Chatty AF 241: 2026 Winter Mid-Season Check-In (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

DEE: Who are we talking— Who’s quasi love interest?

VRAI: The little narr— Isn’t… The narrator, who’s the little blonde kid and he hatched out of an egg and also he might be the Antichrist.

DEE: Yes!

PETER: Oh, wow.

DEE: [crosstalk] That’s a really great description!

[Introductory musical theme]

VRAI: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast and our winter 2026 slightly-more-than-mid-season podcast! My name is Vrai. I’m the daily operations manager at AniFem. You can find me on Bluesky sometimes @writervrai being sad about vampires. And with me today, I have Dee and Peter.

DEE: Hey, everyone! I’m Dee, former AniFem managing editor, current hanger-out in the world. You can find me posting cat fics— [corrects self] cat pics (ha-hah!) and geekery on Bluesky @deescribe if you are so inclined.

PETER: And I’m Peter Fobian, I’m an editor at Anime Feminist, and I’m also on Bluesky @peterfobian. It’s just my name.

VRAI: Alright, if you have never tuned into one of our seasonal podcasts before, how it works is we use our Premiere Digest [and] we just leave things where they settled from the first episode because it makes it easier for folks to follow along. Yeah, so, we start from the bottom of the list and we work our way up to the top. Sometimes, if we don’t really have anything to add, we’ll send you back to our three-episode check-in if the show is still kind of where it was last time we looked into it at the quarter mark.

And we are actually going to start pretty far up the list this season, with the first show that, actually, when we were putting together the digest, [we] kind of waffled over putting in near to the top, like, in Feminist Potential, and it seems like it would have belonged there. And, Peter, you are the only one on this call watching You and I Are Polar Opposites. How is it going? It seems nice.

PETER: Yeah, I actually can’t believe I’m… I appear to be the only person watching it unless other people haven’t updated the doc, which is crazy to me.

VRAI: I believe— Yeah.

DEE: [crosstalk] Peter, there are so many joseimuke this year. I just had to watch other things. The good news, which we will get to this as we keep going: I’ve dropped some stuff. So, if you tell me, “Hey, Dee, watch this show,” I’ll start watching this show. I was waiting for you to tell me that on this pod, so… [Chuckles]

PETER: Oh, yeah. It might actually be my favorite show this season, full stop. We’ll talk about Journal with Witch, obviously, but I can say I am enjoying Polar Opposites more than Journal with Witch. I think it’s kind of like a combination of Skip and Loafer and Tsuredure Children. So it’s got a lot of goofy, eccentric personality type shenanigans along with some really good high school personalities. And I thought they were going to pair off a lot of the kids, and I think they are at some point, but right now it’s mostly just been a central romance. 

Yeah, I don’t know. It’s just… It’s really good. It’s really good, gang. Suzuki’s a really good protagonist. She’s kind of a little weirdo gremlin gyaru. They do a bunch of really cartoony animation where she’s jumping around. The fashion in the series is also really good. I love the art style. I think Tani, the boy in the central romance, he’s kind of like a very quiet guy. You know, he’s her polar opposite. But I really like how they get into his… he’s more cerebral and he’s trying to figure out how she’s thinking about stuff, and the way they do it I think is pretty interesting because he’s trying to understand her really well and he’s also such a neutral presence that she has trouble understanding him, too.

I think they’re going to get into some more, maybe, serious thematic stuff with some of the other couples. One of the girls, her early joke is that she only falls in love with absolute scum. Like, if a guy isn’t going to go to a juvenile detention center or something like that, it’s just hard for her to get excited. But in the most recent episode, they kind of introduce some stuff where it’s like… she says, like, if she likes somebody, she finds it hard to ever hate them, even if they… and she has some kind of maybe screwed-up perspectives on some previous relations that basically have facilitated her allowing other people to kind of repeatedly hurt her feelings, and she might be matched up with this guy who is just 100% traumatic reaction to his very awkward middle school career. So, they’re both just trying to figure out how the hell they’re supposed to take all the bad stuff that happened in the past couple grades and become functioning social creatures again. So, I think there might be more to talk about, kinda take apart, at season’s end, but for right now, I just think it’s really fun. I look forward to it every week. I laugh all the time. It’s really cute. So, please watch it.

DEE: That’s great. I have been attempting to find, like, a school romcom this season that would hit, and I have been struggling. So, that one has been lowkey on my list just because I knew a lot of folks were enjoying it, so it’s great to hear that from you. I will… Like I said, I’m replacing some stuff, so I will probably be caught up by the end of the season.

VRAI: Yeah, I think Cy has been really enjoying it as well.

DEE: Yeah. Slight emphasis on “probably” because March Madness is going to hit and we all know my schedule gets wonky once the basketballs happen. But probably I will be caught up by end of season and we can chat about it.

PETER: Yeah. So you need to watch it right now.

DEE: I’ll start it now before the March Madness happens, yes. That’ll make it easier for me to catch up.

PETER: Let me know. I’m very invested in the “Dee checking out You and I Are Polar Opposites” story arc.

DEE: Cool. Okay. [Chuckles] Well, more on that later.

VRAI: Is there anything worth saying about Sentenced to Be a Hero? Because I know that Caitlin and Cy enjoyed the premiere, but it was one of those “This is not shitty for the genre, and that’s cool, but it’s maybe also not too thematically meaty for our purposes.”

PETER: I definitely think they’re maybe getting into something regarding the fact that the central premise of this show is basically how they’re employing carceral slavery to act as soldiers in their wars rather than, you know, risk any of the rich nobility out there. It’s kinda got flavors of 86 in that way.

DEE: Mm-hm. I was thinking that as you were describing it, yeah.

PETER: Mm-hm. The church is once again evil, as it always is in fantasy series for some reason.

VRAI: Well…

PETER: [crosstalk] And I think they’re kind of getting into a lot of political corruption, so I am wondering how they’re going to keep pulling that all apart. It does seem like there’s some grander designs in the narrative regarding how unfairly even some of the… I mean, some of the heroes are, like, psycho murderers and stuff like that, but some of them were even committed to this horrible sentence because maybe their political perspectives or truth-telling as journalists were disfavorable to the kingdom. So, yeah, it’s got some meat on those bones.

DEE: Yeah, it sounds like it’s taking some swings, actually, out here, Sentenced to Be a Hero!

VRAI: [delightfully surprised] Alright!

PETER: It’s hard to tell how deep they’re really going to dive into it but, I mean, even if they don’t, I think it does… I mean, it is really solidly put together and gorgeously animated, so, I mean, even if the design isn’t to delve into these themes too much, I still think it’s a good watch. So, I guess we’ll see. [Chuckles] But I am enjoying it regardless. I think it’s good.

DEE: Yeah, keep us posted on that one. That’s one that I’m like, mm, let’s see how it turns out before I commit to it. [Chuckles] But it definitely sounds interesting. Yeah, it sounds like, you know, it’s not just fluff; it’s doing some stuff. So, you like to see that.

VRAI: Yeah, not just fluff and not just edgelordery. It seems like the writing actually has some, like…

DEE: Some criticisms to make?

VRAI: … some subtlety to it?

DEE: Even if it’s, you know, doing it mostly through the lens of fun action, there’s still a sense of, like, “I have a thing I want to say.”

PETER: Yeah, the main character has pretty obviously been framed at this point. But, you know, there’s a lot of those revenge fantasy series out, and—

VRAI: Right, I was going to say, that’s more common than not.

PETER: He is not…He could have very easily, I think, been like an obnoxious edgelord, grimdark-type guy. But I think that his personality comes across pretty well. He’s kinda… They do it well. So, even if you’re kinda tired of those series or don’t want to interface with that at all because most of those stories are extremely shitty, I think he’s a good MC to carry the series as well.

DEE: Cool.

VRAI: Alright. That’s awesome.

DEE: Yeah, appreciate the check-in.

PETER: Yeah, love to see it.

VRAI: Yeah. Alright. Alright, so, moving up the chart a little bit, we’ve got Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary, which I watched the first episode and simply have not had time to watch more. But, Peter, you’re up on it. Anything worth checking in on?

PETER: I don’t know if I have too much to say about this. It’s basically like Mieruko-chan, except it’s about a grade schooler who punches ghosts in the face. It kinda—

VRAI: And it’s also not extremely skeevy like the anime version of Mieruko-chan.

PETER: Uh, tr— Yes. I was going to say they do have a character who seems concerning, but he… uh… he’s okay, I guess. He just sort of thinks Kaya-chan’s cool because she can exorcise ghosts and wants to help her. Um… I hope I don’t eat those words later on. [Chuckles] But…

VRAI: Yeah, I was going to say, you might—Don’t call down the curse.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe I should take that back. But yeah, yeah, it does the same thing where it’s Mieruko, where it’s like, “Oh, here are some ghost tropes, and then we’re either going to subvert it or not and maybe have a grade schooler uppercut a ghost’s head off or something.”

DEE: That kinda sounds fun, honestly.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Which does rule. It was fun!

DEE: Does it feel like it’s targeted at a younger audience, or is it more teen and young adult?

PETER: Uh, that’s a good question. I’m honestly pretty curious what Caitlin would say about the series, because I think some of the stuff that’s been more interesting to me maybe is like the fact that Kaya can see the ghosts and is usually warning other people away from them, but those people can’t see the ghosts, so they think she’s weird, and then something bad happens to them and they usually end up blaming it on her because they… Like, there’s an evil swing and she pushes the kid off the swing so the ghost doesn’t eat him, and then they think she’s being mean. But then one of the teachers there, I think, kinda sees enough that she starts believing Kaya-chan and has to advocate for her and maybe kind of take the blame for some of the stuff that goes on, because Kaya’s kind of… you know, she’s a kid and people don’t tend to believe children. So, I think, like… I don’t know. I’m sure it’s probably a seinen manga. [Chuckles] But, uh…

VRAI: Caitlin gave the first episode a positive review over on ANN, if I recall, in terms of just being a positive example of a teacher advocating for and communicating with a child.

PETER: Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I think it’s got some of that—

VRAI: [crosstalk] So… And, yeah, yeah, and I really liked what I watched. I just…

PETER: Mm-hm. Yeah, it’s kind of just, you know, monster-of-the-week, formulaic. They do have a narrative going on with her mom and whatever the heck’s wrong with her mom. But… uh, yeah.

VRAI: Yeah, that’s actually, I think, going to be the thing to watch with that series. Once they put a name to what’s going on with her mom, in terms of how much are these ghosts a metaphor for… Like, her mom seems to be the main place where the ghost is a metaphor, as opposed to just being a ghost, and that can get dicey.

PETER: Yep. Yeah, it’s fraught, especially because I think there’s some pregnancy involvement, so…

VRAI: Gotcha.

DEE: I mean, the ghost is usually a metaphor, so…

PETER: [Chuckles] The ghost is always a metaphor, yeah.

DEE: A monster is rarely just a monster. Yeah, keep us posted on that one as well. That’s another one that sounds like it would be worth keeping an eye on. Although, I guess you said every episode’s kind of doing the same thing at this point. But if there’s, you know, broader subjects or themes going on…

PETER: Every episode title has like three titles because that’s like the three chapters it’s covering. So…

DEE: Right. Yeah.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of… It’s like, “The toilet’s haunted. The swing’s haunted. This book is haunted.” That kind of stuff, yeah.

DEE: Okay, so maybe a little on the repetitive side. But, yeah, maybe worth keeping an eye on, though. So, cool, thanks.

VRAI: Yeah. Nice. Alright, let’s move on up to the “It’s Complicated” section, then, with Wash It All Away, and I’ll be honest: I am mostly going to nudge folks over to my check-in write-up on this series because I did drop it, basically for extensions of the reasons I talked about in my check-in. I think there is something here in terms of validating something that is traditionally seen as feminine labor and making it the subject of a hobby anime and the amount of work that goes into laundry and caring for clothes and the very Shinto-esque totemic importance of clothes as a historic and communal object. And I think all that stuff is really neat, and those meditative moments of the anime are really cool and they look nice. I think it is struggling mightily to take out the cheesecake from the manga, but it’s been left with this weird fanservice-shaped hole where it was, and you can tell because… It’s very moe fanservice in particular. Like, there are some panty shots and stuff, but it’s more that this heroine is, like, flustered by the act of living, you know, real 2000s-era stuff.

DEE: Ooh, yeah.

VRAI: Uh-huh. Just everything makes her blushy and flustered and so, so flustered that it’s like, are you going to burst into tears? And just doing the… not… You know when something’s not a fanservice shot but it’s like this feels like an introductory… the visual novel “This is our special illustrations screen for the new outfit”?

DEE: Sure. Yeah, yeah.

VRAI: They do that a lot.

DEE: Uh-huh.

VRAI: Uh-huh. And there’s sort of a thing with a high schooler. And part of the reason I didn’t necessarily flag it as an age gap is partly because (A) she gets blushy and flustered with literally every person she’s ever met and (B) because I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be one of those stories where it’s like, “Wow, these two share a really deep understanding of each other, but it’s not going anywhere,” and then there’ll randomly be, like, a three-year time skip in the epilogue and then they’ll date after the story is over, and it’s like, okay, whatever, I’m gonna pick my battles about being annoyed about things.

DEE: [crosstalk] I’m too tired. Yeah. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Yeah, exactly. But—

DEE: I can only fight so many things. Yeah.

VRAI: Mm-hm. But as much as I do appreciate the hobby elements of this, the other stuff is just such a low, annoying grind that the hobby—You know, there’s not enough character that’s compelling to me to keep me on the hobby stuff that I think is cool and valuable, you know? So I think I’m out.

DEE: It sounds throwbacky, but to a style that I never enjoyed. So… Yeah, so, fair enough.

VRAI: Yeah. Yeah… That means I will still be talking for a moment more. To Shiboyugi: Playing Death Games to Put Food on the Table. I am actually about an episode behind as we record this, so folks may be screaming, “Oh, my God, why didn’t you talk about X?” I’m sorry. I do like this show. I think that it hasn’t necessarily… This is another one that’s a little bit like “Well, it’s kind of still where it was when I checked in on it.” 

It is starting to introduce some stuff of, like… Our heroine, Yuki, is sort of being compelled to become a mole and somebody wants to take down this death game institution and use her to help do it as part of this… But beyond that, it hasn’t really gone too much more on the commentary end. It’s a lot more focused on this rival character and sort of juxtaposing the two of them as, you know, Yuki growing a conscience after doing this sort of aimlessly and without thinking a lot about the consequences for other people much, and this other person who is ostensibly about group work becoming more and more cutthroat and exclusionary and monstrous. And that’s fun. It’s a fun series, but I also don’t think it’s… And don’t get me wrong, I like the weird flirtatious rival vibe they have going on. But it also hasn’t really raised its game since that genuinely quite excellent first episode. And the fact that it’s based on an ongoing manga really kind of dampens my enthusiasm for where it can end up in terms of an explosive finale.

I also just got so spoiled by Necronomico. That was genuinely a really good death game series that expanded it to do other things that had something to say and a tight, smart conclusion that ended confidently. And also lesbians. So, it really had everything I could ask for. Thank you, Cygames. [Chuckles]

DEE: Yeah, I ended up watching that one after the season on your recommendation, and yeah, that was a show that definitely had things to say and took some swings. And, you know, it might have whiffed sometimes, but it very much felt like people wanting to tell a story and having the episodes they had to tell it and they told it. And, yeah, I agree: it was well put together, and I say that as somebody who’s not a big fan of the death game genre. So… Yeah, so it sounds like this one’s maybe spinning its wheels a little bit?

VRAI: A little bit. And it’s not bad at it. I… I… I go back and forth in terms of, like… Because the whole point is that, you know, oh, these unseen creeps are putting these girls into fetish outfits as part of the games. You know, they wake up and they’re wearing a costume or whatever. The most recent arc was… it takes place in a bathhouse, so they’re all in towels. So, the camera isn’t leery, and I do respect that, but it is a little bit of “We’re doing the thing but not doing the thing,” and that annoys me personally after a while if you do it long enough.

DEE: Yeah, it gets exhausting.

VRAI: Yeah. So, I think it is still quite pretty. I love lineless animation. I have a real soft spot in my heart for it. But unless you specifically like death game series or are like, “I’ll watch anything with experimental animation,” eh… I… Nyeh. It’s not one that I’m really jazzed to say, “Go check this out,” as of right now.

DEE: Gotcha. Okay, well, that is good to know because, like I said, I’m kind of a hard sell on death game series.

VRAI: Our next title is Roll Over and Die, which I fell behind. And I have to admit that it’s a little bit of a struggle for me to catch up on this one because— So, something that I made a point not to include in the premiere review or when we did the check-in because I didn’t have a chance… I try not to include source material details unless I have had a chance to check them out myself.

DEE: Verify. Sure, yeah.

VRAI: Yeah, sure. But this is just the chatting shit show, and this has come up multiple times over, from before the anime was even confirmed, from multiple folks in the Discord and commenters on the site, that this— The whole thing that’s fun about Roll Over and Die is that it’s one of the grimdark, wish-fulfillment, you know, “falsely accused” anime, but we have put a queer female lead in it, and that does genuinely make it interesting in some ways. And, you know, we’re doing the thing where, oh, gosh, there’s this girl who says she wants to be your slave and will call you master, but in this case they’ve both been branded, so they are socially on equal footing. It’s just that this other girl has a lot of psychological trauma going on, [Lowers voice into a stage whisper] but also you still get to play into the trope. Cough-cough. [Returns to normal voice] I’m a cynic. Can you tell?

DEE: It is an uncomfortable premise. It was a fraught premise. I’ll say that. It is definitely fraught.

VRAI: Yeah. Yeah, it’s fraught, but also, you can genuinely say that it’s doing… Like, there are things that are changed in the act of making it a queer female protagonist, and I think that that is neat. But also, all of its villains are paper thin and two-dimensional, and that makes it really hard to take when I’ve had this confirmation from multiple other people that there’s a pretty transphobic stereotype as an antagonist of a later arc. So, I’m just looking at it like— And my dearest hope is that this ends up being a Bunny Drop thing where the anime stops before it gets to whatever that material is, and so people can enjoy the anime as, like, dumb, trashy popcorn fun and just kind of leave it at that. But in my heart over here where there’s so much anime and so little time in my day, I’m like, “Do I want the TERF yuri on my day? I don’t know. I don’t know.”

DEE: There’s maybe other things you could be reading or watching or… Yeah, absolutely. I hear you.

VRAI: Yeah. And I know that that makes me— I know that in doing that, I’m a little bit doing the Community meme, like “I can excuse the slave maid fetish, but I draw the line at transphobia!”

[Chuckling]

DEE: Well, we all have— I mean, we’ve talked about this before. Everybody has their hard lines. Everybody has their thing that will take them out of a story and things that they can maybe work past. So, I mean, you know, you’re honest about what does and doesn’t work for you in fiction. So… And, folks at home, if you have different thresholds, then maybe you can risk… I mean, we don’t know… I don’t know how brutal the transphobic villain is, how canon that is, you know what I mean? So, we can’t speak to that storyline at this point, so, I guess, just be aware of that going in that that might happen and it might be real bad. We don’t know.

VRAI: I really hope that it just ends up getting to be like “Yeah, head empty, turn off brain” but with yuri in it. I want it to hold on to that to the end for people, even if I don’t end up getting back into it, because people deserve to have that.

DEE: Yeah.

VRAI: Alright, moving up to other things that have maybe proved a little bit disappointing, how, you two, is In the Clear Moonlit Dusk going?

DEE: Well, I got to about episode 4 and thought to myself, “I don’t think anything’s happened since the first episode. I don’t want to watch this anymore.” I made myself watch through 6 because it wasn’t like it was unwatchably bad, and I was like, “Well, I’ll watch through the mid-season for the podcast.” I dropped it at 6 and I will not be going back and nobody can make me. It is— I— I think there’s a lot of, like… We could dig into it a bit. Caitlin’s write-ups on Anime News Network have been really great, by the way, so I would point you there for maybe some more in-depth conversation as well.

VRAI: Mm-hm. They’re delightful.

DEE: Yeah. My number one thing with it is I just find it very boring. I just don’t feel like anything’s really happened. It’s very tropey. It’s not a romcom because it’s not particularly funny. The guy is not particularly charming or… I don’t feel like we’re going to scratch the surface and find hidden layers. He’s got some alienation stuff with being a rich boy, which, I don’t know, waaah… is kinda where I’m at with rich boys at the moment. And not in a “His parents are awful and he’s been so…” Yeah, I don’t know. There’s not much to him. 

I really want to like Yoi, the female protag, the girl prince, but I don’t feel like the show has done a very good job of articulating her as a character. Like, my read on her is that she has a tendency to kind of make herself what other people expect her to be. But I don’t know if the show plans to interrogate that at all, or if she’s just going to go from being the prince that everyone expects her to be to being the girlfriend that the guy she’s into expects her to be, Ichimura. So, thematically and character-wise, I don’t feel like it’s done a very good job of articulating that. And again, it’s not like it’s… It’s not balls-to-the-wall drama, so it’s not even like I can watch it for the popcorn of it all. It’s just not very interesting. Peter, how are you feeling about In the Clear Moonlit Dusk?

PETER: Pretty similarly. Yeah, I kind of… I thought the first two episodes were pretty good, because I liked the thing where she blocked the guy’s punch in the convenience store, and even after… You know, he pulls her out of there, and after that you can see the manager put the guy in a headlock, and I was like, “Oh, that was a really funny, kind of interesting way to get them in a situation together.” And then the way they end up dating, where he jokes about it and then she just goes, like, “Bet,” [Chuckles] like, “Let’s try it out.”

DEE: And shows up with, like, a contract. Yeah, no, I agree with you. I thought the first two episodes, there was a premise there that felt like it had some potential.

PETER: Yeah, but then… And, of course, her whole thing with her presentation and the way she’s kind of… I actually kind of… The premise, I was uncertain about, but then when they got a bit more into it, where it’s kind of like… oh, it’s kind of like… and this is probably going to come up in the Tamon’s B-Side discussion as well. It’s like they’re kind of othering her or reducing her to a role rather than recognizing her as a human being — the other girls in school, since she’s like their idol. And I was like, “Okay, so there’s some interesting stuff they can do with this,” and so I kept… Like, in the first two episodes, it just seemed like there’s a lot going on here, but then none of it paid off whatsoever. Like you said, the… I can’t even remember the guy’s name, the love interest guy.

DEE: [crosstalk] Ichimura? Yeah.

PETER: Ichimura, yeah. He seemed like he had a lot going on, you know, beneath the surface, and then it’s just like, no, basically what you see is what you get—unless something crazy happens later. I even kind of thought, at the beginning, they’re both— Yoi’s very analytical and trying to figure out how she feels about a lot of things, which came up in… I don’t remember what the series was, was it last year? Where it had the guy who was kinda way too aggressive about getting together with the girl, and she’d started dating him because she didn’t even know what love was. God, what was that called? I’ll see if I can dig up the name. But a lot of that came out with her trying to participate in a relationship so she could kind of analyze things and see maybe how she does feel about it.

DEE: Sure. Like an experiment.

PETER: [crosstalk] It’s kind of like, you know, “I’m going to jump first and see how I feel about it later.” But then Yoi just seems like… I don’t know, the way it’s executed is just like she’s just constantly completely lacking in understanding of anything that’s going on and never coming to any conclusions afterward that make any of the… It’s just kind of an excuse to make her react strangely to very basic human interactions. And then when the series introduced the guy named Ohji, I fucking lost it, man. [Chuckles]

DEE: The romantic rival who I like better in every way than Ichimura? [Chuckles] That was the other problem. And this is a problem I used to have with shoujo a lot when I was younger, and it’s been less of an issue recently, I’ve found, but where they bring in the rival and I’m like, “But that guy’s, like, nice and sweet and you guys seem to have a nice rapport and have conversations with each other. I think you actually should date him. I think he’s better.” And so, that made it tough, too.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, he’s more relatable. He’s not, like, a weird alien guy. Although I hate that his name is Ohji, though. I don’t know if you two remember Fuuka. Do you remember that show?

DEE: Vaguely.

PETER: It’s… The guy is in a band with a girl named Fuuka, and then she dies and then he meets another girl named Fuuka, who joins their band, and then meets another girl named Fuuka.

DEE: Oops, all Fuukas!

PETER: [crosstalk] And it’s like, is there a cloning factory going on around here? So, that’s what I’m starting to wonder, yeah. It’s like same vibe. Although I agree: I think I like Ohji more than Ichimura, too. So, I don’t know. It just feels… It’s very… And we’re probably gonna get into this with Hana-Kimi, too. I just recognize a lot of the tropes it’s doing, too, and it doesn’t feel like it’s putting enough of a new spin on them that it’s really keeping me interested.

VRAI: Okay, point of order. Hana-Kimi is thirty years old, so…

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

DEE: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

PETER: Yeah. In Hana-Kimi’s case… We’ll get into it with Hana-Kimi. I definitely… There’s some, like, Sopranos energy going on with Hana-Kimi, for sure. But, yeah, with Moonlit Dusk, it’s more recent, so…

DEE: Yeah. It’s a bummer because when I heard the premise for that one… that one’s kind of been on my radar for a while. I hadn’t quite gotten to trying out the manga, but I kind of wanted to, so when it got an anime and it looked pretty, I was like, “Oh, cool! This will be great!” And so, you know, power to anyone at home who is enjoying it or pulling something out of the story. But I have just been… it’s really not clicked for me, and I just feel like it’s… I feel like it had a premise but it doesn’t seem like it knows what it’s trying to say or even what questions it’s asking at this point, and I just… Yeah, the lack of charm has pulled me away from it. So, I won’t be coming back but, Peter, if you’re going to keep watching it, I am curious to see if it finds its footing and how it is in the back half.

PETER: I could definitely say the art, both in the manga and the anime, is really good. And the scenario and the setup in the first two episodes were excellent. So, there’s always a chance.

DEE: If it ever decides to interrogate that, it could turn into something really interesting, I think. It just doesn’t really feel like it is, at this point. It feels very shallow right now, is kind of how I felt about it.

PETER: Lot of potential. Mm-hm.

VRAI: I desperately need to know if Yoi’s character design is the case of “This author can only draw one female face” or if it was editorial mandate, “Your heroine has to be cuter,” because if you want a whole series about this androgynous heroine, maybe she shouldn’t look like every other female character except with short hair.

DEE: Well, and I think maybe it’s trying to do something with the trope of the girl prince, whether or not that exists in reality. And, you know, that’s another element of this I think we could dig into. The story is there’s this sense of “Oh, Yoi feels like she has to play the prince because that’s what people expect of her.” And it’s, like, well, in reality, girls are basically never encouraged to be masculine, right? Like, maybe within some very specific contexts, but in broader society that’s generally not the case. People would be encouraging her to be more femme. 

But within the story, maybe you’re trying to do something about exploring this trope of the girl prince, which is a trope I like a lot. But, again, I don’t think it’s doing anything with it! So, it has been a frustrating experience. There’s other shows with other girl princes who I would recommend. A lot of the time I’m watching this like, “We could have had a second season of Nozaki-kun and I could be hanging out with Kashima right now.” Or even, like… what was the show? It was a couple of seasons ago. It was maybe, God, years ago? I don’t know. It was flawed but I liked it. How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer. That was a show that was at least interrogating the concept in some interesting ways.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. It’s like [if] you got a lot to talk when you’re sad about something, you talk about it a lot when you know it has a lot going for it, too, so…

VRAI: Well, and I can see it resonating very strongly with the transfem experience, right, like feeling gawky and gangly and wanting to be recognized as cute and girly. And I can see how it would vibe on that front, but I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s not for me. It’s not for me.

Alright, well, let’s move on, then, to the other vaguely gendery shoujo of this season, which is Hana-Kimi! Do you want to start? [Chuckles]

DEE: I’ll do a quick one here, just because I haven’t talked about this. This will probably shock folks who know my track record with shoujo and romcoms. Hana-Kimi, for whatever reason, I just bounced off of as a kid. I love a crossdressing heroine. I love a wacky shoujo romcom. I don’t— I couldn’t— I don’t know— It’s not— The humor doesn’t work for me, not in a way that I hate it, just in a way that it just doesn’t. It’s never really clicked for me. I bounced off it as a kid. I thought, “Oh, maybe if I watch it as an adult, I’ll appreciate it from a historical legacy perspective.” I am bouncing off it as an adult, too. So, I went ahead and dropped it at 5. I just said to myself, “This one’s not for me, and that’s okay.” So that’s where I am with Hana-Kimi.

PETER: Yeah, definitely a lot of the jokes and stuff either haven’t aged well, like with the school nurse or are just kind of… The tropes have been so used now that I think it… Like, I mentioned The Sopranos earlier. And I think a lot of what I wanted to say about Moonlit Dusk kind of applies to the Hana-Kimi scenario as well. But, of course, in Hana-Kimi’s case, it’s super old, so it’s kind of like you can see a lot of the building blocks of future titles in it. And usually—although The Sopranos was particularly good, so maybe this doesn’t apply—it’s kind of like ways that people have riffed on it and done really interesting things, and then you get the first emergence of that trope earlier on, which might not have had all the future context that people use to say, “Oh, wouldn’t it be more interesting if we did it this way?” or something like that. I guess kind of in a game-designerly-type way, they’ll usually say, like, the first game to try a mechanic doesn’t tend to succeed, but then the next one that riffs off of it tends to do very well. 

I kind of had that way about Hana-Kimi, where I see its influence, but I don’t know if I really vibe with the way it has done stuff. I know, going in, I was sort of really… based on the scenario, I was kind of interested to see how long the fake-out could last, the farce of her pretending to be a boy so she could be in the all-boys school. And then, like, 15 seconds into her first school day, she bumps into a guy who just goes, “Are you a woman?” [Laughs] I was like, “Is that it? Is it over? Has the ruse played itself out?” And, of course, they have the dog that only likes girls, and then the guy who’s constantly suffering a gay panic around her. I don’t know. Yeah, also, this season, I just feel like there’s a lot of good romance series. It’s got stiff competition, is what I’m saying.

VRAI: Yeah, I kinda spilled my guts on Hana-Kimi when I did the premiere review.

DEE: Yeah, that was a good review.

VRAI: But I definitely—Aw, thanks! Even though it was frustrating to me as a kid who wanted something more trans-er, I still devoured it because it was the closest thing I could get. And I certainly have fonder memories of it than After School Nightmare, long may it burn.

And I think… Not even Sopranos. I think Hana-Kimi does have… As far as the school comedy with the wacky student council president, it’s got a bad case of Seinfeld syndrome, where you look at it now and it’s like, “Oh, every other series for 30 years has done this, so this seems kind of old and trite now,” when it wasn’t the first (like, Here Is Greenwood exists and some other dorm comedies), but it was a big deal and I think it was charming in that sense. And I was so happy that the anime was sort of leaving that intact in a historic sense while cutting out the really dated homophobia, because for me Umeda was a really, really pivotal character. He’s an archetype that I still go back to as a favorite. Like, Miyuki in Kowloon Generic Romance is a similar character who I loved a lot. I just love that sort of acidic “‘I don’t care,’ he said, caring deeply” kind of character.

[Chuckling]

DEE: Yeah, those are always good.

PETER: “‘I don’t care,’ he lied.”

VRAI: Uh-huh. And having a gay adult who is the sensible, reliable, emotionally mature person that teenagers can rely on and is not a predator to those teens…

DEE: Yeah, I think it’s great.

VRAI: [In singsong] Still not as common as it should be.

DEE: Mm-hm.

VRAI: But at the same time, the sort of flatness that I was worried about has only gotten worse. The smoothed-out designs are not good for this series because at least half of what’s fun about the manga is the fact that, yeah, the ruse falls apart basically immediately but her art is so slightly rough and fluffy and playful, it sort of implicitly invites you to go, like, “Yeah, this is all stupid as hell, but we’re having fun, aren’t we?” It’s kind of joyous in that sense. And I think that that is hugely missing from the anime, and all that’s left is kind of like, “Well, these tropes are all tired.” The anime was never going to… The anime was set up to fail when you made a beloved cultural touchstone anime of the series that was making fun of it 20 years ago! Like, Ouran has been out for 20 years! And it just makes me kind of sad, not because— As much as I have nostalgia for Hana-Kimi, it’s not one that I recommend that people read necessarily, but I wanted better for it, you know? Because…

DEE: No, I think that’s totally fair.

VRAI: Yeah, it just kinda bums me out, and if nothing else, I was like, “Well, if you’re going to adapt this whole thing, can you give Nakao a boyfriend instead of having him pine for 19 volumes and then get shot down? Please? Please, God?”

DEE: Yeah, maybe we can adjust a few things?

VRAI: Honestly, if he was like a romantic B-plot, I feel like that would solve 90%… not 90%… like 60% of the weird with that series. But I don’t know, I just… Eh. [Sighs] It bums me out, and I think I’m not gonna watch any more either, but I wish it had turned out better.

DEE: Yeah.

PETER: Feels bad. Yeah.

VRAI: Sigh. Feels bad.

DEE: The curse of the classic shoujo adaptation strikes again.

VRAI: Yeah. Alright, the next one up in It’s Complicated is The Darwin Incident, which none of us are up on. I am going to try my damnedest to maybe try to skim over it for our finale podcast because it’s definitely swinging big and, I’m not gonna lie, the trailer for this blurbed Urasawa, and that’s… yeah, fine. Fine, I’ll look at you for that. Lizzie’s premiere review certainly didn’t make it sound like a subtle show, but maybe it’ll still be interesting nonetheless. So, apologies, readers and listeners. Put a pin in that one. I will try to report back diligently next time for us.

So, let’s move on to a shoujo that is killing it on all fronts from everything I’ve heard, which is Tamon’s B-Side.

DEE: Tamon’s B-Side is so fun. We’ll talk about some potential points of concern, but overall it is bright, it is well-directed, it is well-animated not in the sense that it’s like a sakuga-fest but in the sense that it knows how to storyboard a scene to make things visually interesting. The voice cast is having a great time, and it’s just wacky pop star hijinks while also kind of interrogating the idea of the face you wear, your public performing persona versus who you are outside of that, and wanting to be accepted, you know, both those sides of you being valid and wanting acceptance for those. And, yeah, it’s a fun show. I would not describe it as exceptionally deep, but I do think it is doing something with its character relationships and that makes it more than just complete fluff, and it’s just been a fun time. Peter, are you enjoying this one, too?

PETER: Yeah. I am enjoying it. I think it’s got really great comedic timing, and the art is really bright. Yeah, like every time her head explodes and the pink liquid goes everywhere in lieu of blood and stuff like that, all that stuff’s really good. A lot of good creative decisions, I think. I think it also nails some of the more… You know, it’s one thing to have comedic timing, but then also another important thing is to get the dramatic moments, and I thought that especially the scene where they’re singing “Rain” and Tamon loses his position as center I thought was done really well and had the appropriate emotional impact, too. So it can do both, is what I’m saying. 

And I think that’s really important for the story as well, because, uh… there is kind of, like… it’s treated… There’s a lot of comedy in the premise of Tamon having the two faces, his real personality and then his idol persona, but I think there is some stuff to dig into there, as you said, as well, especially because normally that stuff kind of bothers me. And it is sort of treated for laughs, but I think it’s also sort of pointing at how ludicrous it is with Utage kind of considering… There’s almost kind of a Holy Trinity thing going on with Tamon, where Gloomyhara is just the vessel that contains the Holy Spirit of Tamon, who is a separate being entirely, because she genuinely gets angry at him when he talks shit about himself and not in a way where it’s just like “I don’t like my friend is saying bad things about themselves,” but “No, Tamon is a greater being, a god, and I will not even allow the body that he possesses to insult him,” that type of thing.

DEE: Yeah, Utage has a very complicated psychological situation going, where she sees Tamon and Gloomyhara as, like, slightly different people, but they’re still the same person, which is why she can’t have a relationship with Gloomyhara, even though she’s starting to genuinely like him and see him as a human being and not just this godly pop star—which makes for some conflict and I think also justifies this being kind of a slow burn. Right? Because a lot of the time with romcoms, you’re like, “Oh, my God, just date already. Just tell each other you like each other.” And with this one, it’s like, no, there’s a lot of tangled threads here that are keeping these two from moving forward.

PETER: Yeah. I think one of the things that I really like is the fact… while it does play off the concept with a lot of humor, the fact that she considers Tamon like a greater being… I think it is approaching with some self-awareness, as you said, with her kind of having to overcome that to see him as a real person, because essentially she is dehumanizing him, which is a lot of the problem I have with idol culture in Japan. So, not only is it playing it off for humor; it’s also doing it with self-awareness, and that’s actually an obstacle or maybe a bad thing that she slowly has to work through to see the real person underneath. So, that’s, I think, maybe the central, really smart thing that the story’s doing, too. So…

DEE: I will note there are a few red flags with Tamon that I think they’re pulling away from a little bit, thank God. But there was… After the thing where he lost his place as the center, it’s kind of played for comedy, but he does seem to have been seriously considering suicide, so, content warning for folks at home for that. And then he has a conversation with Utage where… I think what he’s trying to tell her is like “You’re super important to me,” but he basically says, like, “If you stop supporting me, I’ll die,” and it feels manipulative in a way that… again, not in an intentionally manipulative way, but it’s, like, “Oh, that’s extremely unhealthy.” And to the show’s credit, Utage’s response to that was “Did he just threaten me?” And she does not… She is like, “This is concerning and we need to shut this down.” 

So, to the show’s credit, it knows that’s not a good thing. But just a point of mild concern to keep going forward. But I think the show is kind of nudging us away from that because in the most recent episode, it looked like Tamon was maybe gonna get kind of possessive and toxic, and then he ended up actually being really sweet and kinda just being like, “Hey, Utage has told me she doesn’t like it when people do that, so, no, knock it off” kind of a thing, instead of getting all possessive with her and trying to pull her away from people. So, I think we’re shifting away from that, but it is something to kinda keep an eye on and is part of that, like… it’s a comedy but there are also these more dramatic, serious beats in it to kind of keep an eye on, for sure.

PETER: Yeah. And I can say, I don’t think I’m really a fan of anybody else in the band. I do like that they all have, like, a B-side.

DEE: They all kinda suck. Yeah!

PETER: Yeah, they’re just, like, jerks. [Chuckles] And, of course, in addition to being jerks, a lot of them also become obsessed with her to make it a kind of reverse harem-type situation. I think the story really… it didn’t need that to be really great, and I don’t really know if the drama really has elevated the central story in any way either, outside of maybe a couple scenarios that maybe could have been done another way. But yeah, just Tamon and Utage together, I think, are really good. Just the way they play off each other is really great.

DEE: Yeah, so I look forward to this one every week and I’m excited to see how it wraps and maybe pick up the manga when it’s over.

VRAI: Maybe I need to make time for this one. It just seems so cute.

PETER: Yeah, it’s really cute.

VRAI: Alright, let’s move into another one that has been doing well. We just get to feel warm and fuzzy here at the close for a while.

DEE: For a while, yeah.

VRAI: The Invisible Man and His Soon-to-Be Wife.

DEE: So, this is one I started late. I picked it up late, just because I’d kind of been hearing some decent buzz on it, and it was when we asked the AniFam what shows they wanted us to cover. This one was getting some votes. So I was like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been kind of curious about that one. Let me check it out.” This one has snuck up my list and is one of my favorites of the season. I am… I… I thought the first episode, the pacing was… I didn’t dislike it, but it felt very slow. I think as they start to expand the cast and their relationship, it picks up speed almost immediately, and by the third episode, I was thoroughly charmed. How about you, Peter?

PETER: Yeah, I actually tried out the manga in advance for the season, and I thought it was really… Initially, when I first saw it and realized it kind of had that monochromatic thing that The Guy I Like Is Actually a Girl (is that what that one is called?) is doing with green, except with teal, I thought was a really cool aesthetic, but the manga didn’t really click with me. But I think the anime has definitely elevated the source material a lot. I think the voice acting and the really loose animation style… It seems like it’s a really well-illustrated show but every once in a while the animation gets really loose and playful, too, which I really like.

DEE: It is lowkey really well animated, like in a way where it didn’t have to be and then they’ll just be like, “Here’s some fun sakuga animation of them reacting to things in the office or something,” and I’m like, “Well, this is a joy to watch. Thank you for that.”

PETER: Mm-hm. Yeah, and initially I thought it was just kind of a cute sitcom or sit-rom type. I guess there’s comedy, too. But yeah, it just keeps… Every once in a while it peels back and it shows you another thing that it can do really well. I remember one of the first things that really surprised me was… they were having a conversation during dinner or something like that where personal hygiene came up, and she was talking about how it can be difficult to wash her hands or something like that because she can’t really… if there’s something on it, she can’t see it, right? And he says, “Oh, yeah, I have the same problem, but because I’m invisible.” [Chuckles] So, they’re kind of finding these commonalities in the way… I don’t know, just between his completely supernatural physiology and her disability. So, I thought that was really cute and especially thoughtful, like maybe that led to them wanting to create the story in the first place. Then, of course, the fact they just reveal one of their coworkers is in a very textual gay relationship, which really came out of left field.

DEE: It was just very casually introduced. I really enjoyed that, yeah.

PETER: I loved his boyfriend. He’s, like, their lawyer, just saying, like, “Wait, you haven’t told them that we’re together yet? I am making you do that right now.” And he’s like, “It’s not their business, dude.”

DEE: Yeah. He’s like, “I don’t like to blend work and personal life.” And he’s like, “No, no, no, we’re together. I’m his partner. Yeah, that’s me.”

PETER: Yeah, it didn’t seem like he was hiding it. He’s just a very private person, which, yeah, I think was… It didn’t come off badly, at least from my perception. I also noticed that they both had weight changes since they were kids we saw in the flashback. That’s not really…

DEE: Yeah. It’s never commented upon.

PETER: [crosstalk] It happened and it’s—Yeah, it’s never commented upon, which I thought was good. And they’ve even done some good stuff with… I don’t know her name, but the bobcat girl. There’s some kind of fraught stuff going on with the fact that she’s, I guess, kind of portrayed as, like, Native American.

DEE: [crosstalk] Luna, yeah.

PETER: But I really liked her subplot about her fur pattern and her not being able to find clothes that suited her, and then meeting that spotted frog who was able to say, like, “Oh, no, you can wear patterns.”

DEE: As a fashion person and him being like, “I have the…” And she trusted his opinion because she was like, “Well, you also have the lived experience,” and so, that sense of being able to bond over that and help each other out. Yeah, I think the series does a really good job of exploring difference in the world, in a somewhat utopian world in that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of systemic oppression. Like, there’s some prejudice, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of systems in place. So, it’s more— And our cast are more people who don’t necessarily know everything about every other culture and people and way of being, because nobody does, but there’s just this sense of a curiosity, a willingness to learn, a willingness to accommodate, that runs through the whole series, which I think gives it this very warm, inclusive core.

To kinda go back to your point about the bobcat people being… They’re from America and bobcats are indigenous to America, so they make a comment about her family being like indigenous Americans, basically. I don’t think this— Every once in a while, the series kind of tries to twist its story into being more about race, and I think that’s where it stumbles. And I think the reason it stumbles is… I know we— We’ve talked about this before, too. When you’re doing a story with fantasy elements to do metaphors about difference, it really helps if you also have a non-fantasy example. And so, the fact that one of our main characters is blind, I think, really helps with some of the different disability or personal appearance type stuff that they do with the story. 

But there are no, like, brown humans in the cast. There is a dark elf and there are some quasi-racial jokes about the dark—And not in, like, a—saying that’s going to make it sound worse than it is, and I don’t know how to explain it without having this go off on too long of a tangent. But there’s dark elves and white elves, and he’s the only brown-skinned character. And so, I think the show does—And then you’ve got the bobcat people being indigenous to America. And Luna’s lived in Japan her whole life, so she thinks of herself as Japanese, which, that’s cool and fine. But I think every once in a while it kind of tries to touch on those more racial or cultural things, and it sort of fumbles because it doesn’t have a human example in the cast. So, maybe it’ll add that and that will make it better, but I would say that’s the one small pain point I have, my critique with how the series is handling those elements of it. But overall, I do think its heart is in the right place, and for the most part, I think it handles those elements quite well.

PETER: Yeah, like I was saying, Hana-Kimi had a lot of competition [chuckles] this season.

VRAI: You know, it’s a good problem to have, I guess.

DEE: It’s true.

PETER: Yeah, good for us.

VRAI: Let’s move on up to Holy Grail of Eris, which I can’t believe I’m the only one watching. I’m having a grand time with it. Again, this is something that I sort of covered a lot of what it’s still doing with my check-in. The first three episodes sort of spin their wheels a little bit, but after that, it really does find its footing with the naive heroine finding a way that she can contribute to this investigation of this ongoing political conspiracy. And it’s really Yu-Gi-Oh!-coded in a way that I think is specifically for me, except it’s not going to be yuri, but that’s okay; [Takes on a begrudging tone] the probable male love interest is nice.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: But no, really, I think it’s… Because one thing I always get a little bit tense on in stories—in villainess stories or just wronged young woman stories—is when it has “This young woman was wronged, and there’s all these bitches around her.”

DEE: Yeah, that can sometimes be a problem.

VRAI: But this series has really gone out of its way to avoid that, in a way that I have found refreshing. Like, there are a lot of terrible women, but it’s a show that has really kept in the forefront of its mind, “Well, yeah, some of these women are terrible, but this world has forced them to be terrible,” and not in a way that, like, “Aw. And that makes them nice and we’re all going to be friends, actually,” but it has this understanding of them that humanizes them. And I also like that, you know, this is a wronged villainess story, but also Scarlet is just kind of mean. She is just kind of mean and terrible, and I like that they preserve that part of her character because I have a lot of warmth and fondness for the villainess subgenre, but a lot of them… partly, probably because My Next Life as a Villainess set the tone, a lot of them do turn on “Actually, this lady that everybody said was the villainess was just misunderstood this whole time, and she was actually really nice and thoughtful to everybody and maybe just a little bit blunt.” And that can be great, but let the girl be mean! Let her be mean and still interesting! [Chuckles] It’s fun to see!

DEE: Yeah, I’ll be honest. This one just completely missed my radar. I kept seeing the title and going, “I should figure out what that’s about,” and I just never got to it. So, I am a little— I am reaching villainess isekai burnout, which took me longer than it did other isekais, but I am reaching it. But, yeah, I think I might give this one a try. The plot of it being a murder mystery is different, is fresh enough that I think I could probably have some fun with that one. So, that’s awesome. Cool.

VRAI: Yeah! The one thing I will kind of flag for people, potentially, is that— So, the nice thing is that— So, the nice fiancée who, you know, replaced our villain character is not— She’s definitely involved in a conspiracy that maybe has to do with war crimes that the country she is in did against her home nation, but that means that there is also kind of some maybe fraught things [with] the terrorist organization that she’s part of, which is sympathetic but also has some of the only brown-skinned characters in the cast.

DEE: Mm-hm!

VRAI: Yep! So, that’s a thing to watch out for.

DEE: Keep an eye on that.

VRAI: Yeah, and also— Yeah. So, yeah, that would be my only note at this point. I’m having a great deal of fun watching this one. And it’s also based on a two-volume novel series.

DEE: Nice!

VRAI: So it’s going to have a conclusion!

DEE: That’s very exciting. Okay, that pushes it up my list. I’m like, alright, okay! Alright, we’re going to have an ending!

PETER: [crosstalk] [Chuckles] An ending!

DEE: I love an ending! [Chuckles] I love an ending out here in the anime world.

VRAI: We do! We love when an ending. Alright. Let us move on to Journal with Witch. I don’t know how much to— We talked off mic about how maybe we just want to skim over this one a little because it’s going to have its own episode. Like, we all adore it.

DEE: [crosstalk] There’s no way we don’t do an episode on this one. There’s no way we’re going to be able to dig into everything on this call, and we’re going to want to spend lots of time about it. So, three people will get together and talk about Journal with Witch, an early frontrunner for anime of the year and, quite frankly, an early frontrunner for anime of the decade. It’s really that good, guys. It’s really that good.

VRAI: It’s stupendous. No notes.

DEE: I cry a little bit. The last two, three episodes, I think I’ve cried a little [in] every single one! Yeah, it’s really coming for me personally. Yeah. It’s a special one.

PETER: Yeah, it’s really good. It’s almost like… When I was looking at it, I was like, “God, what do we even talk about?” Because there’s… You gotta dig really deep to start unpacking everything, so I was intimidated by the idea of discussing it on this podcast, actually.

DEE: Yeah. So, I think it’s probably good of us to just tell everyone, like… you know, I mean, pretty much the content warnings that were in the first episode in terms of it’s a story about grieving. Like, be aware of that. There’s some undercurrents about societal oppression and othering. They used the word “neurodivergent” in an anime, which I thought was cool. It’s like background conversation, but it does happen.

VRAI: Yeah, and Makio is pretty— Like, she’s not diagnosed because that’s simply not who she is as a person, but she’s about as explicitly AuDHD as you can get, I think, without having that label slapped on top.

DEE: Yeah, well, and I think the fact that one of the side characters, one of the kids who was more familiar with the terminology, even says, “Do you think she might be neurodivergent?” not in a judgy way, just like, “Oh, do you think that’s why she has trouble with these things?”

PETER: Yeah, this could explain that.

DEE: Yeah, I was like, the fact that there was an awareness of that, whether the story decides to dig into that or not… I was like, that shows that the author is paying attention, I think. There’s also a subplot with one of the characters potentially being queer, so there’s a lot happening. It’s all handled very beautifully and gracefully and… yeah, great show. Everyone should go— If you can handle the fact that it is a show about grief, go fucking watch it. It’s so good.

VRAI: I will take this opportunity to say that everyone should read this mangaka’s other series, which is a horror BL called The Night Beyond the Tricolored Window.

DEE: Mm!

VRAI: Simply do not watch the anime.

PETER: Wait, that’s the same author?

VRAI: It’s not only—

PETER: Holy shit.

DEE: [crosstalk] I had no idea it was the same author! Brain explode.

VRAI: Yeah. Well, that’s because the anime wasn’t just disappointing or not up to the source material; it’s actively bad. It is actively fucking awful and a real disgrace to an excellent manga. So, everyone should go and read that. You can buy the digital version DRM-free from SuBLime. And, yeah, if you like Journal with Witch and you like horror series—because it’s a romance, but it definitely leans hard into the horror early on in particular—please go read it. Please go read it. It’s so good.

DEE: Awesome.

PETER: [crosstalk] That’s crazy. Wait, does that mean Tricolored Window is josei?

VRAI: Uh, Tricolored Window… no, I don’t know if—

DEE: BL sometimes is considered its own demo genre, so it might just be considered BL. I’m not sure. But yeah.

PETER: I just didn’t know if it was the same magazine. That’s crazy, though. That’s crazy.

[Chuckling]

PETER: That’s crazy.

VRAI: Alright, speaking of excellent BL, our next title is Isekai Office Worker: The Other World’s Books Depend on the Bean Counter, which I am so behind on because I’m basically saving it up to binge it but…

DEE: Oh.

VRAI: Oh, my God, it’s my shit! Dee, how’s it going?

DEE: How far into it are you?

VRAI: Uh, like two or three episodes.

DEE: Okay.

PETER: [Chuckles]

VRAI: Uh-huh? I’m not bothered by “Fuck or die,” if that’s the thing.

DEE: Um, no, that’s not it. The most recent episode as of this recording finally seemed like it had started to acknowledge the fact that Seiichiro has feelings for Aresh and is maybe into him. But up until that point, we had spent several episodes where the relationship was getting, for me, deeply uncomfortable because it really felt like Aresh was kind of forcing himself on Sei in a way that was like, “You have to because you’ll die if you don’t,” and Sei was just kinda like, “Okay, well, this guy’s really up in my business.” And so, finally, finally, the last episode, there seems to be… we’re digging more into the fact that Sei’s like, “Okay, I need to start to deal with my own feelings about this guy.” And I’m like, “Okay, I would have liked to have seen those feelings acting out rather than you just kind of always seeming mildly annoyed at him.” But that helps. That helps with the fact that Aresh is uncomfortably possessive sometimes. Like, he gets mad at him for hanging out at a friend’s house, and I’m like, “Please stop doing that!” So, I don’t love the main—I want to like the main relationship more. I don’t, because I— At this point, maybe we’ll turn a corner.

Truthfully, the things about this series that interest me the most are the way it is handling the “Holy Maiden of Destiny summoned to another world” storyline, because Sei’s whole thing is like “It’s really fucked up that you’re just grabbing teenage girls from other worlds and forcing them to save your world for you.” And it’s really nice to have an adult from our world in the story saying that out loud. And part of… like, the way he kind of saves the kingdom in the first arc is he figures out a way that they don’t have to summon Holy Maidens anymore. So, there’s kind of an arc of him and the now-somewhat-former Holy Maiden trying to figure out who they are and what their lives are going to be like now that they’re kind of stuck here. And they’re trying to figure out a way to use magic to get home, and so he’s like, “Well, I want to get home, so I really probably shouldn’t get too close to the people in this world.” So, there’s a lot of stuff going on there. But, man, I wish I was more into the main relationship.

I don’t think it helps that the animation is not particular—It’s not sexy. If I’m supposed to find it hot… Every once in a while, there’ll be a shot where I’m like, “Okay, that was pretty good.” But for the most part, they just sort of are flatly sitting on each other! [Chuckles] And I’m like, “Ah, this is a bummer.” So, mixed opinions [from] me on it. But maybe it was also just a matter of one of those… because I think it was a light novel initially. It could be a situation where it got pulled into being a full running series instead of a single volume, author was trying to figure out what it looked like after that, and now it’ll start to… Maybe in this final act, it’ll find its footing again. So, that’s where I’m with it.

VRAI: I can… Yeah, Sei’s the kind of character that can be… He’s such a trope, where we’ve got the extremely stiff, self-involved character who cannot have feelings ever, ever, ever, ever until, oh, no, he does, and I think that kind of character works a lot better in novels where you can see them dithering and waffling and “Oh, you’re thinking this thing that actually means you’re having feelings you’re repressing,” and you lose some of that when you transfer to anime. But, yeah, I can see why it would be frustrating. Yeah.

DEE: I think there are definitely ways the anime could have conveyed him feeling attracted to Aresh in any way and then pulling back from that. And again, we’re in his head. It’s not like this is a series that doesn’t have any inner monologue. So, I do think those are things they could have pulled in and they really didn’t, so there was a stretch in the middle there where I was like, I don’t think Sei’s into Aresh and I think Aresh needs to back the fuck off! And I was like, I know this is a BL, so that can’t be what’s actually happening, but that is what I’m feeling from it. So, again, we’re turning the corner. Hopefully things will get better from here. But, yeah, their relationship just… I just have not felt the chemistry, I guess is what I would say.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Yeah, fair. Yeah, I’m looking forward to finishing it up and checking back in with you at the season finale.

DEE: Yeah.

VRAI: Yay.

DEE: Yeah, we’ll see where we’re at.

VRAI: So we’ll leave it there for now.

DEE: Sounds good!

VRAI: Yeah, and, to actually reverse this conversation, Champignon Witch is a series that I kind of fell off on because they introduced the [Takes on a steadily rising pitch] quasi-love interest and I sort of hated him and also the animation got really stiff for a minute?

DEE: Who’s— Who are we talking— Who’s quasi-love interest?

VRAI: The little narr— Isn’t… The narrator, who’s the little blonde kid and he hatched out of an egg and also he might be the Antichrist.

DEE: Yes!

PETER: Oh, wow.

DEE: [crosstalk] That’s a really great description!

PETER: Okay.

DEE: Man, this show could go so hard, when you describe it like that.

VRAI: [Laughs]

DEE: I am bummed at the adaptation. I thought the first two episodes looked— I mean, again, it wasn’t like a lavishly animated production, but I thought there was some creativity and some charm of the storyboarding.

VRAI: [crosstalk] No, but they knew how to board.

DEE: Yeah, there were some really nice stylistic touches. A lot of that has fallen off since then, and it has become a significantly flatter show. I’m still watching this one mostly because I am a sucker for shoujo fantasy, but if I had access— And I don’t have access to the manga. If I had access to the manga, I think I would have dropped it and would just be reading the manga. It definitely— Did we end up doing a three-episode for this, or no?

VRAI: I don’t think we did. So, yes, please.

DEE: Yeah. So, third episode, it completely… you know, for folks at home, it becomes a different show in a lot of ways. Luna finds a… Well, she finds a fifteen—She finds a teenage boy named Lize dying in a river, and she sucks the poison out of him because that’s what she does. She purifies him. But there’s so much toxic energy in him that it also sucks out a bunch of his memories and ages him down to age eight or something—like, his body. 

And so… And she’s talks— A bunch of the witches show up and are like, “Oh, yeah, this kid is the child of ill omen” — that’s not the exact terminology for it, but it’s something to that effect — “and he will bring about the end of all things if we don’t kill him.” And she’s like, “No, they said that about me, too, but I was able to control my magic. I can help him.” So, apparently this is a thing that happens periodically with people in this world! So, Luna takes him in and the story since then has been from Lize’s perspective, him writing in his journal. So it’s become a very different story where he definitely has a crush on Luna, but it’s him getting to know Luna and coming into his own with magic and learning more about the world. There’s some really fascinating—

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah, I don’t like Lize much. Anyway, please go on.

DEE: [crosstalk] Eh, he’s eight. I mean, there’s some really fascinating undercurrents in the series in terms of how we deal with negative emotions and finding healthy ways to express that and the idea of black witches as taking in those bad vibes, almost, and turning them into something that is growth and productive. And Lize initially… all they can figure out to do with him is have him write down his bad feelings in a journal and then he loses his memories of them. But by doing that, he can never grow. 

Like, he never gets older, he never develops enough new memories, so they’re trying to find other ways for him to be able to work through a lot of that buried trauma and then also new memories of this new life that he’s got. We’re starting to dig into what the difference is between the white witches and the black witches. The white witches used… There’s a fairy element and spirits in the woods. There’s a lot of really cool stuff happening, and I just so badly wish it looked better. I just wish it was a better adaptation. It relies way too much on inner monologues, and it just 95% of the time does not look very good. But interesting story, for sure, and I do want to see where it’s going.

VRAI: Yeah. Maybe I’ll try to pick it back up and muscle back in and see if it can catch me again because, yeah, I agree. There’s a really, really interesting premise here with a lot to say, and that’s— I— It looks better than Dahlia in Bloom, which is the faintest praise.

PETER: Yeah. It’s another manga with a really sketchy art style. But those were really hard to adapt, so they end up looking really flat in the anime.

DEE: Yeah. Well, and, you know, a good adaptation team will find ways to change things around, or you make it more storybooky, but then it looks so gorgeous that you don’t necessarily notice it’s not moving that much. I constantly point to Hanako-kun as an example of an anime with very little actual animation that looks really good, because if you know how to storyboard, then you can cover for a lot of that. Truthfully, Vrai, I mean, like—

VRAI: Yeah, and it really seemed like it was doing that. Mm-hm.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, truthfully, there’s other shows this season that I would recommend over it. I’m going to stick with it because, again, I don’t have any other way of assessing it at the moment, but it’s a hard one for me to recommend to folks just because the adaptation is not… after those first two episodes, has gotten very clumsy. And I don’t really know where it’s going with the story, so while I am interested, I don’t have a lot of confidence that I can be like, “Oh, yeah, no, no, it totally knows what it’s doing. This is going to be great.” So, we’ll see. I’ll keep up with it.

VRAI: Yeah. Thank you for your reportage and your service.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: [Sighs] But you know what is nice is that we have enough joseimuke this season that we can have a whole gamut from “Already the best anime of this year” to “Well, that was kind of a wet fart. What a sad thing. Wish we had the source material in English legally.”

DEE: No, it’s nice to have the broad spectrum. So, when you just have one show, if it’s not very good, you feel like, “Ah, damn, that’s it. That’s it for the season.” But, yeah, we were a little spoiled for choice this season, and that was great.

PETER: Mm-hm. Agree.

VRAI: Yeah. That’s nice. More of that, please.

DEE: Mm-hm!

VRAI: Yeah. Alright. Is there anything that we forgot to discuss that either of you wanted to talk about?

PETER: [Chuckles]

DEE: Nope.

PETER: Heh-heh.

VRAI: [Snickers]

DEE: There are 8,000 sequels we might have to deal with in the end of season…

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, I was gonna say.

DEE: But, no, I have nothing else for today.

PETER: Today is not that day.

DEE: Yeah.

VRAI: [Laughs] Incredible. Alright, well, folks at home, thank you so much for joining us today. If you liked what you heard, you can find more from the team at animefeminist.com. We’ve got more podcasts, more articles, including transcripts for the podcast if you are listening to it now and would rather be reading it. If you really liked what you heard, consider chucking us a little bit of money on Patreon, patreon.com/animefeminist, or on our Ko-fi [pronounced “coffee”], Ko-fi [pronounced “koh-fee”], ko-fi.com/animefeminist. We are entirely crowdfunded and it helps us to pay our writers and editors fairly, including to pay our transcriptionist, because we really believe that kind of stuff is important and fair pay is one of the core things that we want to be doing here.

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And until next time, good luck in the seasonal mines, folks. Enjoy that delicious, delicious joseimuke.

DEE: Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom!