The Dreaming Boy is a Realist – Episode 1
A better production might have elevated it to the heights of “lower tier acceptable shounen rom-com.”
A better production might have elevated it to the heights of “lower tier acceptable shounen rom-com.”
A potentially interesting thread is buried in a premiere that’s otherwise crass, silly, and dumb as bricks.
What? You’re telling me this generic orphan who was always a bit of an outcast secretly has a supernatural family legacy and gets to go live on a cool island? Neat! I wonder if he has a grand destiny he’ll reluctantly have to fulfil, too!
There were about five times in this extended premiere that I said, out loud, “I can’t believe it’s still going!” It doesn’t help that the characters move and act like cardboard cutouts. What went wrong?
Rushes through a checklist of upsetting tropes early on in maybe the tamest and most toothless way possible.
Dead Mount Death Play has managed to put so many conceptual hats on top of one another that it’s come round to being kind of entertaining.
Raeliana is a great protagonist, but it’s a shame that the animation production isn’t as good as it wants to be.
How it fares will depend on a couple of key things: how it handles its love interest, Isaki, and how it handles the theme of mental health and isolation that underpins the whole premise.
On paper, A Galaxy Next Door sounds like a cliché rom-com where a magic wife fixes a sad boy’s problems. And it very well could turn into that, but this premiere is a lot more charming—and way more relaxed—than its synopsis would have you believe.
Magical Destroyers is simultaneously A Lot and very little at all.
It’s a supernatural comedy first and foremost, but that silliness is grounded in characters that feel like characters rather than one-off jokes.
I would rather chew off my own fingernails than watch another episode of The Legendary Hero is Dead. Or someone’s fingernails, anyway.
Some wonders cannot be described, only seen.
It’s cool to see a sympathetic fat protagonist, but the show trades that for a generic Potato-kun almost immediately.
There’s nothing problematic about this show so far. And that’s great. If there’s one thing corporate-backed vtubers are good at, it’s being good at toeing the line to be as uncontroversial as they can in the face of controversy, so you probably won’t see anything too hard hitting here either way.
I’m happy to report this is a sweet show about how basic kindness can really go a long way.
The manga is immensely popular and, based on the gore elements alone, I can see why folks are excited to see the supernatural narrative and action sequences in the upcoming weeks.
There’s a few sour notes here that mostly come down to having to get the premise out of the way, but I think this might shape up to be a nice balm for all the people who were crushed when the director of Recovery of an MMO Junkie turned out to be violently anti-Semitic.
If you weren’t already inclined to check this one out, it’s probably worth sitting back and waiting to see how the much anticipated Uzumaki anime finally comes out.