(vague episode 34 spoilers)

So Mahiru's "individually" is robbing others of their own, I see. Ganguro fashion has been the subject of meaningful debate and analysis, but Aikatsu Stars! knows the real concern is that these dang kids look and act differently than the majority. Remember, kids: Don't stand out or be yourself! The demographic that worked on this episode was almost palpable.

Now I enjoy myself some bad puns, and generally favor whatever the localized title is, but "Anne Happy" is pushing being too groanworthy even for me.

"Each episode of the show will have an anime segment as well as a live-action segment. Each anime part of the episode will be five minutes long, and each live-action segment will be 16 minutes long and will feature the cast playing arcade crane games."-ANN

Where're my live-action crane games, Crunchyroll? How am I supposed to get the full experience of this show now?

With the season just about to begin, there's this vague but growing inclination that Funimation is going to wait for their Hero Academia pre-airing stream to announce the rest of their slate for spring. Which is alienating viewers and leading a number of people to believe that this show is the only show they're gonna simulcast. But all of the fanfare around this title and silence about whatever else they might be simulcasting really demonstrates just how much they're putting their eggs in this show's basket. They must expect it to be a pretty big deal. And I'm not familiar enough with this to speculate too much about how it'll perform (which isn't a great position as I'm forming my FAL team for the season!). but let's say it doesn't catch on for whatever reason. If the series is a flop, that leaves Funimation with a high profile failure and a number of other series they barely bothered promoting, perhaps even using them to promote said potential flop instead. Now maybe it's a smash hit but why take this risk? Even if it is a smash hit, wouldn't it be better to also put some effort into letting the other shows have a chance at the same? Yes, these deals can take time to work out and you may not have them finalized until right near the start of the show. But they're saying they already have other shows to announce, so either they're indeed withholding promotion of those titles, or they're lying. Even if this show is the biggest commercial hit in the history of anime this is still a weird marketing decision. Crunchyroll is steadily announcing a slate of titles they'll be simulcasting and customers are increasingly becoming legitimately convinced that Funi doesn't actually have any other shows, which is a perception Funi has pretty much deliberately created. I don't get it, and it seems to be baffling and upsetting a number of their current and potential customers. Such an odd move.
***

I'm opting to watch Funi's marketing Twitch stream thing for this and I've never used Twitch before. Is Twitch chat always so... terrible? Gee whiz.
***

And after four hours of counting down, the Funimation hosts can't even watch the premiere because they didn't successfully get the episode out on time. Sort of a great image of anime simulcasting in general, really.
***

...that's it? Just seems like a competent but typical one of those, really.
***

Their marketing push definitely seem to have brought in new members. Members who really don't seem to understand how their service works or what it offers and seem displeased with it to the point that they don't intend to continue past their free trial. Success? And all the money they've spent on this show has left them with a catalogue of shows for this season that, while you may or may not individually like them, can reasonably be described as "the leftovers." Which is alienating and disappointing current customers, prompting them to not want to continue being paying customers. ...success? And for all this marketing blitz, the show's popularity just seems "okay," which isn't okay when you've staked this much on it.

Obviously I don't have access to the actual hard numbers Funi sees. But at least from the outside, this hasn't seemed like a great marketing moment. It looks like Funi's sacrificed more for this title than they've gained from it and made a poor gamble. This show will probably do okay for them! But they've hurt the image of their simulcasting service and ceded a significant number of shows to Crunchyroll. Being "The Place to Watch My Hero Academia!" doesn't, no matter what you think of this particular show, stack up well against being "The Place to Watch Most of the Other Shows, Including Multiple Popular Ones!" When your service has a cost comparable to CR you want to convince potential customers that it also has a value comparable to CR. And they've neglected their forest to pamper what they think is a very nice tree.

CR is a very, very incompetent service. Funimation does many things better than them. But if they don't have the content, who will care about the service?
***

Oh dear. Now CR's announced they're also simulcasting Haifuri so that's even one less exclusive show Funimation can boast about having to entice people to subscribe. There are six exclusive, non-sequel titles from this season on Funimation. I'm currently watching around twice as many exclusive series on CR from this season as Funi has simulcasts altogether. Even if every single show on Funi was one I wanted to watch, that'd still be at best half of what I've opted to watch on CR. And that's because while "quality over quantity" is an easy line to spout off, quantity actually does matter. Especially when a number of the shows on CR also have the "quality" part.

Funimation is 2/3 the cost CR for an annual subscription, assuming the basic tiers of both. This season it's giving me less than 1/2 the value in terms of anime. But it gets worse. CR includes manga. Funi doesn't. Last season CR let me watch the live-action second season of Wakako-zake. Live action on Funi is far less common. In terms of having stuff, CR has significantly more than Funi does. To say that Funi's simulcasting business isn't having a bad season is to bury your head in the sand. The disparity is obvious and users are making their displeasure clear. Funi's not gonna say that, most likely, because of course they want to constantly project a positive image of their business.

We don't get to know how much Funi spent acquiring this show or how much it would've cost to acquire other shows. Could they have gotten some combination of the seemingly popular shows Joker Game, Twin Star Exorcists, Bungo Stray Dogs and/or Re:Zero? We can only speculate. But if they had the choice between a few popular shows or going for what they hoped to be the most popular show, I can't say the latter was the better move. Because, again, quantity does count for something. And if they couldn't get more than one of those shows had they not gone for MHA, then they're in pretty bad shape. Either they've made a fairly questionable marketing decision and/or they can't adequately compete with CR when it comes to bidding on simulcast licenses. The former is arguably a negative thing for this season. The latter would be a serious problem on a more long term basis.

I'm trusting this isn't going to double down on the bear sex jokes.
***

(spoilers?)
So it didn't double down on that but man did it go down some real awkward and even terrible alleys. Some real casual sexual assault of a 14-year-old, treating her as a dress-up doll for leering older men, pretty much bullying her on a regular basis, an odd idol undercurrent that never really jived with the rest of the narrative, ending on having the main character finally, after constant merry disregard for her strong social anxiety by others, completely collapsing under the weight of said social anxiety and regressing to a more childlike state as those around her refuse to try to help her but rather continue to enjoy the results of what seems like actually a pretty serious problem so that they can just continue to keep Machi as a pet and playing that all off as a cute, happy ending... I mean somewhere in all of this is slice of life/comedy stuff that borders between okay and alright but man oh man does it make some really disagreeable turns.

I... I just wanted a cute anime about a young girl and her bear out in the country trying to get familiar with city life. But it seems this anime and I differ in our opinions on traumatizing and sexually abusing a child as being "cute."
***

no seriously what the heck

The same voice actress that played Sumire in Aikatsu!, playing a character that looks like Sumire, sounds like Sumire and even has some personality overlap with Sumire, and I had no idea until someone else pointed it out. I can recognize Yuasa by seeing a walk cycle but can't recognize a voice actress even when it's been made this easy and obvious. I mean there's a certain nicety to hearing only the character and not such-and-such voice actor, but how am I this hopeless at recognizing voices?

Also you're seeing the staff that also worked on GJ-bu bringing the same expressive character -and particularly cat- animation to this show. It's nice. Helps make the show stand out from the field a little.

I...

Look, this feels like a giant red flag made out of other, smaller red flags. The promotional material kind of pitched it as "Adult takes advantage of little boy's financial dependency on him to turn said little boy into his personal fetish toy" which is not the most appealing thing in that it would be actively awful. And in a season where Super Lovers went all in on that sort of thing, I was on a bit of a high alert going into this show. But... I mean there's some weirdness ("No, no, he's just having him wear that maid outfit because he likes frilly clothes!") but nothing overtly terrible. Well, I mean beyond the certain subtext and minor fanservice involving a minor, but... you know it's kind of an awkward statement about anime that one can be relieved that a show's appeal to pedophiles is "tasteful." But insofar as you can accept that uncomfortably common element of anime, I mean it's not like it's worse than Black Butler, I guess.

If I sound hesitant here, it's because I know anime isn't great at the whole "restraint" thing and could so easily go from straddling along the side of the line to crossing right over it at any given moment. And for a show that's kinda on the lower side of "okay" it's maybe not worth sticking around to see if it does transgress, but I'm gonna stick with this show, I suppose. (Feel the excitement!)

Help.