Chatty AF 233: 2025 Summer Wrap-Up (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

DEE: Peter pulls out a scroll of his watchlist and it unrolls and hits the far side of the room. 

[Chuckling]

DEE: Let’s see, any other sequels?

PETER: There was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince part two. [Obscured by crosstalk]

VRAI: [crosstalk] No. Uh, and we’re done!

DEE: [crosstalk] Okay! [Chuckles]

VRAI: Alright! Thank you so much for joining us, AniFam! [Chuckles]

DEE: [crosstalk] Good night, everybody!

PETER: Yeah.

[Introductory musical theme]

VRAI: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast and our end-of-summer anime retrospective! My name is Vrai. I’m the daily operations manager here at AniFem. You can find me sometimes on Bluesky @writervrai. And with me, once again, are Dee and Peter.

DEE: Hi, I’m Dee. You can find me on Bluesky @deescribe (that’s “Dee” with two E’s). I used to be the managing editor, and now I hang out and help out with podcasts and recommendations.

PETER: And I’m Peter Fobian. I’m an editor here at Anime Feminist. I’m @peterfobian on Bluesky.

VRAI: Alright. And welcome, once again, to the anime… Welcome to the anime, yeah. No, that’s good. Keep that in

[Chuckling]

VRAI: Come on and slam! Oh, God, I miss Samurai Flamenco so much. [Chuckles] Anyway, if you are joining us for the first time, I’m sorry. How our seasonal podcasts work is, end of season we tend to spend a little less time on titles that may have been covered more extensively in the mid-season if they have not changed substantially since our last conversation, because that gives us a little more time to talk about sequels and stuff, especially this season because there are a lot of short titles going on. 

We’ll also have just plain old series write-ups for Captivated by You and Let’s Go Karaoke, because if the anime industry is gonna try stuff out, we can too. Other than that, we start with our Premiere Digest, working from the bottom up. It’s not necessarily because that’s where those shows still are; it’s just an easy point of reference. And we try to keep it light on spoilers, but do keep in mind there may be some as part of our discussion.

Alright. So, starting in the Red Flag zone, Peter, you said that Clevatess kind of settled out of the grimdark stuff after those first three episodes or so. Did it finish strong?

PETER: Yeah, and in fact, they announced a season 2, which is gonna be going into the school arc, so [chuckles] I have mixed feelings.

VRAI: It’s always a fucking school arc!

PETER: I definitely feel like… yeah, especially in season 2 of… well, I guess it’s not an isekai, but usually isekai anime. It ended in a good spot. Clevatess kind of begins to recognize the potential worth of humanity through their—I don’t know if there’s an established gender for Clevatess, actually—connection with Luna, the baby. Alicia kind of convinces Clevatess to recognize Luna’s humanity, and Clevatess, I think, is in more in a “I need to figure out what’s going on in the world right now” stage, which moves the relationship between Alicia and Clevatess more toward a partnership than a master–slave thing. They’re more partners where one of them is animated by the blood of the other one. So…

VRAI: Yes, yes, Venom, we’ve all seen it.

PETER: Oh, sure, true. So, yeah, I feel like they’re all in a much better place at the end. I think there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on with the worldbuilding, but then, of course, they just go to a magic school and I die a little inside, so…

DEE: Of course.

PETER: Yeah. I definitely… I think the arc for the show, as we have seen it, is really great, and I’m not exactly ecstatic about season 2 unless they get out of this hole pretty shortly. But they’ve been there for a bit in the manga, so…well…

VRAI: I mean, you never know, sometimes the school arc is good. Look at Magus’ Bride. But mostly it’s a sign of shounen rot syndrome setting in, so let’s hope for the former.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. Just the author going to what they know, which is high school. [Chuckles]

DEE: I always appreciate series that have school arcs that last, like, a volume, and it’s not what you expect it to be at all. Those are always fun.

VRAI: Nah, yeah, no, that I can respect. Alright. What about Ruri Rocks? You had a lot of really nice things to say about that, and I know that the Discord enjoyed it quite a bit. Did it finish strong as well?

PETER: Yeah, absolutely. I did have a—I think, like, literally the episode after our last recording, they did this thing where, I think, Nagi got dirty and then put on some new clothes which were identical to her other clothes, and…I can’t remember who her associate is. She got pissed and they did a little fashion show for her, which of course ended in her wearing a maid outfit and jumping up and down. So I was like, “Ruri Rocks, it has fallen.”

DEE: [Chuckles]

VRAI: Womp.

PETER: But after that,  they had a bunch of good episodes after that. They do some stuff with just the girls. They make a crystal radio and bring in their other classmate. They just continue on the vibe of learning more about science, being really focused on that, and the grandeur of time and space slowly, over billions of years, forming these artifacts we call rocks that all have history and a story behind how they were formed and how they got where they are in the exact moment where we encounter them, which I think is very… They really land— That could be really contrived, but I think it really lands the drama and the awe of our place in the universe, as well as all the scientific legwork that goes into making these discoveries. 

So, I think it kinda nailed that for the final couple episodes. In the last one, they go to an onsen, and they literally had moving fog moving around them, so they didn’t do any bad stuff for that one and ended up spending some of their onsen trip… They collected a lot of rocks and were trying to find little meteors. They literally brought— [chuckles] They brought microscopes with them to the ryokan.

DEE: [Chuckles]

VRAI: Aw, good for them.

PETER: So, Ruri finds a tiny grain-of-sand–sized meteor and is very happy and then they kind of talk about their plans for the future and college. Nagi says she wants to be a professor. So, it has a lot of insights into the academic space there, too. So I think it ended up really good. It’s a great show.

DEE: Yeah, it sounds like a nice little hobby anime, for sure. So, it has a conclusion conclusion? It doesn’t just sort of stop?

PETER: Kind… I think it found a good emotional stopping point. Nagi’s just kinda—Ruri has a lot of anxiety over what she’s gonna do after school, and it’s kind of like one of those “You’re obviously…” I feel like her direction’s pretty obvious to anybody who’s looking at her, but it’s also kind of like “You also need to focus on the now and really interact with your passions to develop your interests and make sure you know what you want to do next” kind of thing.

VRAI: Okay. That’s nice! Wish it weren’t randomly horny, but glad that, besides that, it seems to be really good.

Alright. I promise we’re gonna make you stop monologuing soon, but last time you were really high on Dealing with Mikadono Sisters Is a Breeze. So, talk more about it? You still high on it?

PETER: Sure, uh…

DEE: [crosstalk] Is it staying the course or…? Yeah.

PETER: Yeah, I’d say it’s pretty staying the course. They concluded the other two sisters’ story arcs, which [for] the martial arts girl, it was kind of the expectation that she would be a tomboy because she’s such a gifted martial artist and her wanting to explore her femininity as well. And then I feel like with… uh… oh, God, what’s her name? I can’t believe it. She’s my favorite one. Miwa. 

Miwa kinda… her subplot, I feel, was just—this is gonna maybe sound way more insulting than I want it to be—kinda cribbed her story out of March Comes in Like a Lion. It’s revealed she doesn’t actually like shogi and she does it for approval and because she’s so good at it. She wants to make her father proud. She wants to make her sisters proud. And she kind of has a crisis around that, but she ends up saying, “Well, as long as I’m good with this and I accept that this is what I want out of shogi, then there’s really no problem with me playing for that reason, is there?” So, I don’t really know if their subplots did too much for me, as much as the first one did, but I feel like they were kinda fun all the way through.

I enjoyed spending time with the characters. And then they kinda ended the whole thing off with the girls walking outside, and then they kinda waited for him to show up so that he would say… because, you know, he always wants to say, “Have a nice day,” or whatever. So, they tricked him and they waited for him to come out and say it, because they know that that’s really important to him. And they’re just kind of enjoying the new sense of domesticity and connection they have because Yuu worked so far to bring them closer together as sisters. And that’s the spot it decided to end things off on, which I thought was really sweet.

DEE: Yeah. Sounds like definitely on the higher end of harem series. Some of your pitches of some of the early episodes got me as close as I’ve been to checking out a harem series in quite a while. So, definitely, for folks who enjoy that style of storytelling, it sounds like it would be a good one to check out.

PETER: I don’t really… I mean, I haven’t read the manga, but I’m not sure if there’s actually…if it’s supposed to be a romance with any of them, if there’s a romance happening there.

VRAI: I feel like a harem series is subtly distinct from a romcom in that often the point is that you are viewing these characters as viable romantic options with the accompanying beats to match, even if the story doesn’t go through with it. So, does it matter if he’s not going to get together with these people? It’s still doing the thing… I guess I would say.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah. I would say he’s definitely not even interested, and I don’t know if they’re interested either, just besides the fact that he has some crazy good charm that he inherited from his mom, so every once in a while he blasts them with a handsome face and a dramatic line that he drops unintentionally, and then they’re like, “Cut that out!” And then [chuckles] things just sort of continue. But yeah, yeah, I see what you’re saying. Like, formulaically, definitely it is very similar to a harem series, but I don’t know if in the manga he even ends up with one of them or not.

DEE: If the manga ended with them all just being like, “We’re friends! Bye!” I would be infinitely more interested in it, so if it has ended and people know that, yeah, let us know.

VRAI: [crosstalk] I would respect that flex, I’m not gonna lie.

DEE: And if it’s still ongoing—I assume it’s still ongoing, but I don’t know, I haven’t checked on it.

PETER: Yeah, I’ve been meaning to check out the manga, so I can definitely follow up and let y’all know, because I do think you’d probably enjoy it, especially the stuff that happens with Kazuki’s arc.

DEE: Mm-hm. Yeah! Well, thank you for the report.

VRAI: That’s nice. Alright, let’s give Peter a break, although shout-out… I think With You and the Rain ended up being a nice little show, beginning to end. I know Chiaki watched it and, I think, enjoyed it.

PETER: I liked it way more than I thought I would.

DEE: Oh, yeah? That was one I kept looking at like, “I should check that out. I love tanuki.” And then I just didn’t quite get to it. So, maybe it’ll be a show to watch in between seasons. We’ll see.

PETER: I think you’d like it.

VRAI: Alright. Dee, it is our turn to pick up the slack and talk about Turkey, a show that was made… [Giggles]

DEE: Turkey! I liked it. I’m on, like, a razor’s edge with this one where I think it could go either way. I think it could be a show I completely forget exists in like a season, or it’s gonna be one of those where a year or two years from now, I’m like, “Um, Turkey. That one was…” [and] fondness for it will build as time progresses. And I’m not sure where it is yet, but it’s somewhere in that category of… It’s just so unapologetically itself, and I really appreciate that about it. 

There were so many moments in the last few episodes where I was like, “This is ridiculous!” and just started kind of laughing at it, but at the same time, I gave a damn about all the characters and wanted things to work out for them. And there’s an absolutely bonkers twist in the last fifteen minutes that got a genuine emotional reaction out of me! So—

VRAI: I might have had a little feeling, yeah.

DEE: Yeah, right? So, yeah, it’s a weird one. It’s hard to know how to pitch it. I don’t know, maybe if you enjoyed Birdie Wing, give Turkey! a try. It’s not quite as balls to the wall.

VRAI: [crosstalk] No, it’s not as gay or as camp.

DEE: Well, it’s not as gay or as campy, but it’s got that element of…I don’t know, I mean, we talked about this at the mid-season, the way it smashed these two story types together and then just was all in. I don’t know if there’s anything specific…Is there anything specific you wanted to talk about in the back half? I mean, those are just general impressions.

VRAI: Yeah, no, I think… I think for me, too, it’s gonna be one of those shows that’s very like I remember it— It sits in the same spot in my head as Just Because, which is a very middle-of-the-road high school romance that sometimes I’m just like, “That was better than it had any right to be,” and then I kinda go back to forgetting about it because I don’t like it enough to champion it, rewatch it, own it, but I was like, “I’m glad I watched that. It was pretty good!” And I think Turkey’s in that same spot, where I appreciate its commitment to…

DEE: The bit?

VRAI: … doing its thing. I do appreciate its commitment to the bit. Like the fact that the finale is just doing full-on “We’re just gonna do specifically A Kid in King Arthur’s Court, the cheesy ‘90s movie”? That warms my heart so much! But it’s also got—

DEE: [crosstalk] Bowl for your life! So good!

VRAI: Yeah, yeah! Yeah, that’s right: we’re gonna bring back sparklers, because it’s part of our plan… It’s very cute. And I think it’s so sincere about wanting to do its, like… girl power, I guess? I think what it is is I’m like, this show is very sincerely made, but I don’t know why it was made. Do you know what I mean?

PETER: I know what you mean.

VRAI: [crosstalk] There’s, like, you really committed to doing the thing, you like all these characters, but I don’t sense a burning need of “I had to tell this story because of this central emotional hook” about it. It has all these nice moments but not something there, you know?

DEE: I think it doesn’t quite tie everything together thematically as tightly as it could have. I do think it’s there. I don’t think it hit on it quite as hard as maybe it could have, because I think a lot of it is about agency, balancing agency with responsibility and looking after your community and that delicate balance between the two. And, you know, we talked at the mid-season about it with… Oh, my gosh, I pulled up the character list so Peter can cut this, but Suguri’s…

VRAI: [crosstalk] Suguri?

DEE: Suguri’s arc, yeah. You know, a lot of that being about “Well, this is what my family needs me to do, so this is what I’m going to do.” And I liked how they brought in the older sister who is more of a free spirit and kind of showed how there was still room for that even hundreds of years ago, if your family wasn’t tyrants, basically, that there could still be some leeway for people to be able to travel freely or not necessarily be… Like, there were still some people who that was important to them, even to the point where they might leave their family for a little while. So, I thought the way it touched on that— And then it did the same thing with the— I don’t know want to spoil the twist of the ending because it’s so good! But…

VRAI: Genuinely, it caught me by surprise. That doesn’t happen very often.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah. Came completely out of left field, and I was like, “What?” And then by the end of it I was like, “No, I’m on board with this. This is beautiful.”

VRAI: And it is actually foreshadowed. I have to give it to them.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah. But Sumomo’s whole arc is kind of about her feeling—Where Suguri is okay with doing the thing that the family needs to do, Sumomo is doing it but doesn’t necessarily feel comfortable about it. And so, I think the way they tie those different elements in… And, you know, all the characters are female characters, so it’s about agency in an era for everybody, but it’s also tangentially about women finding some kind of power or freedom in these different time periods—and community, especially the way they all work together. So, I think that is there. I do agree with you that there is not… it maybe gets overshadowed sometimes by the silliness. But…

VRAI: Yeah. It’s a lot of good individual pieces that, yeah, maybe just needed some strong central something to tie around that isn’t there. But that doesn’t mean all the individual pieces aren’t good. Like, I did get a little choked up about Mai resolving her grief, her survivor’s guilt stuff. There are really good beats in here.

DEE: Yeah, it is kind of a messy show. It is kind of disjointed, just a little bit, I think, in places, as it bounces from each character arc. Tonally, as well.

VRAI: And those first three or four episodes are kind of… I feel like the back half is a really good kids’ show and the front half is kind of like an awkward kids’ show.

DEE: I mean, I didn’t watch the first half week to week. I watched it all in one sitting, and I had no trouble going from episode to episode, so I will say I think it works better when you just sort of sink into it, rather than dipping in and out week to week. So, it might work better as a binge.

VRAI: Fair.

DEE: So, anyway, yeah, I would say we both enjoyed that one.

VRAI: You know what? Yeah. Yeah, give that one a look, I think.

Alright, let’s move up to one that you’re— I think this might be your sleeper of the season, just the way you’ve been talking about it, Dee. Secrets of the Silent Witch?

DEE: I love this show. [Chuckles] I mean, I don’t really—Peter, maybe you do. I don’t have a ton to report in from what I said in the mid-season. I feel like it’s very much staying the course. I am happy to report that it looks like it’s gonna be two cours, just back to back, rolling straight into the winter. Which, it had the pacing of a show that knew it had more time to tell its story, but I didn’t know that for sure, so I appreciate that we’re just kind of rolling into the next character arc right now—or next story arc, I guess. 

Yeah, I’m continuing to just really, really like this one. I think as far as straightforward anime fantasies with really good casts getting to know each other and solving political schemes from time to time, I think it hits really well. I think it’s really well made for that. I’m not gonna sit here and be like, “Oh, it’s totally breaking the mold!” But I think that it’s just a really well-told fantasy story. Peter, do you have anything new to say, or is it just kind of holding the course for you as well?

PETER: I definitely agree. In fact, I’ve been thinking it kind of reminds me of Mob Psycho if Mob Psycho was a female-led fantasy series, I guess, just in the way that she’s so overpowered but by her own perception she isn’t that great a person because I don’t think her powers are all that useful based on her personal goals of, I don’t know, just maybe having some friends and…

DEE: Doing math?

PETER: … a good time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DEE: Friends and math.

PETER: Doing some long equations.

DEE: [crosstalk] But she likes chess now, which is great. She does enjoy chess.

PETER: Oh, yeah, she’s got a hobby, too. Yeah.

DEE: Yeah, it’s definitely a story where the character’s emotional journey and challenges is more important than their “leveling up their magic powers” quest, you know what I mean? Which I think is what makes it such an engaging show, is it’s about Monica finding a place where she feels safe, but then it’s not like her anxiety is magically cured. She’s still working through it. And sometimes there are mishaps and betrayals, because it is also a court intrigue-type story, so…

PETER: Yeah. A lot of her peers are political assassins, it turns out. [Chuckles] But yeah, yeah, I think it’s good. I also noticed in the very last episode they introduced a couple adult lady mages. One of them has some concerning assistants, but then they had a granny who seems like she might be involved in some of her future arcs. So, I’m kind of excited about that as well, especially if it’s got more characters that are maybe moving out of the student body proper, even though I love basically all of her friends now, especially the one who was really pissed off she was coming after her man. That might be my favorite character actually.

DEE: Oh, yeah, the girl who’s just like totally deadpan and then—But now they’re friends, and it’s fine, yeah.

PETER: [crosstalk] She kept calling her, like, “kiddo” over and over again, and then she found out that it would be advantageous to her to be her friend, so she’s just reminding everybody that they’re best friends now.

DEE: It’s like “We’re best friends now. We’re besties.” Just total deadpan.

PETER: Literally seven times she said, “Oh, did you know we’re best friends?” Yeah, I feel like we just talk about small things like that, but honestly it’s just, yeah, a really charming show, stayed the course. I think it might be headed up toward a pivot where they do some bigger plot stuff, now that we’re entering apparently what’s the second half, but it’s really fun and I’m gonna keep watching it.

DEE: Yeah, the world is definitely expanding, so it’ll be exciting to come back and see how the back half of it goes. I’m curious… Folks at home, drop a comment if you have read the light novels, and just let me know how they are from a… uh… what am I trying to say?

VRAI: Prose?

DEE: Yeah, thank you. I was gonna say “narrative” and that wasn’t the word I meant. Prose, yes. Just let me know how they are from a prose perspective. It doesn’t have to be amazing, but if it’s decent I think I would check them out because I’m really enjoying the character work here and just the slow build with everybody. So, yeah, great show, check it out.

VRAI: You know what else is great? You know what else is frickin’ great?

DEE: What?

VRAI: Is Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show.

DEE: Is it? Did it hit the landing?

VRAI: [crosstalk] This show rules! This show rules! I love this show!

DEE: [crosstalk] Alright, well, adding to my watchlist. I told you at mid-season I wanted to see how the ending hit, so… Alright, keep going. I’m making a mark to watch it.

VRAI: Yeah. Like, the last stretch is really strong, I think. And, I mean, in fairness, it should be noted that this show ticks quite a few personal boxes for me. You know, it’s weird and visually audacious, and it has lesbians in it and also cosmic horrors that develop extremely concerning fondnesses for mortals. These are all my favorite things. But also, just generally, I think it is… I think it does have something that it wants to say. It’s wrapped it around Miko and this sort of… ah, “death game” for shorthand, but it’s really… it… this sort of competition game show format, I think, is more broadly accurate.

 But this show is so mad about Japan’s television industry. It’s really, really got a bone to pick about that specifically, and I think that’s what… It’s almost deceptive to say it is a death game. I almost feel like it lures people in with that at first, because then it goes for—You know, like I said in the mid-season, it sort of broadens out into talking about variety shows and doing some parody about that. And then the last arc is about how news shows and live programming exploit vulnerable people for views.

DEE: Oh, damn. Okay, so it’s got some teeth on it.

VRAI: It does. And I think there are some little whiffs here and there, like there’s a toss-off joke about… because at a certain point, this is livestreaming to the entire world, so there’s a little toss-off where Miko gets yelled at for engaging in looksism by insulting the little Innsmouth fish gremlins. And, like, eh, okay, political correctness gone mad, blah blah, but there’s no teeth on that joke. It’s just like, “We threw that in there and we moved on.” And there are little moments like that, like for example the thing with the fact that one of the contestants is a high school teacher who apparently is a creep but has never actually harassed one of his students. 

And I swear to God I think the show is actually trying to do something, because basically all the contestants who make it through the back half of the show have an Elder God who is a foil to them, and so it ends up wanting to do this thing where his foil is actually sort of predating on another contestant and how that’s ethically wrong, and I’m like, “You’re swinging really big here, and I’m not sure that you’ve… I’m not sure what I think about what you’re doing, but I think I admire that you tried? Question mark?”

[Chuckling]

VRAI: It’s quite— I appreciate… and, you know, I’m not the end-all on this subject obviously, but I also appreciate that Kana, the character who is dealing with domestic abuse… part of her big climactic moment towards the finale is, “Fuck my parents. I’m never going to forgive them for what they’ve done. But also, this is about me and I want to move on and be happy,” and I just… I think you don’t see that kind of narrative enough because we so often return to the power of forgiveness and reparation of bonds, and sometimes that’s great and sometimes people want that, and sometimes “Fuck these people. I’m better off without them.” So, I like seeing that that’s there.

DEE: No, yeah, that all sounds fascinating. Yeah, I was very curious about the show at the start, and then reviews were iffy at first, but it sounds like it—You know, I’d rather a show swing big and whiff here and there than not try. So, yeah, I think I need to check this one out.

VRAI: Yeah. Well, and… And Miko and Mayu’s relationship is more like character motivation for Miko than it’s actively explored, but I don’t think it’s done badly, if that makes sense. Like, Mayu’s sort of a peripheral character, but I don’t dislike her.

I would say the only thing about the finale that’s kind of weak is it feels a weird need to thread in a bunch of sequel hooks that I’m not confident they’re actually going to get to do anything with, and I’m like, “You didn’t need this.” But beyond that, it’s a really emotionally nice finale. You know, the last episode brings back some of the playing around with video game visuals that the first episode did, and I just really liked it. I mean, like we were talking about with Turkey, I feel like this is sort of a show that has that “Oh, you wanted to say something with this weird, weird little show,” and those are the ones that always stay with me in my heart, I think, even if they’re a little bumpy in places. So, yeah, y’all should watch it.

PETER: I’m super interested now. I think— I have complained on this podcast about how it’s such an old canard [that] it’s the responsibility of kids to forgive their parents for doing absolutely unforgivable shit or something. I think… what was the… Wandering Witch, I remember, really turned me off because it just always seemed like the onus was on, usually, a child or student or some sort of dependent to forgive their teacher or the person who essentially has responsibility over them for just doing some absolutely fucked-up stuff. So, anything that’s brave enough to just say, “No, you’re not really obligated to forgive anybody for anything,” I think that’s great. I’m much more… Maybe I’ll check it out in the near future.

DEE: Yes, party, party, party!

VRAI: [crosstalk] And it’s so bingeable, too. Whoo! [Chuckles]

PETER: Yeah, yeah. I got a big plane flight coming up, so [obscured by crosstalk].

DEE: [crosstalk] That’s true. You could get a whole anime in there, no problem.

PETER: Yep.

VRAI: You could do it. You could do it, my guy.

PETER: Alright, I’ll check it out.

VRAI: Well, we don’t have any updates from Cy about Bad Girl from the mid-season. I would say go back to check their thoughts on that, in terms of “We deserve more C-tier yuri shows, basically, and that’s okay.” [Chuckles]

So, let’s move on from that, and I’ll do a little more monologuing with There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…, which is officially—

DEE: [crosstalk] Unless?

VRAI: Unless?

DEE: Well, you gotta leave space for it, I can’t not do it, so…

[Chuckling]

VRAI: Thank you. Thank you. I am so glad that we are on the wavelength about that.

DEE: Yeah. Kneejerk response.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Which, by the way, its official portmanteau is WataNare, but @passiontentacle on Bluesky—and then Chiaki was using it in the Slack chat—started calling it YuriMuri, and I feel like that’s a way cuter portmanteau that’s way more memorable.

PETER: [crosstalk] That’s a good one.

DEE: That’s very cute, yeah.

VRAI: Mm-hmm. I’m sitting here in the corner wrestling about whether to recommend this show, honestly, because I did like it. I did like it. I think it is doing some interesting things. I think it’s doing a lot of what Tony has talked about that they like Monogatari, where it spends some time with the different dynamics of secondary character relationships, rather than just everything being wrapped around the protagonist. In media generally, including fan works, I think there is a tendency when writing poly romance to flatten everything out to be the same dynamic, where what’s fun about it to me is that, oh, no, all these relationships look very different and that’s cool. 

And I think that YuriMuri actually does get that, and those are the moments that I really, really enjoy, like the whole arc in the middle with Satsuki, the childhood friend who’s also the rival of Mai, the first love interest, who kinda sucks. And actually, the fact that, as the show goes on, everybody in universe kind of resents Mai and the way that her presence is a black hole that sucks up everything around her is also kind of interesting. It’s another show that I’m like, “I don’t know that all of these swings always work, but I do appreciate that you’re taking them.”

It’s a lot— I would say the biggest problem with it right now is that…It got a second season, kind of. I’m not sure if it’s going to be released as a film or a five-episode season 2 OVA thing, but there is going to be a continuation. And what that means is that literally the last episode—The last arc is basically about Sena, who is the best character in the show. She’s sort of the angelic older sister type, who is struggling with the fact that she is seen as like this angelic archetype and nobody sees her as a real person, and I really, really like her storyline. It’s really well handled, and I think her and Renako have the best chemistry. There’s a bath scene between them that’s genuinely kind of sexy and intimate feeling. 

So, you have that arc, but then we have to bring Mai around again, because Renako has commitment issues. And so, what ends up happening is that in literally the last episode, we introduce a whole new conflict for these characters that it kinda drops and goes, “Come watch the movie!” Which is sort of frustrating.

DEE: [crosstalk] That’s a hook!

VRAI: Yeah! Yeah. And especially because this is put out by Remow… Which, I guess this show was popular enough that it didn’t do the thing of, “Oh, we’re just gonna have an episode up for a week, and then we’re gonna take it down, so you’re gonna have to watch it as it comes out!” although it did have some weirdness, because I was late watching episode 8 and then it was just gone for a while, so I had to come back when episode 11 came out because it randomly popped up again and catch up on the context there. So, it’s frustrating as an international viewer to know that “Who knows if this show will still be up for people when the movie comes out.” We just don’t know. Yeah, what it reminds me most of is Kashimashi. I made a post about this on Bluesky, but YuriMuri is for people who looked at Kashimashi and rightly said, “No, she should have two girlfriends.”

[Chuckling]

VRAI: But unfortunately, it also replicated the fact that Kashimashi has a nothingburger TV finale and stuck all its actual conclusion in a special OVA. So, yeah, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be on the seasonal recommendations, maybe it’ll sit over in the corner as “This is interesting and fraught, and we’ll talk again when it actually has a real ending.”

DEE: That’s—Yeah, okay.

VRAI: Yeah. I did enjoy watching it. I will watch the movie. I think that if you are a yuri fan and you’re okay with the stuff that’s been discussed in the mid-season, I would recommend giving this a shot, just because I think it is trying to do something different and interesting and I think that’s neat. If you’re not specifically into this genre, maybe wait and see how the movie comes out. But yeah, no, I have regrets about watching it. And it looks pretty, too.

DEE: That’s good. I’m glad it got some shine on it, as well.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Alright. So, Takopi’s Original Sin… Yeah, for sure!

DEE: We already discussed that one at mid-season.

PETER: It was over by mid-season.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yes, that is another short one that got finished, so we can bump it to Gachiakuta, which, Peter, you are still watching—and a big fan of, as I recall.

DEE: [through chuckles] I do believe you have demanded that other people actually watch this one with you.

PETER: I would—We actually got to the point where I’m just like I feel a little unqualified to talk about it since the… Although it’s very tongue in cheek, which I hope I have properly conveyed, especially Remlin, all the characters are messed up. It’s kind of like a— I think I even mentioned that last time with the comparisons to Dorohedoro. And they introduced the last… I think it’s [a] three- or four-episode arc. It’s literally just them in a room talking to this girl named Amo, who’s pretty messed up. And I guess they’re trying to get information out of her, but it’s kind of apparent that she’s not quite, uh, right in the head, and you start learning about her. 

She’s really interested in talking about girly stuff or something, and through some of their conversations you kind of start learning that…it’s like, oh, she was basically sold into sex slavery from this guy but has a very warped perception of what happened. Her recollections are all in crayon. And she kind of says that her mom found her her one true love or something, because he…He sexually assaulted her. And she complained, in her child naivete, that she didn’t really feel comfortable when they did that stuff and described how she was feeling during all that.

VRAI: Oh, I also like Paradise Kiss.

PETER: She was basically describing her symptoms of anxiety, right? And he was saying, “Oh, so your heart was beating fast? That must mean you’re in love with me.” And she just chose to believe him, maybe because that was simpler. And by this point he’s already dead. Somebody kills him, and then he had a… a whatchacallit. Or, no, she kills him. Sorry.

DEE: Oh, good!

VRAI: Yay!

PETER: A guy shows up and beats the guy up and then takes his Vital Instrument, which are his shoes, and says that she should have them instead. And something about the shoes, she really wanted to keep them. I guess she was just willing to go along with everything but that’s the only thing in the world that she really felt like she actually wanted. They fight over ‘em, and she accidentally kicks him off of a high place and he doesn’t land well. But at that point… yeah, so, a lot of this is kind of… they definitely stick with the child sketching-style stuff for a lot of the portrayals of the…

DEE: Assault, I take it?

PETER: [crosstalk] … most vivid stuff. Yeah. But she… her power turns out to be that the shoes release a smell when she wants them to, and anyone who smells it is kind of put into a fugue state where they’re remembering somebody who’s important to them, who they imprint upon her, and that makes them want to protect her, so they have delusions that some loved one of theirs is being attacked and they defend her, which kind of ends up expressing itself as Rudo thinks that a bunch of people are attacking that girl from the first episode, whose name escapes me. 

There’s another member who seems to have a dead wife, and the scene of her getting murdered was replaying in his head, and he was trying to defend her, and in reality he was attacking his own friends. So, her power in and of itself seems to be very kind of thematic with her own background, which I feel is somewhat intentional. The sort of conclusion to that is I think she… you know, after the fight’s over and Rudo gets very upset [chuckles] and really beats the shit out of her, actually…

DEE: Geez.

PETER: Yeah, they kind of talk it out a little bit and she realizes what she’s doing to other people is not kind of okay and their way of communicating with other people is not very functional and they need to have the courage to kind of reach out and have discussions with people rather than just trying to format all of their social interactions based on their own desires, and they kind of make a pact to grow together.

I’ve seen a lot of people really speaking well about the episodes, so I’m curious specifically how it would land with the AniFem team. I feel like the direction that she’s going in now a little bit later on is pretty interesting, but there’s definitely…it’s a pretty intense set of episodes.

From a production side, I really was impressed. I thought her voice actress is really, really good. Bones really put in some extra work to—It’s like two episodes where they’re in the same room with this girl and kind of just experiencing her trauma. And they do a lot of dramatic framing, that thing with the crayons. They do some really interesting stuff with showing people’s faces and her changing facial expressions as she says different stuff. Again, the VA’s delivery is really good, too. So, I definitely thought the episodes were really engaging and interesting, but, again, it’s just kinda really… This is the most the story so far has gotten with some really intense, potential triggering content.

DEE: Yeah, for sure. So, folks, definitely be aware of that if you decide to check it out. It sounds like it’s at least trying to do it thoughtfully, but, you know, obviously I haven’t seen it, but definitely a thorny discussion point in there, for sure. I mean, it sounds fascinating, though. I will admit that.

VRAI: No, it does. Like, I am extremely side-eye when battle shounen is like “What can we do with a female character? What could possibly motivate her? Sexual violence, of course!” But that doesn’t mean that it can never be done well, you know? So, yeah, I’d be willing to… This is one where I’d read the manga, honestly, I think, because then I can get through stuff faster. But yeah, no, honestly, folks, write in.

DEE: Let us know your thoughts.

VRAI: I’d love to know—Yeah. Alright, well, then—

DEE: Knowing that it’s Bones makes me want to check it out more. I will admit that.

VRAI: Bones does look to do Bones things.

DEE: Bones good. Dee love Bones. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Do love Bones. I guess let’s move on to City the Animation. Did they finish or do they still have one more episode?

DEE: It finished on Sunday. It was thirteen episodes but it just finished right before we recorded this, so I was able to watch it to the finale. They tease a second season. We might get one; I’m not sure. Again, this is one where I don’t necessarily have a ton to add to the mid-season; it pretty much stayed the course. 

I continued to really, really enjoy it. It continues to just be a lot of animators playing around and showing off. And not every sketch hits, but a lot of them do, and any time they figure out a way to bring a bunch of the cast together for some citywide event, it really does a nice job of hitting the way people’s lives are connected when you live in… I mean, really any town but certainly a larger place where [there are] a lot of the same people who know each other or work together. Like, there’s an episode that’s like an extended race, an obstacle course race, through the city, so every character you’ve hung out with up to that point is involved in that, and it caps off some storylines.

It hit some emotional beats at the end very sweetly. Much like Nichijou, it does a really nice job of showing the goofball friendships between both girls—because there’s some middle schoolers—but then also, in this case, young women, because there’s some college characters, as well. And just their relationships get to be so delightfully weird and oddball and they have silly fights about nothing, but then they’ve made up like five minutes later and it’s fine, but then they have each other’s backs. 

There’s an extended arc about a couple of middle schoolers. One of them is moving away, and so every time we check in with them— In addition to doing just weird shit middle schoolers do where, you know, they pretend to be superheroes protecting peace one minute and then they’re just goofing around at the local shrine the next, but throughout it, they’re also touching on the fact that one of the girls’ families is moving away, and she’s trying to figure out how to tell her friend and what the best way is to say goodbye. And so, in between all this goofiness, there is some heart there as well, which, again, I thought Nichijou did—in its back half—very well, as well.

So, I had a great time with it. If you like comedies, especially sketch-style comedies with some interconnected pieces, if you like really impressive animation, yeah, it’s a fun show, I would recommend it, and I would say check it out, for sure.

VRAI: It’s really a bummer that it’s in Amazon jail, honestly, going on back to 2017.

DEE: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s not stuck behind two paywalls, as opposed to…

VRAI: That’s true.

DEE: We’re old enough to remember Strike. We’re old enough to remember that.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, all 365 days of it.

DEE: [crosstalk] It’s on Prime, which a lot of folks still have, but…

PETER: Although, now that I mention that, there is another series that I don’t think we discussed during the last cast because it was in jail. I don’t know if anybody’s watching that, actually.

DEE: What’s the other show that’s in jail?

PETER: Fragrant Flower Blooms.

VRAI: No, Fragrant Flower is on Netflix.

PETER: Yes, but that was truly in Netflix jail since I think during our mid-season recording it had… the first episode hadn’t even come out yet even though it was on episode 6 in Japan or something, right?

DEE: Oh, so are we on a delay in the States?

PETER: Yes.

DEE: [crosstalk] I thought maybe it just aired late in Japan. Okay, it’s like the [obscured by crosstalk] …

VRAI: No, no, we’re on the six-week delay.

PETER: [crosstalk] It is truly classical Netflix jail type beat.

DEE: Weird! Yeah, like half of it is up on Netflix right now. I had not started it because I thought, “Ooh, should I try to binge this for the pod?” and then I saw there [were] only six episodes, and I was like, “Oh, well. I guess it started halfway through the season or something.” That explains it. Cy said they’re enjoying it?

VRAI: Yeah, they gave a really glowing review to the first two episodes, and I think they’re still enjoying it a lot. So, that is also one that folks… especially if you’re looking for a well-made high school romance, that’s a good one to check out.

DEE: Yeah, and with the weird U.S. schedule, we’re probably check… I would think we’ll maybe try to check back in with that in the fall since for us it’s gonna be a fall show. You know?

VRAI: Yeah. So, that leaves us with one more show in It’s Complicated, and actually Alex was nice enough to record their thoughts. Yes, so we have Betrothed to my Sister’s Ex, which Alex was kind enough to record some thoughts on for the finale, and I will hand it over to them now.

ALEX: Hey, everyone. It’s a rogue Australian accent in the middle of a podcast here to give you some final thoughts on Betrothed to my Sister’s Ex. Overall, non-spoilery thoughts is I thought this was nice. It didn’t blow me away, but I think it’s a perfectly charming example of a fantasy romance, a bit of escapism, a bit of romance, and that character arc of coming from a really, really rough place and discovering things like self-esteem and friendship and true love. It’s quite sweet, with some of the, let’s say, seesawing tone [chuckles] issues that I mentioned or had Vrai narrate for me in the mid-season.

There’s a couple of things I would like to talk about and specifically highlight for our purposes here. They do both involve spoilers for late in the game, though, one of them being a trigger warning I want to flag for people and one of them being something I thought was really cool but does involve dropping a pretty big plot twist that the series has been building up to. So, that’s your warning for that.

I’ll go with the content warning first. About eight or nine episodes in, you get some flashbacks to what happened to Anastasia, who is the sister, of course, in our title, and you find out that one of the ways that these girls’ parents manifest being just completely the worst people imaginable is that they care so little about their daughter that they send her off unchaperoned in a carriage with the sleaziest man imaginable, and he does try to sexually assault her. 

He gets as far as ripping her dress off and saying a bunch of creepy stuff, but she stabs him in the hand and she flees and she’s ultimately fine. It’s certainly not the graphical, gnarly depiction of such a thing we’ve seen in one of these fantasy anime, but I found it quite confronting, especially because, as I mentioned before, a lot of this show is very sweet and twee and kind of charming, and so when it does dive into these more graphic and darker things, it’s always a bit of a ,“Wa-hey!!!” So, just want people to know that’s there.

I also want to flag something interesting that may not apply to every region but I thought was worth bringing up. Crunchyroll has recently started implementing Australian ratings on all of its series, so, you know, G for general, PG for parental guidance, M for mature, all that jazz. And this series was PG for most of its episodes, and then partway through the season it changed and went up to an M with, then, a little included warning about mentions of sexual violence or references to sexual violence, something like that. So, presumably the rating changed once that scene happened, and I just want to… I find that very interesting. I just want to let people know that you maybe can’t 100% rely on those ratings. 

o, if you’re watching this or any other Crunchyroll series with maybe younger people or you’re more sensitive to those content warnings and things that come bundled in with ratings, maybe just wait until the series is finished because it seems like those ratings are updated on the fly, based on what happens episode to episode. But that’s just purely an observation. I have no industry knowhow to back that up. But just to flag that in there for people.

Now, on to the good news. The good news is that Anastasia survives this and, for a brief period, is living her best life, dressed as a boy, and is working as a tailor’s apprentice. So, good news: all that stuff from the first episode, where she’s like, “I love making clothes. I love thinking of women dressed up as handsome men,” that does in fact come back and seems to be a real intrinsic part of her character and her motivations. Of course we have this classic thing now where you have to say, “Well, you know, is she some kind of queer? Is she some kind of trans? Is she just in disguise because it’s convenient? Is she throwing off the shackles of the very specific and rigid femininity that her parents caged her in with?” Could be all of the above. Could be none of them. It sort of doesn’t really go into it. 

I will say, though, when she is given the chance to be out of her disguise and just hanging out in the world where everyone knows who she is again, she doesn’t…Like, they don’t put her in a ball gown for the wedding at the end. She’s, of course, at the wedding, because they get married and have a happily ever after. And Anastasia’s there hanging out in more, sort of… not like a fully butch outfit, I would say, but, you know, she’s wearing a blouse and pants. So, I don’t know, I thought that was kinda neat. So, good for Anastasia. She ended up being a highlight of the show. She got to be a character. She wasn’t the evil stepsister type. Nor was she an angelic little cherub who just got to die to advance the plot. So, good for her. You know? It was sweet.

So, hey, bit of a mixed bag, this one, and some surprises, but, hey, if that all sounds good, I recommend checking it out. Thanks, everybody. Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

VRAI: But I’m sure that it was thoughtful and enlightening.

DEE: I’m excited to find out when the episode drops. Suspense!

VRAI: Me too. Oh, it’s suspense for us and the listener and reader at home. That’s exciting.

PETER: Isekai correspondent Alex.

VRAI: [Chuckles] Alright, that leaves us just one new premiere for summer, which is The Summer Hikaru Died. And I’ll say right now that it’s gonna be really, really hard for this to be unseated as my anime of the year. That’s where I’m at.

DEE: It hits all your—It presses all your favorite buttons, for sure, so that doesn’t surprise me at all.

VRAI: Mm-hm. [Laughs] Yeah. And it’s gonna get a second season! Like, that never happens! Between that and YuriMuri, what’s happening? When is the other shoe gonna for these continuations of queer anime? I’m a little bit scared.

DEE: We’re getting a bunch of second seasons and shows just auto-getting two cours. And it’s… Yeah, I’m worried at some point that that bubble’s gonna burst, but I’m really going to enjoy it while it’s happening because I don’t remember it being this many shows—that I cared about, anyway—for quite a while, so it’s been a pleasant surprise, for sure.

PETER: Yeah, certainly, because I feel like a lot of twelve episode anime just don’t have enough time to do what they want to do, and it seems like a lot of the good ones are the ones that got the 24, so, yeah, a lot of pleasant surprises coming at the end of these episodes.

DEE: Yeah, and Summer Hikaru Died is very much a series in progress. Like, they found a stopping point, but it’s very clearly an unfinished story, and so, the fact that they got the second season is, I think, huge for this one.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Yeah, it’s sort of like where Land of the Lustrous left off, where we’ve reached an accord between our two leads but the actual plot has… we are hovering on the precipice of a much larger conflict. So, it reaches an emotional resting place but it does not feel like “Ah! And I’ve gotten a complete story out of this in some sense, even though there may be more later.” It is half a story.

PETER: [crosstalk] He didn’t get his sister that floatie yet. They can’t leave that unresolved, you know.

DEE: That’s true. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Mm-hmm. It’s so good. It’s so beautifully and carefully made, and I just… We don’t know when the second season is happening. I don’t want them to rush it. We know that the manga’s going to be ten volumes and that Mokumokuren is quite involved in the anime production, so I’m hoping that they take the time they need to make it the best version of itself. And also, I said it at the mid-season. I will say it again here: unless horror is a no-go for you or you are extremely photosensitive, if you do not fall into either of these camps, I cannot encourage you to watch this enough. It reminds me why animation is my favorite medium.

PETER: Yeah, was it the last episode where they’re on the train and it just used live-action footage with them drawn into it? I thought that looked really good. I don’t even know if I have a reason why. I was just like, oh, it would be really hard to animate just a front view of a train going forward, because, you know, you have to animate all the stuff moving sideways as you continue straight onward. But then, they kind of had both of them appearing… I think it was in a reflection of one of those traffic mirrors or something, getting off of the train, and I think it just kinda lended itself really well to the tone of the scene. And they’ve done that a bit before, like when they showed the… it was just a pile of chicken, and it was just a photograph.

VRAI: I love you, raw chicken.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was so good.

DEE: It plays with mixed media a lot more than I can think of most shows. It’s definitely, yeah, experimental in some ways, for sure.

PETER: Mm-hmm. I wasn’t sure if the final scene with Hikaru, where he’s looking up and he’s like half Lovecraftian beast and half just smiling Hikaru, and the camera pans up and is zooming in and out toward him, I wasn’t sure if they were using some 3D in there, but I thought it did really well trying to match the first-person perspective of the other character, what’s his name? Uh…

VRAI: Yoshiki.

DEE: Yoshiki.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yoshiki. Which they’d done a couple times before with his bangs in frame, which I thought was very fun, as well.

DEE: Yeah, there’s a bit in that last episode where Yoshiki’s kind of having a revelation to himself, and the part that’s reflected in the water… I’m pretty sure it’s an actual human person’s mouth that is talking out of his animated face, and it is one—

PETER: Yes. I think it was a whole body with his head on it, yeah.

DEE: Yeah, it is uncanny, which certainly ties into the show itself. And again, we’re halfway through so it’s tough for me to make any big claims. I would like to say it’s trying to make a point about the subject matter in this show. Even though it is fantastical, it is still true to life and kind of knocking on the door of the real world a bit, with the emotional revelations of that scene.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Oh, yeah, I think that’s very personal.

DEE: That’s my best guess for why they’re doing that. It could also just be someone was like, “It’s gonna look cool!”

PETER: Yeah, yeah. Somebody’s just like, “Hey, let’s try this.”

VRAI: [crosstalk] Why can’t it be both?

DEE: Yeah, I don’t know yet, because we haven’t seen the whole show. It certainly at this point feels very thoughtfully and purposefully done, I would say, and is definitely unsettling in the moment.

VRAI: Yeah, yeah, although I gotta say I did have to go and crawl under a table to do some joyful screaming when we get to the end and Yoshiki is like, full hands clasped meme with Lan Wangji and “I stand by my canceled wife.”

DEE: I don’t get that reference but…

VRAI: I love when the seemingly—

DEE: …I’m sure someone in the audience will appreciate it.

VRAI: You totally watched The Untamed.

DEE: I did but I don’t know what that meme reference is to.

VRAI: Fair enough. Darmok at Tanagra. The wall fell. But no, yeah, I… Yeah, I think you are precisely right in terms of the mixed media partly being about, yeah, that these are… and particularly as Yoshiki accepts a little more of himself, that they are real people and being able to not hate himself makes him more alive. And then I do a little cry because I love Yoshiki so much! It’s a really good show.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, I definitely want to know where it’s going, although I imagine we might have quite a bit to wait because I think it caught up to the manga, basically. So, it could be a while.

DEE: There’s seven volumes out, and so if the author has said it’s a planned ten, then… eight, nine, ten… I mean, it depends on… Pacing-wise, a lot of the time you’ll get two volumes a year if there’s no delays or anything, so it could be a couple more years maybe. I’m not sure.

VRAI: Yeah, yeah. My understanding from folks in the Discord and on Bluesky is the anime ends around like halfway through volume 5, so…

DEE: Yeah. So, if we’re truly at like the halfway and, again, if the author has said that it’s planned to be ten volumes, then, yeah, could be a couple years before we get the whole thing.

VRAI: But we know it’s coming, so I’m okay. I can wait.

DEE: Hey, I’ve got longer waits for things. This feels like one where if it is a couple years, I’ll get back into it and be like, “I have forgotten all the lore, everything that’s happening,” and I’ll probably have to rewatch the first half.

VRAI: Reasons I haven’t started season 2 of Hanako-kun for 500, Alex.

DEE: Yeah, why, Vrai? Why?

PETER: [Laughs] Uh-oh.

VRAI: Because I forgot all the lore, Dee! I forgot everything!

DEE: [crosstalk] Oh, the lore. I’m thinking of the characters. It’s a big cast, so I thought maybe it was like, “I don’t remember who these people are!”

VRAI: No, no, I vaguely remember who everyone is. I just don’t remember 70% of what happened in season 1.

PETER: Yeah, there’s a lot going on in season 2, too.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Which actually is a wonderful chance for the two of you to remind me. Dee, how was season 2? Because it’s done now.

DEE: Yeah, season 2 was really good. I feel like I talked about— I talked about the first cour when that came out and how it took them a little while to get used to the new director, but then Tony and I both felt like the back half was really strong. This season—and this could be my memory playing with me because I’ve also read the manga but it’s been a little while since I read these arcs—I feel like the anime didn’t quite… we’re into a very… like, things are getting complicated and messy in really interesting ways. I really, really love the manga, and I think the way it deals with complex emotions in an empathetic way without necessarily characters off the hook, I think, is really good, and I like the way it does that. 

I don’t know if I think the anime hit the emotional beats, especially with some of the supporting characters, as well as the manga did. And, again, I don’t have access to the manga, so I couldn’t point to exact scenes, and it just be my memory filling in gaps, but I felt like they rushed a little bit of the side story stuff, but they also kinda left us halfway through the arc. Like, it really just kind of ends, with an understanding that we’re gonna get more.

VRAI: Oh, weird.

DEE: Yeah. I mean, they kind of find a stopping place but not really. We’re really in the thick of… It’s a long arc that they’re going through. They have to go to the underworld—well, the space between, I guess, not officially the underworld, the Boundary—and they’re dealing with another one of the Seven Wonders, and there’s a whole lot of backstory there, and we get a lot more with Hanako and his brother. So, there’s a lot of stuff building in this arc, and rather than— So, I feel like they rushed a little bit of it, but I also appreciate that rather than rush it super fast and try to cram it all into a cour, they just kinda went, “Cliffhanger! You’re gonna get another season.” So, I’m happy to see more of that.

I think they did a good job with Kou and Mitsuba’s arc and Kou kind of coming into his own as someone who has his own goals, not just following in his brother’s footsteps. And I really like what they’ve done.

Hanako makes a lot of very poor choices in an attempt to protect Nene—well, really, save her life—in this arc, and I appreciate that the show is sympathetic to the fact that this eternal 14-year-old is making poor choices and why he is, but also Nene is like, “You need to fucking knock it off!” and isn’t like, “Oh, I immediately forgive you because you did it for me and that’s so sweet.” Like, she’s pissed at him for not giving her a say in her story, basically. So, I like the way it’s handling that, as well. Peter, are you watching this one? You’re not marked on the spreadsheet.

PETER: I am not. No. I’m just dealing with a lot of the promotional stuff, so I keep seeing clips and going like, “Wow, there is a lot [chuckles] going on right now.”

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, I think this season’s a little bit of a mixed bag but [it is] also…My memory of this arc is it ends really satisfyingly, so I think we’ll get more of that in the next stretch of episodes whensoever we get those. So, I continue to really like Hanako and recommend it for folks, especially if you like supernatural school stories with extremely likable but also messy casts. So, yay, Hanako-kun!

VRAI: Yeah, I’m definitely gonna get back to it. That’s one that me and my partner watch together.

DEE: Recommend.

VRAI: So, it’s definitely on the list, and I’m glad.

Speaking of shows that I’m sure are good, but who knows when I’ll get around to it because of my instinctive resentment at this point for the way Shonen Jump series take up air, it’s Dandadan!

DEE: Dan-da-dan [pronounced with short “a” sounds as in “man”]!

[Laughter]

DEE: Speaking of shows that end in cliffhangers, gleefully, every season!

PETER: Ah, yeah. Oh, my God. The place they stopped is actually so crazy. If you’re a manga fan, you just know what’s coming next is so… yeah.

VRAI: Is it better than where they stopped at the halfway point?

PETER: Slightly. They actually did choose to end the season on another…it’s a nonconsensual kiss between this new, mysterious girl and Okarun, unfortunately. They do mirror Momo’s reaction to romantic feelings and something exploding behind her that they did from the first episode, which I thought was a nice touch, but it’s just a kind of unfortunate stopping point otherwise, I think. Definitely leaves a lot to think about before the season, though. Leading up to it, though, I don’t know. Ah, it’s just… it’s a really fun series.

VRAI: I know part of what people love about the first half is the episode with Momo’s mom, I think it is, and just how Momo’s written in general, so I wanted to know how its female character writing carries on in the second half.

DEE: It stays the course.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Momo is, to my perception, the main character. She’s the real active agent and kind of the real team leader, as well. And also, they do— I want to say, they’ve kept the relationship pretty static, even in the manga, but there is romantic development between her and Okarun. And I feel like even then, they’re in a car ride to the hospital, and she reaches out and kind of intertwines their fingers together, and both of them are… they’re too teenage [chuckles] to do anything but pretend that she’s not doing it, together.

DEE: The tension in that scene is so perfect. Science Saru—I haven’t read the manga. The manga may also be really good. I feel like Science Saru is doing a lot of work to really make this show pop, as well.

PETER: Mm-hm. Yeah, yeah. They’re doing really good adaptations. And the setting and all of the stuff is so weird that they just get to go full Science Saru on it, too, so I feel like it was a really good match between IP and studio. But, yeah, Momo is definitely… she’s the one who is kind of initiating romantic stuff, and both of them are super bashful, but it doesn’t feel as annoying as it can with a lot of romance anime when they just refuse to take any sort of initiative, even when it’s 30 episodes deep and everybody but the two main characters knows that they’re gonna end up together and it becomes kind of an exercise in frustration. 

So, even in that, I feel like it avoids being interminable in that way and also shows yet another way in which I think Momo is really kind of the driving force behind a lot of the plot developments and stuff. So, I think it does a great job there. Momo… I love Momo. She’s probably my favorite Shonen Jump protagonist, maybe. That’s actually a big statement. I’ll have to think about that. Yeah, and I think—

DEE: [crosstalk] I like the main character a lot.

PETER: Mm-hm. And they introduce Jiji and Kinta in this season. Actually, Dee, I’m interested in what you think of the two of them. [Chuckles]

DEE: I like Jiji a lot because he feels like kind of an intentionally slightly obnoxious teen boy…

PETER: Yes!

DEE: … in a way that I find kind of endearing. Like, I think if I knew him in real life, he would annoy me, but in this particular environment… I also… you know, that first arc with… Evil Eye—

PETER: Evil Eye.

DEE: —is the name of the spirit that’s possessing him, I think that continues what I found—other than the fact that I really enjoy the cast—I think that continues some of the thematic elements of Dandadan that I think are so interesting, which is the way the spirits are… a lot of them are victims of, like, different kinds of abuse or social ostracization.

PETER: The ghosts are created by trauma, right?

DEE: [crosstalk] And that isolation and that trauma has festered into this pure rage, understandable rage. And so, the fact that— Honestly, the moment that really endeared me to Jiji is when he—and minor spoilers for the first half of this series—is when he begs them not to exorcise Evil Eye because he’s like, “He’s just a kid who wants to play, and I told him I would play with him, so please don’t rip him out of me and shred his spirit apart.” And so, the fact that they kind of find a balance with this extremely angry spirit that just wants to fight all the time and they find a way to kind of find a balance for that and have him experience the world and have a community was like… it was really sweet. That really got me.

I confess that I felt the thing that happens with long-running shounen starting to happen in the back half of this season, where it started to lose me, because Kinta does not really work for me at all at this point. To me, he’s a very sort of straightforward mockery of anime nerds in a way that I don’t find charming like I do the other characters. And maybe he’ll get better. But I feel like he got punished for social awkwardness in a way that the other characters didn’t. But then there were also a couple parts where he was kind of a creep, so I didn’t like that either. So, yeah, the stuff with Kinta and the kaiju in the back half started to lose me a bit, but damn it if that cliffhanger didn’t pull me in again. So, we’ll see how long I make it through season 3. But I really did think the first half of this season was very strong.

PETER: Yeah. I think Dandadan is kind of one of those shows that’s brave enough to just have shows where it’s like, “No, this person is canonically annoying, but I am trying to make you like them despite that,” which I think it succeeded with with Jiji, where you’re just like, yeah, I could not tolerate being around Jiji in real life, but I recognize he’s a good person and I think he’s very funny in the series. Kinta, I also feel like, is kind of along those same lines, where he’s— I know what you mean where it’s kinda like, is he a creep or is he just really bad at interacting and doesn’t know? Because, I mean, the running gag early on is they keep saying “testicles” because they’re talking about the Golden Ball.

DEE: [crosstalk] They keep on talking about the Golden Ball and he thinks, “Oh, they’re making dirty jokes.” I thought that was kinda funny. That part didn’t bother me.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, he’s just trying to hang. [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah. And they’re like, “You’re such a creep,” and he’s like, “You guys made the joke first!” because he doesn’t understand the context. I was fine with that. Truthfully, I don’t remember what the exact moments were, but I feel like some of his reactions to Momo were a little icky.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, he definitely… he’s like, “How are you talking to girls? I don’t know how you’re doing that.” And I think that kind of— I don’t know if— It’s kinda hard for me to get a bead on whether he… I don’t know if he’s in it for the girls or literally just because he has zero friends.

DEE: Yeah. It’s that attitude of “Girls are a completely different species” that’s just fucking exhausting.

PETER: Yeah. I mean, with Jiji early on, I think he’s kinda primarily annoying and moves over, and Kinta becomes sort of a long-running character, so I think he becomes a little bit more comfortable in the group.

DEE: Yeah, we’ll see if he gets better.

PETER: A lot of him is… This whole thing for him is kinda wish fulfillment because he gets to pilot a robot and all that and live his dreams of a hero.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yes. Which, good for him.

PETER: So, I think, even in that one, it’s trying to be kind of compassionate towards somebody who’s fundamentally a really annoying, awkward human being. And so, I like that vibe. I definitely agree with you on the ghost things, too. Some of my favorite spirits are coming up, so I’m really looking forward to next season.

DEE: Mm-hmm. Okay, well, that’s good to know. I’ll stick around.

VRAI: To balance out the shounen talk, I feel like I must stop briefly to note that, Dee, you are still watching and enjoying Anne Shirley, which I think is wonderful.

DEE: [crosstalk] It ended. Anne Shirley ended.

VRAI: Yeah! It’s over. Yeah.

DEE: Yeah. It just wrapped up this past weekend. Yeah, I thought it was a really strong series that I could happily throw at a ten-year-old, which is really nice because we don’t have a ton of those on the market. I don’t know if it got a dub, but I hope it does.

VRAI: It does. It does have one.

DEE: Yeah. I have not watched the dub. I should’ve done that. Anyway, no, this was a fun one for me because I definitely went through a period between the ages of eight and ten or something like that where I read a bunch of those classic girls’ lit series, like Heidi and Secret Garden and Little Princess.

VRAI: Little Women and… Yeah.

DEE: Not Little Women. That one was always pitched as like an adult book, as for an older audience, so I never read that one. And somehow Anne of Green Gables slipped through the cracks, which is wild because I think I would’ve loved it!

VRAI: Anne is wonderful.

DEE: [crosstalk] It is very impressive how well it has aged, especially for a series that was written in like 1900, I mean, you know, being aware of the fact that the girls are expected to get married. But Anne’s education is as much of an important plot point as the slow-burn romance. It’s also really interesting to watch from the perspective of knowing that Anne of Green Gables was very popular and influential in Japan as well, and how some of the character arcs and tropes and things have kind of woven their way into other popular fiction in Japan was kinda cool to see, some of the enemies-to-lovers, rivals-to-lovers–type vibe between Anne and Gilbert. And now I know why there’s so many anime characters named Gilbert. I always thought that was an odd pull, and I assume this is why.

VRAI: Non-zero chance.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, you get a lot of unusually popular English names that nobody uses anymore in anime, that you’re always like, “Where? This has to be from somewhere.” Somehow it entered the Japanese collective unconscious, and they just keep using these names that people who speak English don’t actually ever name their frickin’ kids anymore.

DEE: Yeah. So, I think Gil might’ve come from here, which is great. But—

VRAI: Yeah. I have no professional data to back it up, but I have a pet theory that the reason for so many red-haired shoujo heroines is Anne.

PETER: Oh. That’s true. Like… Yona of the Red Dawn [sic]…

VRAI: [crosstalk] This is my unsubstantiated theory from out my ass.

PETER: [crosstalk] … Snow White with the Red Hair, that kind of… yeah, yeah. Interesting.

DEE: Yeah. I’m sure there’s a line— I’m sure if you were tracing the history, Anne of Green Gables would be somewhere in there because I do know especially the 1970s anime version was also very popular and well received.

VRAI: It’s so good!

DEE: So, it’s a classic across genres. And, yeah, I actually did read the first book while this was airing, because I was like, “You know what? I should just do that.” And, you know, they definitely cut some stuff and streamlined some stuff, and I’m not sure how many of the books they actually get through by the end of it. They get to Anne effectively graduating and—I don’t know, spoilers for a 100-year-old series—getting engaged as well. But I really appreciate it. It’s very charming. It’s nicely animated. There’s a few corner cuts here and there, but then there’s other parts that really pop. And yeah, I appreciate that this existed, that it got two cours, and, yeah, like I said, definitely one that you could recommend for a younger audience or for [a] family-style show.

Truthfully, the only thing that I felt aged really poorly is there was a middle arc with… Anne’s adopted mom adopts a couple of other kids that are like distant family. And the boy, Davey, is a bit of a troublemaker. And there’s parts with… The series is really good about… it’s not like they’re hitting him with a switch or something. They’re very anti… no, they’re like, “We’re not going to hit kids. We’re going to teach them why this is wrong,” which I very much appreciated. But there’s like a whole arc where he locks his sister in a shed and the reason Anne is upset with him is because he lied about it, not because he locked his sister in a shed! [Chuckles] I’m just like, “Come on, guys. Come on! Maybe teach Davey that that part was also wrong, not just the lie.”

But other than that, I really appreciated it. It has a very likable cast of characters. Anne is extremely charming. She’s imaginative and spunky and everything you want in a shoujo heroine. And, again, I like that the series is as much about her education and friends and growing up and going out into the world as it is about, you know, there’s also a slow-burn romance… that is—I will say—is fine. So, good for them.

VRAI: I’m so, so glad.

PETER: [crosstalk] It’s not her best friend, is it?

DEE: No, I’m sorry, Peter.

PETER: Okay. [Chuckles]

DEE: But yeah, no, the first arc has strong yuri undertones. But, as is often the case for that period of writing, they remain good friends but they do eventually marry men. So, sorry, folks at home if you were hoping for something different from the series written in 1899. But certainly has a Class S vibe.

It’s nice. I’m not like an Anne of Green Gables mega-fan or anything, so I’m sure people who read all the books might have critiques about how the material was adapted, but, yeah, overall I was very pleased with it. I looked forward to it each week.

VRAI: Yeah, it’s not for me, just because I like the slower pace—I mean, this is just retreading what I said before. I like the slower pace of the ‘70s series. But so, the new series maybe didn’t quite click with me on that front, but I’m really, really, really happy that people are watching and enjoying it, you know?

DEE: Yeah. I’d like to watch the original, the ‘70s one at some point, as well, for the history and then also to see how it filled in the other gaps from the novels that this one, I think, did a good job… I think what it snipped, for the most part, you never felt like it was rushed or like it was missing material. So, overall, I think they did a nice job cutting things down to a manageable length.

VRAI: Alright, we’ve got two more shows, two more sequels that need a definite shout-out. I feel a little weird about doing this because I’m not watching Call of the Night the anime, based on my rules that if something is going to be annoyingly horny, I want it where I can flip through the pages as opposed to having to watch it in whatever time the director has set for me.

DEE: [Chuckles]

VRAI: But I did read all of the Call of the Night manga, and I think that the arc that this section of the anime covers is worth a shout-out because I think it’s the strongest part of the story. It’s the part where the mangaka finally really figures out and settles into who Nazuna is as a character beyond, like, “Damn, I think this character design is hot.” And her relationship with Ko settles into what it felt like it should’ve been from the beginning, which is your classic vampire, you know, “This is an ancient being that acts like a teenager and never emotionally matured, and so they’re basically kind of on the same footing.” It also goes a lot into Nazuna’s mom and the many lesbians that she pulled into her orbit, in a way that is not handled like shit. [Chuckles]

DEE: Impressive.

VRAI: Right, yeah, no, it’s actually rather sweet about it. I think the manga’s very much interested, in a way that I see with a lot of titles recently, [in] this definition in adolescent series of, like, “Well, how do I know when I’m in romantic love with somebody? What is that gradation? What is the magic sign that lets me know it’s romance?” And I think the best moments of the series kind of are interesting sort of melancholic meditations on that. Anko is a wonderful character for that reason and her relationship with Nazuna is, I think, really interesting, which is why it frustrates me even more that when she’s introduced, the series decides like, “Why do we need jokes about her trying to pick up this 14-year-old?” and then those crop up again later on for some—  don’t—This manga’s very frustrating in places, which is why I’m not watching the anime. But I would say that this is definitely the strongest part of it, where it does the best, where it kind of has the most interesting things going on with vampirism as a metaphor for identity and loneliness and all that stuff, so I did want to shout it out.

And that leaves us with My Dress-Up Darling season 2, another show where the horniness rule is in effect. So, this is the strongest portion of the manga, I remember, but I didn’t watch the anime. What about you, Peter?

PETER: I did. I loved every second of it. It was great. Yeah, as you said, they kinda tone down the stuff and they’re working more into the now-established Marin/Gojo romance, where also he’s kinda— Well, in Dandadan’s case, they both definitely like each other and seem to be on some level aware the other one likes them, too; they’re just so awkward. But yeah, in this one, Gojo, I think, is blissfully unaware and Marin is trying to figure out [chuckles] how to ask somebody out. But I definitely liked that they do a lot of the… This is where a lot of tertiary-type characters get introduced and form a larger cast and kind of a multi…what do you call it? A larger community that represents more demographics of people, like the adult ladies and the crossdresser, Amane, which—

VRAI: Yeah, I… mm-hm.

PETER: Oh, go ahead. You have Amane thoughts.

VRAI: [crosstalk] No, no, I was just thinking. No, no, I mean, Amane’s fine. I like that he’s there. Like I said, I think what makes this the strongest portion of the manga is those ensemble characters where you’re looking at different reasons of, like, here’s how cosplay and these communities can be affirming spaces for gender nonconformity and playing with… and degendering hobbies. That’s the word I’m looking for.  If I really wanted, I guess I could be frustrated that there’s not more queer people in it, but I am still glad that it’s talking about gender and just being accepting of people in this really warm and sincere way that I think really works.

I love the arc that’s just “Well, what if Marin did Dear Brother cosplay that also had a sprinkling of host club on top?” That kinda rules. And I do think after this the manga gets kind of bogged down in dragging out the confession, where, the last couple arcs, I’ll be real, I was kind of hanging around to see what the series that Marin was cosplaying would be, because I think the mangaka really excels at doing interesting gestalts that are both recognizably references but also believable as their own thing, which is harder than you think. I wanna play that denpa game!

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, draws out the essence of a genre, yeah. Mm-hmm.

VRAI: I would like to play the denpa mad nun game. That sounds like it’s made for me.

PETER: Oh, my God, the kind of… I don’t want to say “pixel art,” but sort of the grainy Windows 98 kind of heavily pixelated-type art that they brought into the… They do a really good job capturing the feeling of the place and time of the shows that they’re pulling from there, as well as the extended fandom and community around them, as you were saying earlier, which I think is a real strength of the series, for sure.

VRAI: Yeah. And it’s less—It’s not not horny, and I do appreciate that the mangaka is a woman, and I think there is a textural difference to how it feels in places—with the manga, at least. Not to say that you can’t still have critiques of fanservice just because a woman is drawing. But I do think that it demands looking at in a different context. But yeah, so I guess I just—And it also pleasantly doesn’t have the problems that kind of, I think, kept the first season off our recommendation list, which was both the fact that it went really hard on the fanservice and it also had the tanning subplot. And this one is just kind of all the strongest parts of the series with the minimum of weaknesses. So, thumbs up to it.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah. And the choo-choo scene and the chest-binding scene and stuff. There’s a lot less nonsense this time around, for sure.

VRAI: Mm-hm. So, then, enjoy the sparkling heights before… whatever happened with the ending.

PETER: Yeah, I really like the adult characters and how they interact. One of my favorite parts is where they’re just like, “I don’t know why you kids are stressing out so much. Being an adult’s awesome. You have so much dispensable income and you can focus on your hobbies and that kind of stuff, so just shut up about leaving high school, please.” So, I think that sort of stuff and those perspectives are really good. I am kinda confused with the place that it stopped. It doesn’t seem like there’s enough for another season, but there’s definitely a final arc there.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Oh, does it just have the Haniel stuff?

PETER: I think it’s just Haniel, so maybe there’s gonna be… my theory is that they might do a movie as the final arc, because it seems like they have at most six episodes’ worth of content left. So, maybe that’s the direction that they’ll go with it, although I don’t think anything was announced at the end. It just kinda finished with a non-confession. Very strange.

VRAI: Ah, yeah. But yeah, I know it’s like a discourse lightning rod, and I get it and I don’t blame anybody for being like, “No, I can’t deal with this,” but I… I don’t know. I’m glad I read it, you know? And I think the characters are very sweet.

PETER: Yep.

VRAI: Is there any sequels content that we’ve forgotten or that I’ve forgotten?

PETER: [considering] Ah, geez.

DEE: Think that’s all I watched. Peter pulls out a scroll of his watchlist and it unrolls and hits the far side of the room.

[Chuckling]

DEE: Let’s see, any other sequels?

PETER: There was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince part two. [Obscured by crosstalk]

VRAI: [crosstalk] No. Uh, and we’re done!

DEE: [crosstalk] Okay! [Chuckles]

VRAI: Alright! Thank you so much for joining us, AniFam! [Chuckles]

DEE: [crosstalk] Good night, everybody!

PETER: Yeah.

VRAI: If you—

PETER: Oh, there was also part two of To Be Hero X, although I don’t really know… I think they finished the first half, 24 episodes, and I don’t know when the next part’s gonna start. They did a new version of the opening where there’s just a bunch of new characters that we’ve never seen before. It is a tangled web now. I’m not even quite sure how to talk about it. I’m kind of… I don’t know maybe if it’s worth doing a podcast on its own, although I do think maybe just doing a podcast on all the new animation coming out of China might be something interesting for us to do, including To Be Hero X. Because I know we got Lord of Mysteries, and this season there’s Who Made Me a Princess. So, maybe that would be…

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah. Yeah, donghua’s really… there’s really been more of it lately, which is cool.

PETER: Yeah. But To Be Hero X is…it’s become very interesting, I’ll say, in a way I don’t want to elaborate on because either it’s…

VRAI: Fair enough.

PETER: … talk about it for two minutes or…

DEE: Or two hours? Yeah.

PETER: [crosstalk] … or thirty. And we don’t have thirty, yeah.

VRAI: That’s fair enough. Alright, AniFam. Thank you so much for joining us for this little summer look-back. If you like what you heard, you can find more from the team by going to animefeminist.com. If you really like what you heard, consider supporting us by going to patreon.com/animefeminist or ko-fi.com/animefeminist if you’re more of a one-off kind of a person. Especially as social media sites continually threaten to disintegrate, it really, really means a lot that we have such dedicated supporters who help us to continue doing what we do for almost a decade now. We truly, truly could not do this without you. And that includes providing transcripts for our podcasts, paying writers and editors as fairly as we can, you know, at least to industry standard and better than industry standard for a lot of websites, and we believe in that quite strongly, and you help us to do that. So, thank you so, so much.

DEE: You’re the best!

VRAI: Speaking of socials, while they exist, you can find all of ours by going to Linktree. That’s linktr.ee/animefeminist! Thank you so much, AniFam.

DEE: And remember.

VRAI: And remember.

DEE: In bowling, there’s always a second throw.

VRAI: That’s so true!

DEE: It’s so wise and so true.