Chatty AF 242: 2026 Winter Wrap-Up (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

VRAI: You know? I’ll go ahead and tell the listeners at home that this recording has been extremely cursed.

PETER: Mm-hm. Truly.

VRAI: Actual storms, skies rent asunder, power loss…

DEE: That part seems to be okay so far, knock on wood. We haven’t gotten cursed on this end, so…

VRAI: Alright. No, you’re right. You’re right. It was just multiple plagues.

[Introductory musical theme]

VRAI: Hello, and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast and our wrap-up of the winter 2026 anime season! Hey, I’m Vrai Kaiser. I am the daily operations manager at AniFem. You can find me on Bluesky sometimes @writervrai. And if you want to talk to me about The Lost Boys, I am always open. With me today are Peter and Dee.

PETER: Hi, I’m Peter. I’m an editor here at Anime Feminist and I’m @peterfobian on Bluesky.

DEE: And I’m Dee, former AniFem managing editor, current occasional part-time-ish reviewer and podcaster. You can find me posting cat pics and geekery on Bluesky @deescribe and very occasionally remembering I have a Tumblr @joseinextdoor.

VRAI: [Chuckles] The listeners at home do not get my Tumblr. That’s just for me.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Exclusive access.

DEE: [crosstalk] That’s your little secret area.

VRAI: Please don’t. Please don’t. That’s just where I want to be a weird, normal person. [Chuckles]

But yes, so, welcome back to our seasonal podcast. As just a refresher, you can check back on our three-episode check-in and our mid-season. For a lot of these shows, if they haven’t really changed much, we’ll refer you back to that previous coverage, say, “You know, we talked about it here. It’s kind of still doing that same thing.” We start from the bottom of the Premiere Digest and work our way up to the top, even if shows have gotten better or worse in that time. It’s just easiest for reference. We will try to be light-ish on spoilers or give you a heads-up if we feel like we have to talk about some especially egregious ones.

Alright! So, this was a weird season. We are gonna start all the way up in our Neutral Zone with You and I Are Polar Opposites, a show that probably should have been up near the top, but I was waffly about it. I’m sorry, folks at home. Peter and Dee, you both finished this.

DEE: I think the Neutral Zone is a perfectly… The only reason it’s at the bottom of the Neutral Zone is alphabet. The Y is a low letter in the alphabet. No, I think where it is makes sense for it. It was a very fun romcom. We’re getting a season 2. I look forward to hanging out with these kids. I had a good time every week. I will say this one didn’t necessarily stick to my ribs. Like, I had fun with it but I had lowkey forgotten that I watched it this season, because we’re recording this way later than we should have. It was fun, I didn’t think it did anything particularly regressive, and I like how chill it is about… I think the character writing is very good in the sense that they avoid a lot of easy, tropey archetype-type stuff that shows up in a lot of romcoms. Or if you think they’re gonna go that way, it’s not even necessarily that they’re subverting tropes; they just do such a good job of fleshing the characters out into full people that you’re like, “Oh, that’s just an aspect of their personality.” You know what I mean? So, I think the way it writes its cast is very strong. I don’t necessarily think it’s doing anything where I’m like, you know, “What a groundbreaking take on romantic tropes!” necessarily. But it’s a good show. I had a good time, and it was a very bright and well-made adaptation. So, Peter, any thoughts from your end?

VRAI: Nice.

PETER: I feel pretty similar. Yeah, I feel like the formula is, you know, polar opposites getting together, so it did a good job in not just making all the characters archetypes out of necessity to make them extremely different and, therefore, their attraction to one another ironic. All the characters kind of had… If they were extreme, it offered a lot of background and behavior that kind of described why they are the way they are, usually middle school trauma. So, yeah, yeah, I thought it was a lot of fun. I really like especially Suzuki, the main girl, and, yeah, I’m really looking forward to next season, where… well, I guess it would be summer season where we’re gonna get part 2. And I’m also super interested in Ramparts of Ice on Netflix in the spring, which is by the same author. I don’t know which work came first, but this one seems to be more drama-focused. So, we’re getting a lot from the author whose name I didn’t bother looking at first, but…

DEE: Oh, no!

VRAI: Agasawa.

PETER: Damn. Oh, okay, okay. Thanks, Vrai.

VRAI: Yeah, Cy gave the first episode a very nice review.

DEE: Yeah, there were— Sorry, as Peter was talking, I did remember two things I just kind of wanted… since I didn’t get to talk about this one at the mid-season. Peter convinced me to watch this one, and I caught up for the finale. Two things I did really like about it. One is that I liked that the B-couple is kind of an inverse of the… it’s kind of an inverse of the main couple where the guy is really outgoing and the girl is more introverted. So, I thought that was nice because, again, I don’t necessarily think the show is consciously doing anything with Gender (capital G) but it does avoid falling into patterns by doing things like “Oh, and then in this couple the guy is the more outgoing, extroverted member,” so it’s not like it’s making any hard and fast statements about what a couple should look like, which I did like. I also— The other thing I really adored about this show was the very chill and fun friendships between the boys and the girls. I feel like you don’t see that in anime as much as I would like to, and so the fact that they just had these very casual relationships and there wasn’t a lot of “Oh, I’m jealous because you have a guy friend…” It was just like, yeah, they hang out together, they get along well, their relationship is completely platonic, kind of a thing. So, those were two things I kind of wanted to highlight in addition to the stuff Peter mentioned at the mid-season.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, some characters seem like they are really zero pressure about potentially finding a romantic interest, which I like because, you know, some are obviously going to get paired off and the other ones aren’t just despairing that they don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatnot.

DEE: Yeah, they’re just here to hang with their friends, and I like that.

PETER: Yeah. And I’m really glad you liked it, though.

DEE: Yeah, it was fun.

PETER: Yeah, I do like the B-couple a lot, too. I think in a way it’s kind of subverting the trope of the dumb blonde guy who is kind of super genki but very non-reflective. I think he kind of showed a lot of emotional intelligence, actually, where he’s like, “I think I’m interested in somebody and I’m just going to say that.” And then rather than perseverating for a long time, he ended up just walking up to her and saying, “Hey, I’d like to get to know you more. Could I have your LINE contact information? We could chat or something.” And I was like, “Wow, that was really straightforward and casual and not awkward.”

DEE: Golden retriever.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DEE: It was great, yeah.

PETER: A surprisingly good character. Mm-hm.

DEE: Mm-hm.

VRAI: We like to see a school comedy about good kids.

DEE: Yeah, it’s nice. And I can’t think of any, like, jump scare things I have to warn people about, like, “Well, here’s some bullshit that shows up.” It was a good time all the way through. I had fun.

VRAI: Nice. Alright, well, Peter, you finished Sentenced to Be a Hero, but you mentioned you’d pretty much covered everything of relevance to it in our mid-season. So, we’ll just note that you did finish it, you didn’t drop it partway through, and direct folks back that way for the interesting thematic stuff it’s doing… unless it fumbled anything noteworthy?

PETER: I would not say it fumbled. I’d say it did pull a lot… there were a lot of curveballs in the second half, narratively. It had a really good cliffhanger ending, and it developed the girl in some interesting ways. Patausche Kivia is her name, who is kind of the handler for the criminal guys. So, a lot of interesting stuff. I think they confirmed season 2’s in production, so… assuming Studio Kai doesn’t go under, because I guess they just announced they’re insolvent. [Chuckles] But, uh…

DEE: Yikes.

PETER: Yeah. Um, so I really hope that we get to watch a season 2 of the show. It was pretty good. But, yeah, as far as themes regarding the carceral slavery and stuff, I don’t think that there was too much progress on that front, although I do think that there’s likely to be some in season 2 based on the events of season 1.

VRAI: Ah, the ongoing series problem, I see.

PETER: Yes, indeed.

DEE: Yeah. We’ll see if it ever gets around to that thing.

VRAI: Right!

PETER: [Chuckles]

DEE: Fingers crossed.

VRAI: Alright. Right? But Kaya-chan Isn’t Scary, you dropped. And I did not have time to get to it, folks at home. I said I was going to try, and it didn’t happen. I’m sorry.

DEE: It happens.

VRAI: If I go back to it, I promise to write something.

DEE: Seasons are busy. We can’t watch everything. Not on our budget.

VRAI: Fair enough. But, yeah, why did you drop it? It just was kind of… You mentioned the sort of gag manga repetitiveness of it a little bit.

PETER: Yeah, I guess… Hm, I don’t know. I feel like it was kind of doing… It was like a Mieruko-chan except it’s a grade school girl who punches the ghost at the end of every event. And, uh, yeah, I just didn’t keep up with it. I don’t think I dropped it for any particular reason, except that I didn’t keep watching it. I am interested to see— I know that they were definitely maybe doing some interesting stuff with her mom and the whole maybe diabolical pregnancy thing, which I never got around to seeing the conclusion of, and I don’t know if I really felt qualified to try to untie that knot. So, yeah, I would be interested to hear your thoughts if you ever end up finishing it. But, yeah, I didn’t keep up with it.

VRAI: I hereby give folks permission that if I ever say in public that I’ve taken up watching it again, you’re allowed to say, “Hey, you owe us an article.”

[Chuckling]

VRAI: Alright, we will move on, then. It was a big season of drops! I tell you what. The stuff that was good was amazing, but there’s a lot of stuff in here that I’m gonna be sending folks back to the mid-season for.

Wash It All Away, like I said, I dropped it halfway through because I thought there was some interesting stuff going on with the laundry but the protagonist was a problem, unfortunately.

Roll Over and Die, I ended up dropping because I fully respect folks enjoying it as this sort of… Queer people deserve to have a big, stupid, messy wish-fulfillment edgelord fantasy, too. But it was not for me, I think maybe because Akuma no Riddle is that series for me, because I love Yun Koga so much. [Chuckles]

And In the Clear Moonlit Dusk and Hana-Kimi, we all dropped! Because they really—

DEE: [crosstalk] We all said— We all said at mid-season that that was happening. So, we told folks. There were other shows to watch. I had other priority items on the list. I think we all did. So, I mean, you know, it happens. If folks liked ‘em, good for them! [Chuckles] You know, let us know what you liked in the comments. We just… we had other things to focus on.

Vrai, you kept up with Shiboyugi, though, yeah?

VRAI: Yeah, so, I actually… I honestly don’t have that much to say about it, because I think— [Sighs] I knew this as soon as I found out that it was based on an ongoing series, but, honestly, it kinda has the problem… it kinda has a little bit of what Peter was mentioning with Sentenced to Be a Hero, is that because it’s an ongoing series it can’t really execute on its themes as powerfully as it might have if it were contained, if that makes sense. At least for an adaptation. You know, I’m sure in novel or manga form you can read it all in a chunk. That maybe works better. I respect the ambitiousness of wanting to do nonlinear storytelling in this genre. That’s unusual. I like the weird smattering of murder yuri. I’m always here for that. It’s very pretty. But it was always just a little bit… It never quite got where it was going for me. And I think Sylvia over at ANN was… it was really more her shit, so I think maybe if you want somebody who was really into it, dissecting it… her writing’s always good. But for me, it was very cold. I felt remote from it, where by the end I felt like, “Okay, the character that I thought was the most interesting has kind of disappeared a little bit through the halfway mark. And I can see where you’re going, I think that this is interesting, but I’m kind of checked out, and at this point, the animation is still really pretty but it hasn’t introduced anything drastically new, so I’m kinda just motoring along to the end.”

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, that’s too bad.

VRAI: Yeah. I think it’s worth checking out, like I said, if you are interested in death games and pretty animation, but I can’t really… there’s not really enough there that’s executed with enough oomph for me to say, “If you’re not normally into this, boy, this is worth your time!” But I will tell people to go watch Necronomico again. [Chuckles]

DEE: Every opportunity. Yeah, and it could be one of those where because it’s ongoing it might build on the things that have happened in a way in later seasons, but at this point it’s just not enough to keep you around, it sounds like. Which happens.

VRAI: Yeah. And, you know, I really do respect it for wanting to be so artsy and weird. I don’t know that it will get another season because of that, but I want to see more projects like this, is what I will say. I love seeing anime that takes swings like this.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, it’s always a bummer when there’s a show like that, that you’re like, “This is the kind of stuff I want, but this one isn’t for me. And that’s okay, and I want it to do well, but I don’t necessarily want to keep watching it.” That is always… Sometimes I’ll power through shows because I’m like, oh, but I want it to get those extra views just so they know this is the kind of thing I want, even though this isn’t the version of it I necessarily want. So, no, I totally hear you.

VRAI: And maybe I wanted it to be a little more thematically ambitious with the whole, you know, audience and all. And it was really just— If the overall storyline is doing that, it hadn’t gotten to that point with what they adapted. You know?

DEE: Sure, yeah. So, you know, there’s always time for it.

PETER: Did it have an anime-original ending, or did it just have them looking off in the distance and saying, like, “This certainly was our death game”?

DEE: Our journey continues? Maybe the real death was the friends we made along the way?

VRAI: [Chuckles] Ugh. God, it’s been too long! I didn’t check.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: I will also say… Gang, I tried to watch The Darwin Incident. Um… It’s not… um… good.

DEE: [Chuckles]

VRAI: And it’s also, it’s another show— Speaking of shows— You know what? Shiboyugi deserves points for having its ambitions in check as far as what it wanted to say; whereas Darwin Incident is a show that feels like it would like to just swing wildly, at topics, because it feels like it and then just stops.

DEE: Oh, so there’s like no…

VRAI: And then it simply stops in the middle of the plot.

DEE: So, there’s like no thematic cohesion; it just bounces from one idea to the next?

VRAI: Like, you know, it has ideas about, like, nihilism and whether you owe things to the people around you versus the people immediately in your care and yada yada yada. And then it just takes random political swipes at things that are like “Are you trying to say something deep or are you just trying to be edgy? Are you actually…?” The reason I paid attention to this series is because when the trailer came out, they got Naoki Urasawa to blob—to, uh…

DEE: Blurb it?

VRAI: … to blurb it. Yeah. And from what I watched, which was maybe five or six episodes, it’s closer to Obata than Urasawa.

PETER: Oh, dang. [Chuckles] I could certainly see Urasawa going like that, “Man, this sure looks like something that I would make, doesn’t it?” [Laughs]

VRAI: Uh-huh. I— I— Yeah. I will avoid speculating… at what point they asked him to do that, how much he knew about it, if this was a promising…

DEE: [crosstalk] Where the series goes.

VRAI: Yeah. I mean, who knows? Maybe it will be one of those shows that, like, “Well, you had all these weird, shaggy asides, but eventually your central concept sure was an interesting thought experiment. I hope that you are on board with the story circling primarily or to a significant degree around whether this half-human half-chimpanzee is going to have sex with this human girl.”

PETER: Oh… Hm. Okay.

DEE: Not terribly interested in that storyline. Gotta be honest. So…

VRAI: Yeah. Yeah. It was not for me.

DEE: Yeah. It happens.

VRAI: Sorry. You know what was good, though, is—

DEE: Who are you apologizing to? Don’t apologize for liking things and not liking things!

VRAI: [Laughs]

DEE: It’s fine.

PETER: Sorry they watched it, maybe.

DEE: Yeah. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Oh, well. You know what was good, though, was Tamon’s B-Side. Please, let’s talk about that.

DEE: I feel like there was probably something I wanted to give people a heads-up about in the last arc, but my overarching memory of Tamon’s B-Side was that I had a good time with it. I suspect it will get a season 2 because I think it was pretty popular, but there’s nothing official. It basically leaves off with her realizing she has a crush on him, as a human being, not as a fan, like he’s not a god, he’s a person, which was a good stopping point, but it definitely… again, it’s an ongoing manga, so there was also definitely that sense of… There’s going to be more to this, so…

PETER: Yeah, well, and in particular I think she realized she had a crush on actual… I guess Gloomyhara would be the case here, the real Tamon, rather than Tamon himself, or at least some sort of confluence of the two personalities, since—

DEE: Yeah, rather than just his stage persona.

PETER: Yeah, which she already reveres as a god walking among human beings, who is literally the purpose that the universe was created. Yeah, I think she realized she really admired and had affection for him because of the way he works hard despite all of the doubts and crippling anxiety that he suffers from. So I felt like that… I really liked the direction that it was going to go, and I feel like you kind of got a sense like that’s what was the whole premise of the show, about kind of her getting around the fake persona that… turns out everybody in the group has their own B-side—which is their real personality—and seeing the human that is behind the stage persona. I did like that, although, yeah, I did feel… and one of the reasons why I feel like there has to be another season is because it kind of ended with her going like, “Oh, but I still need to keep my professional distance and keep myself in check,” was where I kind of felt like it landed, even though she’s kind of broken some of her own rules about how close she’s willing to get to him, to maintain his purity as a performer or whatever, which was a little unsatisfying, especially because we had so many other titles that were… I don’t know, they got together in like the first three episodes. And also, I think they never revealed the B-side of the strong, silent one.

DEE: Yeah! I thought we’d get a couple episodes about that at the— I thought we’d get a little bit about him at the very end, and I think we kind of ran out of episodes, so I am really curious to see what he’s like offstage. I think one of two things would be objectively funniest, is one: he’s the only one who doesn’t have a B-side; he’s just exactly like that offstage. Like, no, that’s just him! Or: he’s like the one person who’s not kind of trash offstage, like he’s an absolute bubbly golden retriever of a human being.

PETER: Normal human being? [Chuckles] Yeah.

DEE: Yeah. Regular human pop star! Would be fun. So, yeah, I mean, who knows where they’ll go with that. All the other guys were a little bit trash, but not in a way that wasn’t entertaining to watch. So, you know…

PETER: Yeah. I did like the B-romance with her teacher, Asuka, although I’m gonna have to check how the ages work out for that. I don’t quite understand how her teacher could have been the ex-girlfriend of one of the band members.

DEE: Yeah. I think it said they were like two years apart in school, so they met when she was in high school and he was in junior high, but the next year they were in school together. So it was something like that. It was like two years, maybe three. It wasn’t too bad. But, yeah, no, I thought that side plot was nice. Yeah, it’s a well-paced comedy that I think has a… you know, we talked about this at the mid-season. I think it has a decent idea of what it’s trying to do in terms of talking about pop star personas and fandom and being a fan of someone versus liking them as a person. And I think the way it’s engaging with that is—

PETER: [crosstalk] Parasocial relationships.

DEE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Parasocial relationships versus…

PETER: Relationships. [Laughs]

DEE: Just relationships? Yeah, I was like, I don’t know what the opposite of that is! And I do think the way it’s engaging with that is overall pretty thoughtful, you know, in the realm of “This is also a wacky comedy.” So, yeah, I would be happy if we got more of it. The production… again, it was a really well-done adaptation. And, yeah, it’d be cool to see more of that. Folks at home, if I’m missing… if there was a troubling point in the back half that I’m forgetting about… I know when we talked about this one, we were like eight episodes in, anyway, so I think a lot of that stuff I already covered in the mid-season as far as his slightly creepy, possessive side that he, to his credit, was working on as the season progressed. So, yeah, Tamon’s B-Side.

VRAI: Alright. Rock on. Now, how about The Invisible Man and His Soon-To-Be Wife? Which also, from everything that I can tell, ended really strong.

DEE: Yeah, that was another good one. I am struggling to think— I liked it all the way through. The final arc was… They spent some time with the two of them getting to know their families, which was fun. I don’t think I have a ton more to say about this one than I did at the mid-season, not because it was bad but just because a lot of the stuff we talked about then continued through to the end of the series.

PETER: Yeah, I think we sort of established a lot of the narrative dynamics and interesting stuff it was doing in the first half. I do… I think the only thing that really stands out to me is we kind of learn… You know how in anime they’re often very chaste about their romances? And with… I’m gonna forget everybody’s name since it’s been like a month since the season ended, but the invisible man… you find out that he has been kind of chaste so far since he has anxiety about sex because of his past girlfriend, I guess, kind of having a panicked response to having sex with him because she couldn’t see him and it felt really uncomfortable, which was a very interesting thought to put in there. I thought it was handled pretty well, but of course he was kind of afraid that that would happen again, even though it’s [obscured by crosstalk].

DEE: [crosstalk] It was traumatic for both of them, yeah.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. So, I thought that was an interesting inclusion. And, oh, of course the family stuff was pretty good, as well. In particular the last two episodes, though, I feel like… As you said in our chat, Dee, it did have really standout moments of animation, really loose, almost Imaishi-esque, animation during the fight scene and just sometimes when… um, is her name like Shizuka or Suzuki or…?

DEE: The main character? Shizuka, yeah.

PETER: Shizuka, of course. Yeah, whenever she kinda gets… I don’t want to say “emotional,” but really gets into her feelings or gets puffed up about their relationship or stuff, she’d enter this really loose animation style. And in 11 and 12, they really kinda… I feel like they maybe had some extra time that maybe they were ahead of schedule and they kind of went all out on those episodes, I felt like, especially in the invisible man’s village. I really liked the portrayal of… It kind of shows you that— It looks like the place is empty, but then she’s like, “Oh, it’s really lively here,” and you enter her sense space where she can tell all these invisible people are moving around and having a normal day because, you know, that’s how she interprets the world anyway.

DEE: She’s paying attention to sounds and smells, not solely to sight, yeah, for sure.

PETER: Mm-hm. So, I thought, yeah, it ended in— And of course the ending happens with… they meet each other’s families and then move into the same apartment together. So, I felt like—

DEE: And still— And still, to my knowledge, have kissed and that’s it.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

DEE: Which wouldn’t bother me if you got the sense that that was the relat— But, like, they’re both horny for each other. This is not an asexual relationship. So, I’m like, “Come on, guys. Come on, guys, you can at least make out.”

PETER: Well, I feel like the barrier was his past experience, and I think in the last two episodes they kind of addressed that, so maybe if the anime had gone on a bit longer, they’d have that scene or something like that.

DEE: [crosstalk] That’s a good point, yeah.

PETER: But I felt like it ended in a pretty good spot. Usually— I’m trying to think of how many other romance anime I’ve seen where they actually ended up moving in together. I think A Sign of Affection… and I don’t even know if they got to that point in the anime. So…

DEE: They did not, yeah.

PETER: Yeah. Okay. Oh, sorry, manga spoilers.

DEE: I mean, generally it’s got to be adult characters and there’s not a lot of that in anime, so it was nice. It was nice to have some working adults. I can’t remember if I talked about this in mid-season, so I do want to point it out here. This might be a touch uncomfortable for some viewers, that he is technically her boss. Like, they work at the agency together. And he notes at one point that he’s a decent— I don’t get the sense that he’s dramatically older than her, but he does note that he is older than her. I will give the series credit because I thought it was just going to be like— I mean, their relationship is… He’s extremely respectful of her and her boundaries, to the point that she gets annoyed with him sometimes for being way… like in situations where he’s overthinking, like, “Oh, will she not like this?” And she’s like, “Dude, just ask me. We can just talk about this. I’m actually pretty tough, and I have lived on my own for a while, so I can handle this.” But I thought the series did a nice job of actually addressing that. And he talks about, like, “Hey, you don’t feel pressured to date me, right? Because I want you to feel comfortable,” and there’s a lot of checking in between the two of them, especially as the series goes on. So, I think that if you can get past the fact that that is the premise, I think the way the series handles it is mature, more mature and like two freaking adults than a lot of series are. So, I appreciated that, as well, that they did address that and the characters were kind of like, “Yeah, no, we’ll… Yeah, it’s okay. We’ll keep checking in on each other about this kind of stuff to make sure we’re both comfortable here.”

PETER: Mm-hm, yeah. Also, that she is actually— I feel like it would have been really easy for this series to backslide into the fact that he’s able to take care of her or whatever because she’s not able to do that for herself, but the series regularly reminds you that she is a capable adult, she can cook for herself, and she faces challenges and everything but she is able to do things for herself and sometimes she has to remind him of that, even though he remains pretty good about it throughout most of the series. I felt like it struck a pretty good balance in that regard.

DEE: Yeah. No, I think so, too.

PETER: Yeah. Good show.

VRAI: That’s so awesome. I—

DEE: Yeah, nice show.

VRAI: I also like to see series like that, like adult working shows that are also a bit supernatural and also have some sakuga every now and then. That sounds nice.

DEE: [crosstalk] And a cute gay couple as our second couple. It’s great, yeah.

VRAI: Yay!

DEE: They’re also— Yeah, we talked about that in the mid-season. So, yeah, nice show. Recommended, for sure.

VRAI: Heck yeah. So, I will admit, I kind of said everything I had to say about Holy Grail of Eris at the mid-season. Gonna recommend it. Liked it.

DEE: You finished it?

VRAI: Yep.

DEE: Yeah! I’m glad.

VRAI: It’s a good sh— This really has been a season of, like… dropped a lot of stuff, but the stuff that I finished was all like “Yeah! More anime like this. Anime is good, actually.”

DEE: Yep. It was great to have a complete series. You know, it was two-volume novel. And other than— There were— It’s one of those where I almost wish it had gotten a few more episodes so we could have gotten a little bit more with some of the supporting character relationships, because it’s definitely written there to the point where you’re like, oh, I can connect the dots, and I know that these two have been really close since childhood, so I get why this arc with her friend is a big deal for both of them, you know, this “Why are you hiding things from me?” and then their reconciliation and things. It’s sort of the mid-arc conflict, but we didn’t actually spend a lot of time with the two of them together before that point, so there are moments like that where I’m like, “Man, I wish we could have seen more of this before the big conflict point that deals with the mystery that’s going on.” But overall—

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah, I—

DEE: Go ahead.

VRAI: I do— Oh, no, I was just going to— I do think, because it’s a courtly intrigue series where it’s just about everybody chess-talking at each other, I don’t mind, but I do think you can levy the accusation that, boy, a lot of the action happens off screen and then we talk about it.

DEE: To a point, yeah. I mean, I don’t know. There’s some kidnappings that are pretty upfront and center.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yeah, that’s true.

DEE: But, no, I know what you mean, in terms of some stuff that in a book, you know, you summarize it in a couple of paragraphs and in an anime it maybe looks a little awkward as you’re trying to get to the next thing. That having been said, I do think it handled the relationship between the two main characters and how they’re like foils for each other and how they influence each other in positive ways was really well done. I felt some feelings at the end, which I wasn’t really expecting with this one. I thought, “Ooh, it’s a twisty political murder mystery,” and then I felt some feelings at the end. [Chuckles] So, yeah, I liked this one a lot. Thank you for recommending it. This was another one I picked up in the mid-season because y’all said it was good, so…

VRAI: Yay! I’m glad that you liked it. That makes me happy.

Alright. Let’s go on to the show that is getting its own podcast. But I do still want to say Journal with Witch is maybe anime of the year already. I mean, you know, there’s still eight months left, but boy.

DEE: I mean, Witch Hat Atelier is at this moment making a very strong case for itself. But no, Journal with Witch was terrific. It’s a good year— It’s a season of the witch. Ha-ha!

VRAI: Ha-ha!

DEE: And, no, Journal with Witch was terrific. It’s the kind of show I want us to have more of, these really thoughtful, artful adaptations of critically acclaimed manga that maybe don’t necessarily get a lot of eyes on them but still deserve to have that treatment. It’s the closest I’ve come to a Rakugo Shinju experience since Rakugo Shinju, and that is extremely high praise coming from me. [Chuckles]

PETER: Truly, yeah.

VRAI: For real.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, this was one where there was a part of me that was like, “Do I want to write about this every week? I don’t have time for that.” But, yeah, it sparks that same sense of, like, there’s a lot happening in the subtext, there’s a lot happening with the art and animation telling the story as much as the dialogue is. The back half especially— I mean, you get glimmers of this in the front half, but I will say this is also probably the most overtly progressive show of the season. Like, the back half explicitly talks about the… Well, it talks a lot about women in the workplace, but then it also explicitly talks about the medical school scandal where they were lowering the… (Am I getting this right?) where they were lowering the scores of the women entrants.

PETER: I remember that happening and we talked about it when the news broke. [Chuckles]

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, I remember when it happened.

VRAI: [crosstalk] I want to say it was… I want to say it was Todai. It was a big deal.

DEE: Yeah, it was like 2019 or something, because it turns out this is a period piece. It takes place in like 2018, 2019. But it very explicitly is about that and about different ways of living for the female characters particularly and some of the… And it doesn’t, like, beat you over the head with it necessarily. Again, it’s a lot more like naturalistic-type dialogue, but a lot of it is about the expectations that society places on you in terms of not standing out, marrying a man, having kids, you know, that kind of domestic role, and this flurry of people we meet who didn’t follow that path and the fulfillment they have found or the lives they have led from there.

VRAI: Yeah, I’ll say, by the ending, I am not sorry that Asa’s dad is dead. Fuck that guy. [Chuckles]

DEE: That’s harsh! [Chuckles] But—

VRAI: I’m sorry! I’m sorry! He stayed with this woman at emotionally dead arm’s length for 17 years after telling her straight up, “Basically, I’ll never marry or love you.”

DEE: Yeah. Every character is [Chuckles] complicated. But I hear you, I hear you. But, yeah, so… I’d honestly kind of forgotten some of that. Again, it’s been a while.

VRAI: I just— Yeah. Like every— I mean, every woman in this story is fascinating, which I love! But there is definitely a draw to Asa’s mother as the woman who lost her identity trying to fit into what society expected the Japanese housemaker to be.

DEE: Mm-hm. And kind of unintentionally pushing a little bit of that onto Asa, even though I don’t think she meant to, and kind of grappling with that now that Asa is living with Makio, who has lived a very different lifestyle from that expected life. And then I will say—

VRAI: Where you— Mm-hm.

DEE: Kasamachi… You know, lest people think this is a show that’s like, “All men are evil,” Kasamachi, Makio’s boyfriend, is great!

VRAI: He’s so good.

DEE: I really, really like him. I like that the story kind of— Like, he opens up about the fact that he had depression to the point where he couldn’t get out of bed for a while, and you just don’t see a lot of stories of guys opening up about mental health, and I thought that was really nice. So, it’s—

VRAI: And not that—

DEE: Yeah. No, go ahead.

VRAI: Oh, no, no, just like… And also him talking about, like, “You know, I woke up one day and realized that all these expectations about masculinity were keeping me from being able to love and to be close to other people.”

DEE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has… it’s the legal rep (I’m looking at a list of characters to remind myself), Kazunari. They end up developing kind of a nice relationship where they talk about, like, “Isn’t masculine pressure bullshit? Yeah! We should just be ourselves.” And I was like, “Good for you guys. This is great.”

VRAI: Yeah!

DEE: So, yeah, I like that it comes at it from both directions with those characters.

PETER: I think it’s really valuable to have series like this, too, which are pretty openly critical of Japanese culture in a personal level like this, especially among anime fans. So, I think— It has happened quite frequently where people get really inaccurate ideas of what Japan’s like based on their perceptions from just watching a lot of high school anime. And I think this is— I hope— I mean, as good as the series is, I know it’s not like your mainstream anime watcher type stuff, but I hope it can serve as a reality check, maybe, to some people who would try the series out, for sure.

DEE: Yeah, it’s nice to have more grounded kind of naturalistic series like this that are directly addressing what life is like at the moment.

VRAI: Right. Well, and, you know, we all talk about, like, “Look, you simply do not know what Japan is from watching anime.” But there are certainly anime that become unexpected doorways when they talk about something that isn’t one of the really well-worn tropes. Like, I always think back to being like 15 and Samurai Champloo bringing up the Ryukyuan Islands, which I had never heard mentioned in anime or any textbook really at all.

DEE: Yeah, I mean, for as wild as Golden Kamuy is, that it acknowledges the Ainu is kind of a big deal. So, yeah, I get what you mean about series moving into the broader spectrum of culture and living in Japan itself, so I think Journal with Witch touches on that and is in many ways, I think, resonant for folks outside of Japan as well. I don’t think these issues are necessarily unique.

PETER: Not unique, no. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Oh, no, no, no, not at all. Absolutely not.

DEE: [crosstalk] So, yeah, great series. There will be a full episode for more character dissection. I guess that was just sort of our very long overview.

VRAI: Yeah. You know, just in case you didn’t need a whole episode but you haven’t watched it yet, you should.

DEE: Yeah, there you go. Spoiler-free, no, it’s great.

PETER: Yeah, do that, and then…

DEE: It’s really, really, really, really, really good.

PETER: … listen to the dedicated podcast after you watch it.

DEE: Yeah! Do that, too.

VRAI: Alright, now I’m dead curious since now I am also done: how did Bean Counter land for you in the end?

DEE: It was fine.

VRAI: Oh, that’s a long silence.

[Laughter]

DEE: It was fine. I just never… I never loved the main romance. And the church arc was… it was okay. I lost a little bit of interest in the church corruption arc because as soon as I met the guy who was corrupt, I was like, “Oh, it’s that guy. Hey, everyone, it’s that guy. It’s definitely that guy.” So, I didn’t— Past the point where they solve the need to summon girls of legends, I thought the show struggled a little bit to figure out what it wanted to be after that point, and I kept trying to like the main relationship, and I just could never really get into… oh, God, I’m looking up his name as we speak.

VRAI: Aresh?

DEE: Aresh. Yeah, I just never fell in love with Aresh. And I know other people did. He is an archetype that worked for some folks, and power to ‘em. He just— Yeah, I mean, kind of like I said at the mid-season, I really struggled to buy their relationship as, like… I never got the dokidokis. I’ll just say that.

VRAI: That’s fair. See, it did click for me, and I think that there are reasons for that, because in that middle arc, he is just kind of flagrantly a dick.

DEE: Mm-hm!

VRAI: He’s way overbearing. I have no questions about you being right about that. But to me, the thing that got me through that as more like “Oh, this 22-year-old has growing to do” and not like “God, this guy is a dick. Why doesn’t he dump him?” I think it’s partly because, well, first of all, I like— This is a little highfalutin to say about a sex-or-death series, which is like, “Alright, we need to get these characters together fast because otherwise this guy is so obtuse they will literally never hold hands, so we’ve manufactured this for that purpose.” But when it’s thoughtful, I really… because of the way society talks about sex, because of the way narrative expectations around proper romantic structure deal with sex as a commodity, especially in heteronormative relationships, I really like stories that are about “We’ve started with a transactionified, rule-based physical intimacy. We’ve jumped directly to there. And now here’s how it all unfolds messily after that with feelings.” And—

DEE: And that’s why Rent-A-Girlfriend is your favorite anime.

VRAI: [Sighs]

DEE: I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I’m kidding!

VRAI: Yeah.

DEE: I’m sorry. I had to make a joke. I had to make a joke.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Yep, yep! That’s very… Uh-huh.

DEE: That was handled poorly.

VRAI: I would—

PETER: New season!

VRAI: Yes! Yes, it is! Yes, it is! Oh my God, Peter, why? Um, and it—

DEE: Sorry, I derailed! Keep going!

VRAI: No, it’s all good!

DEE: I just had to make a goof.

VRAI: Don’t you dare cut that out, Peter. [Laughs]

DEE: One of those things is not like the other. So, [Recapping Vrai’s previous statement] enjoyed the premise, which I totally get. I think that is a really compelling start to a story.

VRAI: And, too, I think Bean— So, I liked it overall. It’ll be in the recs. But it is definitely a little bit more tropey with a side of thoughtfulness than it is like “I really have deep thoughts about really unpacking these ideas.” More like the writing is good and fun and occasionally it’s got a little bit of extra think on it. But, you know, there is that background element of it that made me interested in Sei and Aresh’s developing relationship. One of my partner’s favorite tropes of all time is the stoic simp who has strangled himself with this ruleset that he thinks is the only way he’s allowed to be in this relationship, and, by God, he’s gonna hold on to it! Lan Wangji. So, I was residually primed to like him for that and, I think, the fact that he’s younger, too. Like, the fact that it’s kind of a big background deal that he’s 22 and Seiichiro is 30— Oh, I guess age gap warning for the series. But it feels like it is purposefully part of their relationship.

DEE: Yeah. No, I agree with that, yeah.

VRAI: Uh-huh. And then I thought that the last— Although I will say, I think it would be fair to say this show is weirdly deliberately unsexy. And I know that Deen can make a sexy BL anime. And I wish it had allowed itself to be a little bit more sensual so that we would buy the disconnect between what Seiichiro’s internal monologue is and how he’s clearly feeling when they’re actually together.

DEE: Yes. Thank you. That was kind of what I was trying to talk about at the mid-season, but I was struggling to sort of explain it. So, yeah, thank you. There is kind of a disconnect because the animation does not convey that he is super into banging Aresh. They just sort of are awkward little paper dolls placed on top of each other’s laps.

VRAI: A little bit. Yeah.

DEE: It doesn’t feel like a “I’m catching feels for this dude but I know I shouldn’t.” It just sort of feels like he’s not into him, until the very last episode or so. So, I think that is probably a production issue, as well, yeah.

VRAI: I will say, it got me when he read the letter and was like…

DEE: The letter was cute.

VRAI: Oh, shit, I have all the feelings! And I was like, okay, yeah. But yeah, he’s an interesting sort of character that I think has— So, as the BL protagonist who swears he’s definitely, definitely straight until he falls for the love interest has gone out, the guy who’s kind of too oblivious to live has come to take his place. [Chuckles] And that’s kind of what we’re doing. I actually do think that he might have even had relationships with men in the past. It’s just that he’s so resolutely defined this as a business transaction.

DEE: Yeah, I got the sense he’d never had a relationship, period, quite frankly, like he was just so focused on work that he never really had a real relationship with somebody, which is why he was having such a hard time figuring out what to call these feelings, because he’d never really felt them before.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Yeah, I could see that, too. I think, I agree with you that the church arc feels like a little bit of a cul-de-sac, but I did like that it really put a bow on the Holy Maiden stuff from the first arc in a way that I like, because as much as I like the concept from the first arc that, oh, somebody should come in and say, “Hey, what’s going on with this teenage girl? Why are we putting the world on this teenage girl? This is weird…”

DEE: Why are we tearing her out of her home and away from her family to force her to save a world that she’s never even heard of until today? This seems like a fucked-up system.

VRAI: Exactly. Yeah, and my concern when it started out was that worry that, okay, this could tip over into this adult man scolding this teenage girl for believing in her power in this traditional female-centered wish-fulfillment fantasy. But I think the second arc really helps it avoid that, partly because, you know, it’s not just her saying, “I’m going to do something else besides this!” We actually get to see a little bit more of that in practice and her growing up as a compassionate person. The fact that there are other young children who are vulnerable next to her and of various genders, I think, helps too. It helps the world feel expanded and it gives her a little bit more footing to contribute with. So, I liked it mainly for what it did with her character, honestly.

DEE: Yeah, I think that’s a good point.

VRAI: Because, yeah, the villain is paper thin.

[Chuckling]

VRAI: It’s just hilarious. And honestly, the main villain is also… you look at his character design and you’re like, “Ah. Well, you’ll be our evil villain for the day.”

[Chuckling]

VRAI: And I say that with affection! Like, the things that are tropey about this show are tropes that I am partial to, so I think I’m willing to be like, “Yeah, okay.” [Chuckles] Um, and… Yeah. Yeah, that was mainly— I think that the last arc, you know, is fine. It’s a little bit of an abrupt ending, but I was satisfied. And, yeah, I think it could have been a better-executed adaptation than it was in some regards, but I still had a really good time with it by the end.

DEE: Yeah, I didn’t think it was awful by any stretch. I just was never as charmed as I wanted to be. People are going to start thinking I don’t like BL because the past couple I’ve been like, “Eh.” I’m like, no, I swear I do like some! I’m just a hard sell on romance, so…

VRAI: It’s true. You do not care much for a pure romance.

DEE: Well, and that’s one of the things I liked about this one, is there was a lot of other stuff going on. If it had just been Aresh and Sei, I would not have finished the show, because I did not… again, their relationship was not a trope I’m necessarily all that gung-ho about. But I’m glad that you liked it.

VRAI: Yeah! Alright. Well, I unfortunately dropped Champignon Witch. How did it fare out?

DEE: [crosstalk] Oh…

VRAI: Oh.

DEE: Don’t blame yourself. It’s fine. It kept feeling like it was on the edge of being good and was hamstrung by a not-very-good production. But then— I am racking my brain trying to remember exactly how this one ended. I’m gonna be sparse on the details and kind of speak just in general thoughts. I had talked at the mid-season that I thought the show was doing something kind of interesting with healthy ways to handle negative emotions, because it felt like it was leaning towards this idea of they were having this kid basically forget every bad feeling he had and that it was leaning into this idea of like, no, that’s not… You can’t grow. Like he keeps getting younger and smaller because he’s losing all these key memories that help you grow as a human being by learning how to handle these emotions. And I thought it was building towards finding another way to deal with this. And, again, this is an ongoing manga. Who knows where it’s going? I didn’t necessarily get the sense at the end that the series was like 100% excited with where the characters were at the end of this arc. But at the end of it, it’s kind of like he… he makes one decision, that I think is pretty mature of him and kind of shows that he’s making an attempt to grow and not just stay in this perpetual eight-year-old state, where he realizes, like, “I’ve basically kind of fallen in love with…” Oh, hang on. Sorry. Okay, we’re going to do that again. He’s like, “I’ve basically kind of fallen in love with Luna and that’s not good for her and our relationship, so I’m going to kind of set that feeling to the side and not have this unhealthy almost-obsession with her,” kind of a thing. But it leans into, like, “I’m going to write it down and forget all about it.” And I’m like, “That’s not… That’s not great, though. You’re not actually dealing with it. You’re just hitting yourself in the head until your memories go away.”

And then there’s also this undercurrent about how… they call them the black witches… which, we don’t have time to get into colorism on this podcast, but the ones that basically draw negative energy out of the world to kind of purify it, which is sort of what Luna does, they talk about the fact that feelings like love weaken their powers and so they all try to kind of avoid attachment. And I can’t tell if by “love” they’re specifically referring to romantic love or if it’s just like any kind of bond with another person. It was vague. But the characters don’t really challenge that as being a messed-up thing that they should probably try to figure out a way to work through.

So, the series left on a lot of uncomfortable notes where I was not sure how the show wanted me to feel about that. Like, if the show wants me to be uncomfortable, cool, good, and maybe it’ll keep interrogating that. I don’t know, and I can pretty much guarantee this one’s not getting a season 2. Maybe someday I will be able to check out the manga and find out what the plan was here. But, yeah, I was not… It was always kind of hamstrung by a not-very-good production—after the first couple episodes, anyway. And then ending on those thematically troubling notes, where I didn’t quite know what the author was going for, put me off of this pretty good. So, I can’t recommend this one to anyone at this point. Again, maybe the manga goes some— There’s enough seeds there that it could go someplace super interesting, but I don’t have enough story to know for sure. So, that’s where I’m at on Champignon Witch.

VRAI: Got you. That’s too bad.

DEE: Yeah. Sometimes that happens.

VRAI: Most— It does! And honestly, this is a pretty good hit rate, for shows that we pegged as promising early in the season, so I’m going to take the win.

DEE: Yeah, no, I think the top of our list for the most part was pretty solid. Yeah. I don’t think any of them really, truly shat the bed. Champignon Witch sort of fizzled out like a balloon that you let go and it goes [Splutters in a descending tone] more than being super-duper egregious, but, yeah, overall pretty solid top of the list this time around.

VRAI: Heck yeah. Well, do you want to do a brief shout-out on Love Through a Prism because you wrote a whole series review for it?

DEE: Yeah, I wrote a whole series review. Go read it. I really liked it. I mean, I guess the tl;dr is like, as someone who has read a lot of early 1900s history, this is an extremely romanticized version of the early 1900s in England, in a way that I had to stop… I had to tell myself this is not realism; this is like fantasy, right? Once I did that, I enjoyed the series a lot. The cast is incredibly charming. It looks lovely. It’s kind of a treatise on art and artists and passion for your craft. And… yeah, just absolutely top-tier supporting cast. I want spinoff series. [Chuckles] It was good. I really, really liked this one. Go read the review and you can learn more about it.

VRAI: Nice! Ah, I’m so glad that we can do that sometimes now. Alright, let’s do—

DEE: Yeah, it’s nice.

VRAI: Let’s do a little bit of a speedy trip, as we are wont to do through the sequels. Peter, this is going to be a lot of you. A side note: we decided to skip Fate/strange Fake, right? That was the ultimate thrust of that?

PETER: Yeah, I don’t think there’s much to say.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, I think that’s one we would end up talking about a lot and we’d probably just piss off Fate fans. Oh, yeah. Listen, I had a fun time with Fate/strange Fake.

PETER: Same.

DEE: Don’t get me wrong. I just hit a point in the back half where I was like, “I don’t have a damn clue what’s going on. But it looks great!”

PETER: You just have to… It’s like the Speed Racer movie. You just have to [Chuckles] turn your brain off.

DEE: It’s all vibes, baby. It’s all vibes and Ryohgo Narita’s very fun dialogue and character interactions. And, uh, yeah. And just an absolutely stellar production, holy cow. All the fight scenes look good. There were a couple episodes in the middle that were like art. I was like, “Who’s the director for this one? I need to pay attention to this person.” I think like every episode was directed by somebody different, which is an interesting way to do the show. So, anyway… I don’t know, Peter, you can keep part of that in if you want. We really did just talk about Fate/strange Fake.

VRAI: Ha!

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah, I think that’s pretty good. Yeah, yeah. [Chuckles]

DEE: However you want to edit that, yeah.

VRAI: Alright, well what about Frieren? That’s back now. Is it still going right now, as we speak in the spring?

PETER: [crosstalk] No, it was 12 episodes, and I believe they announced another season at some point in the future, maybe 2027 or something. I think it’s far off. So…

DEE: Wow, okay.

PETER: Yep. Uh…

DEE: Gives me time to catch up. I saw that a little bit. I would like to catch up on this one eventually. There’s just a lot of other shows that kind of got pushed further up my list.

PETER: I feel like this season was kind of a bridge—before the next big plot development, anyway. They really foreshadowed what the next arc is going to be at the end of this one. So I feel like this was a lot more— There was a part in the middle where they got into a pretty serious fight against a group of demons, but most of it was just them… you know, the chill traveling portion of Frieren for most of the season.

DEE: I mean, I do like that. So, again, I wouldn’t be opposed to coming back to it. It’s just I’m not in any particular hurry.

PETER: And what I meant by that is just I don’t think there’s a whole lot to discuss, and I definitely think Frieren benefits from being able to do both: it can do the shounen thing and it can also kind of do the cozy travel thing pretty well. So, I think, yeah, it was just a more chill season with a couple of standout fights. And once it gets into the next season/part of season 2 (I don’t know quite how they’re breaking up the seasons), it’s probably going to get into some more meat that can maybe be really discussed at length.

DEE: Cool. So we’ll just put a pin in that until next year. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Heck yeah. And Hell’s Paradise is finished now, too, right?

PETER: No. I believe it’s going to require three parts, although it’s definitely near the end. The manga’s pretty short. I think it was like ten volumes or something. No, maybe more than that. It’s leading up to the final conflict now. Maybe it could do a movie. I honestly don’t remember how much is next. It’s getting into some pretty interesting stuff with some of the new characters. There’s like a second wave of people that come to the island after them who are all interesting characters. Some ones that I— God, I kind of wish a lot more of you were watching it because I think Vrai might like the new ninja person. And [it] kind of has a… oh, who’s the one that you like from Fujiko Mine?

VRAI: Oscar?

PETER: Oh, Oscar, of course, was the name. Uh, kind of like a yandere Oscar vibe.

VRAI: [Interested] Okay.

DEE: [Chuckles]

PETER: [crosstalk] And I really wish Tony was watching it because there’s a lot of… many Buddhist things are happening, as well.

VRAI: Oh, yeah. Oh, so many! Yeah, no, I actually have read about half of Hell’s Paradise. I just didn’t get around to finishing it because… I was busy at the time, I think.

DEE: Life happens. Yeah.

VRAI: But it’s got a lot of gender and body horror, so I’ll make it back.

DEE: That does sound like your shit, yeah. I’m shocked you dropped it—or stalled on it, I guess.

PETER: Yeah, I think this season got a bit more attention than the last one did. The first one was a little dodgy because, I mean, you know, MAPPA’s doing seven anime at once at all times. So, yeah, it looked pretty good and it’s getting to the final conflict, which I hope gets even more support because I honestly think Hell’s Paradise is a really good series that had a lot of restraint for a Shonen Jump, in that it had a story with a beginning, middle, and the end that didn’t get stretched out to something unrecognizable and bad.

VRAI: They said it couldn’t be done.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. They said all kinds of things.

VRAI: So, does that mean you wanted to talk about Jujutsu Kaisen or are you, like, good?

PETER: I’m off the boat. I can’t even watch it anymore, to be honest. It’s just one of those— This is more just talking about myself. I’ve always had trouble getting into Inuyasha, not because I was not interested or thought it was bad, but just so many people were talking about it so much that I just kind of felt an aversion to it that never let me really get in and enjoy it. I want to correct that someday. But it was just kind of like, you know, when you can’t escape something and everyone’s talking about it all the time, it’s kind of just like you don’t want to spend your free time interacting with something that you are constantly being confronted with.

DEE: You’re, like, exhausted by it without even having seen it, yeah.

VRAI: This is why I don’t watch Shonen Jump anime anymore, pretty much specifically, yeah.

PETER: Yeah, especially, I feel like, Jujutsu Kaisen in particular, its fans are very aggressive, it’s kind of a very visual series, so it’s got a lot of spectacle and aura moments and stuff, which I don’t feel like that’s the part of the fandom that I really interact with. And, to be honest, I don’t think that there’s a single thing that I enjoy happening in the entire manga that happened after this season. I think that there’s like two high points. There’s Maki’s scene where she goes nutso and kind of unlocks her true ability, which I don’t really think pays off after that, to be honest. It’s kind of one of those things where the girl gets super strong—

VRAI: Ah, yes, anime madness.

PETER: Yeah, yeah.

VRAI: Always good, yes, yeah.

PETER: And even though the girl is canonically as strong as some of the guys, she never gets the standout moments the guys do. And then Yuta has a really cool fight. And, again, it’s just a fight I enjoyed and I think Yuta’s a cool character. And then after that, it’s just all downhill for me, so I guess that’s all I have to say about it.

DEE: [crosstalk] So you’re tapping out.

PETER: Yeah, I mean, I didn’t even watch the Yuta fight even though I enjoyed it in the manga, is how tapped out I am. So, sorry, Jujutsu Kaisen fans, if you’re listening.

DEE: [crosstalk] I’m glad I bounced when I did.

PETER: Yeah. I mean, it’s still gorgeous, obviously, but…

VRAI: Alright. So, what about the Kaguya-sama… movie, right? I sort of tapped out after season 3.

PETER: [crosstalk] It was an OVA. I can’t remember if it was two or three episodes. That actually came out late December. It was pretty good. Kaguya actually, like, went— It did all the things. It got a lot further than I thought it would.

DEE: [crosstalk] Isn’t it basically the end of the manga?

PETER: Yes. So, I don’t know how much would just be spoilers, yeah.

DEE: [crosstalk] Okay. Well, no spoilies. But you liked the way it ended.

PETER: Yeah.

DEE: Okay, cool.

PETER: I think— Basically, I tend to have objections about how—I was talking about earlier—how chaste a lot of romances can be and how they tend to leave stuff off once they get together and stuff like that. I feel like Kaguya actually kind of went further along in their relationship than I thought it would and it was very satisfying. So…

DEE: Cool. Yeah. I am going to watch it eventually. A friend and I, we have it on our to-watch list after we finish up the current thing we’re watching. So, looking forward to it. Who knows: maybe it’ll make a yearly recs list, for the full series of Kaguya-sama. We’ll see.

PETER: Yep. I enjoyed the OVA.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Is there anything to say about Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider? I dropped that sucker about halfway through cour 1, unfortunately.

PETER: Yeah, I actually… I did not catch up with it, although I do want to shout out—

VRAI: Oh. Let’s skip over it then, honestly, but— Oh, yeah, sure?

PETER: I want to shout out Release That Witch, which came out like in the middle of the season and was only eight episodes, so it’s actually already finished. It’s a Chinese animation. They’re really weird about isekai, where I feel like in the anime they don’t really want to [Chuckles], like, confront the fact that the characters are from another world, so they try to dodge it as much as they can, although in this case the guy kind of is going like, “This is how you make cement” and “What if I invented a steam engine?”

[Chuckling]

VRAI: I mean, somebody who knows more about Chinese broadcast standards than us can definitively answer this question.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. I think it’s a pretty cool series. They really changed the art style for the anime and made it kind of Berserk-esque. Like, everybody’s wearing medieval clothes like doublets and stuff like that. I really liked the art style and it does have some standard animation moments. The first thing the guy does is… he’s in the body of a noble and they’re going to be hanging a witch and he just goes like, “What? Fuck, no! What do you mean?” And it turns out she is actually a witch, but it’s just some girls have magic and stuff. So he ends up basically just trying to… He’s in this medieval world where everybody is superstitious and kills women [Laughs], so he’s like, what if I…

VRAI: [deadpan] How foreign. How unknowable.

PETER: … I raised the standard of living and tried to keep nobles from screwing over people. And then he ends up forming a partnership with this witch who… she has fire magic, so she ends up basically acting as a forge to make a lot of the technology that he has possible. And then he gets visited by my favorite character, Nightingale, who’s from a coven of witches who, whenever they can, before a witch is executed, they try to whisk them off to this place where all the witches gather together. And she’s trying to take the girls out, but the girls refuse because they’re from the community and they actually want to help them. And some of the people are slowly trying to come around. So she just kind of— I guess Nightingale can turn invisible. I don’t really know what her power is, but she sort of just… nobody knows she’s there except for the main character and she just eats all of his food and chills out while keeping an eye on him to make sure he doesn’t do anything bad. And it’s a pretty interesting dynamic, and I think it’s a really interesting show, especially— I don’t know. Chinese animation have made some interesting stuff lately. I think this one’s pretty.

DEE: Is it a complete story?

PETER: No. In fact, I don’t really know what’s going on. I’ve heard that it was like a limited series of eight episodes…

VRAI: [crosstalk] And I’m out.

PETER: … or I don’t know if it’s getting a season 2 or maybe there was a production problem or something. So I don’t know why it’s stopping.

DEE: Yeah. Well, let me know if there’s more. I don’t think I’ll probably check it out at this point. But good to know. I knew you were hyped about that one. So, glad to hear it started off well for you.

PETER: Yeah, I think it— I understand why you don’t want to watch it, but I do think it deserves some attention.

DEE: No, I think that’s totally fair. It’s just a commitment thing at this point. You know, there’s a lot of other stuff on the docket. But good to know. And, again, if it gets a completion, hell yeah, I’d be down.

VRAI: Yeah. But you, for example, have been spending time watching Medalist, which I haven’t even started. Season 2 was good?

DEE: Yeah, it was really good. It, I mean, stays the course from season 1, so I’d just direct you to our previous conversations about Medalist, our previous recommendations. Yeah, it continues to be a good show and that’s really all I— If you like season 1, you will continue to like season 2. There’s some really great skating animation. It’s a good next step in the arc. It’s a short season; it’s only nine episodes. They’re building to a movie that will be a big competition, so I’m sure it’s going to look freaking gorgeous. But, yeah, no, it’s a good one. It’s a really good sports series. So, yeah, continuing to recommend it.

VRAI: Hell yeah. Alright. Well, that leaves, I think one last— I think this is also going to be on the recs list, so you don’t have to spend too much time on it, but you also finished Gnosia.

DEE: Is someone reccing Gnosia?

VRAI: Yeah, I think Cy is. They said they wanted to.

DEE: Okay, good. Yeah, I might co-sign that. I didn’t play the game. We talked about this… I talked about this with Caitlin during the fall podcast, I believe. I didn’t play the game. Overall, I didn’t have a hard time following the story. I understood it. The time-travel alternate-reality shenanigans in the final arc get wibbly either to the point where they were discussing high-level concepts that I just personally didn’t get (which, if so, fair), or it was, you know, just plot bullshit to orchestrate a finale. Uncertain which. I was not blown away by the ending, but I was satisfied by it. They also pulled kind of a fun trick where… It’s based on a visual novel that’s inspired by Werewolf-style “find the traitor” games.

VRAI: Yeah, Among Us.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or the show Traitor, the reality show, the game show Traitor. But they did kind of a clever thing where they played what I would guess is probably like the normal ending. Again, haven’t played the game, so this is just me guessing. And then they took a week off, and I was like, wait, is that really the end? Like, they’re like, “Oh, if you want a more satisfying finale, too damn bad.” But then they came back with one or two more episodes after that to do a more satisfying finish to the story. So, if you’re binging it, you won’t know about that week off, but I thought that was very funny, where they kinda tricked you into thinking, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. That’s really where you’re gonna leave us?” It’s a really strong cast of characters. It kind of made me want to play the visual novel, but I’ve also heard that the one thing with the visual novel is there’s a lot of, like, if you don’t follow the paths exactly right, you can get stuck and it can get kind of frustrating. So, if that experience maybe sounds like a little more time than you want to invest, I think the anime is a really good backup. And, again, if Cy’s reccing it, Cy’s played the game, so Cy will be able to talk about how it holds up and how they, as a lover of the game, felt about it. So, you know, that recommendation will be showing up… when is this going out? Before or after this, around the same time, I’m sure. So check that out if you’d like that perspective on the series, as well.

VRAI: Yay! And I think we made it. We made it to the end, everyone. I’m so proud of us. And we even managed to go over time. Aw.

DEE: And my power didn’t go out or anything. [Chuckles]

PETER: A confluence of miracles.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Thank you so much for— [Chuckles] Right? Thank you so much for joining us, AniFam. Thank you as always for your patience and support. We really couldn’t do this without you.

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