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Oshi no Ko season 2 massively builds upon the foundation set in its first season. The already amazing animation comes back stronger than ever, character arcs feel more integrated and deeper. The slightly odd aspects to the show have massively reduced screen time and previously sidelined concepts find themselves thoroughly explored. I debated a lot on rating but my feeling heading out of it is a 9/10, the greatest season to season improvement I’ve seen yet.

To start with the animation here is gorgeous, the previous season had made good use of light shadow and color but still had some generic looking scenes. In the ... second season every single shot is jam packed with color and emotion. If they cannot come up with something for a shot the frequent cut aways to amazing unique animation to explain concepts serve to fill the void. Multiple color palettes are used depending on the context but all of them are amazing. The animations of the now required dynamic fights in the theater sections were also extremely well done and would’ve easily been the best in a normal season if not for strong competition from Elusive Samurai.

Continuing with visuals the character designs continue to be very strong with the returning star motif and the stage outfits being great stand outs. In my opinion the star motif in particular felt even more strongly used this season and it was a great way to convey someone’s state changing without needing to spell it out for viewers. The outfit choices for everyday wear were also great and I really enjoyed looking at them for my own style inspiration. It’s very refreshing to see women dressed normally (or normal for their social status in a few cases) instead of what we often see in anime. Akane’s outfits in particular are very similar to the types of things I like to wear.

I’m not a musician so I usually refrain from commentary on soundtracks as I don’t understand the dynamics at play but I wanted to call out the strong showing here. The piano themes they use for backing in tense scenes are really good and the insert songs, OPs and EDs remain great as well.

My strongest criticism of Oshi No Ko in the past has been it’s treatment of women. Especially in the first season the way women hoard around aqua and fawn over him was extremely annoying and while it might be something funny or interesting for me really takes things away from me. This aspect is still present in the second season but finds itself massively diminished in favor of an arc that focuses on two women's dreams to the exclusion of their affections. This is a massively beneficial change that saves the show from what could’ve been a disaster. This is not to say they completely ignore this dynamic but I’m very happy with the direction they are going and found myself far less annoyed.

Similarly I found the treatment of the Idol aspects in the first season to be a bit pedestrian and uninteresting, serving to somewhat glorify the industry in something I think should showcase why it’s terrible for young women. The second season while having a bit of this massively cleans up it’s act in this regard. The focus away from these aspects into other portions of the show I find more interesting certainly went a long way in improving my opinion of this season.

Continuing on this I’m very happy with the way the show has been treating women as human beings with their own dreams. Even women with romantic attraction have other things going on in their life that they consider important. They aren’t one dimensional and can coexist on multiple fronts like real people, especially highlighted by a sound off your dreams moment in the last episode. I touched upon this earlier but this decision massively improves the stage play arc by making it about their career goals instead of something to do with possession of Aqua. The largest exception to this behavior is probably R
uby and to a lesser degree Kana. In Ruby’s case I do find her brocon cutaways to be grating, unfunny, and uninteresting however it does also seem like the show portrays this as a character failing. With Kana I find the situation to be less distasteful, sometimes funny, and still a little bit annoying and once again it does seem like future development is in store for this.

The characterization of the cast outside of romance is just generally extremely good. You get a great idea of *why* people do things and it refuses to play into the idea that people do things for no reason. People have convictions behind their actions which can be explored and deconstructed if you take the time to understand them. The depictions of despair are also really great and I was happy to see one of my favorite motifs portrayed so well. There’s a few blunders present, most notably an extremely simple scene involving a musician but these are stand outs in part because of their length and are easy to let fly you by.

The last episode served as a capstone integrating best in the series with its otherworldly visuals, well placed insert, and deepening mystery. They’ve managed to transform me from someone who was debating watching season 2 at all to someone who is quite excited to see where DogaKobo goes next.

Wistoria Wand and Sword

Wistoria Wand and Sword is an okay spin on the magical school format which introduces some interesting and gorgeous animation but falls short of living up to it. Particularly the nature of how plot information is conveyed through constant repetition drags down the show a large amount. Depictions of women are unfortunate despite designs I would class as okay. For these reasons I would class it as a 6/10, above average but nothing special.

To start with probably the best thing about Wistoria the animation at play here is stellar. The spellcasting effectively uses really nice and complex shading to give a great ... feel as well as lots of time and attention being given to objects created. The Elven wood summoning and fire magic are particular standouts to me but smaller things like Julius’ ice flowers also came out great. On the physical side the fight choreography for Will’s movement is extremely dynamic and like the elusive samurai which is also airing this season immensely aids in selling his character. The one notable sour spot is the backgrounds, especially in the final arc where the messy flesh texture is in my opinion poorly done and distracting. However throughout the show there are various points where the contrast between the amazing character art and relatively cheap backgrounds becomes distracting.

The character design is simple with fire mages having red hair, ice mages having blue hair and so on. It is very effective in blocking out the characters. This is aided significantly by the fun design used for the caped uniforms which I enjoyed watching flap around with the aforementioned very good animation budget. Female designs in particular benefit a lot from this largely avoiding male gazey big breasted low cut tops with the exception of elfie whose facial design I quite like but the rest of which I find very unfortunate.

Continuing with female agency in the show is very poor with every major female character of will’s age group present ending up living a life defined in relation to Will. Colette is never seen spending her time thinking about anything else with the same true for “Ms Perfect” Lihanna” Even the all powerful Magia Vender Elfie is seen clutching a pillow of will in the ED and frequent cuts to her all consist of her thinking about him. To cut them some slack on this it appears to be a general writing fault as this broadly applies to every character in the series however I don’t think this makes it much better. It would’ve helped the world building a lot if we were exposed to someone who didn’t spend all their time thinking about Will after first interaction.

Continuing from the characters, I found the writing for most of them to be oversimplified and a bit uninteresting. Characters are classed into an archetype and with 1 notable rapid exception never evolve or deviate from that. Sion probably has the best written development but the way they play him still gets very grating when you can see exactly what’s going on.

Possibly contributing to this was the series inability to not step on it’s own toes by repeating information. Using an example from the character writing the elf wignall’s backstory is first implied in a way that conveyed all necessary information to the audience. However it was then felt necessary to repeat that information multiple times dragging out the scene and making it feel shallow. This is an issue that extends to pretty much everything be it showing someone attacking wings and dealing no damage, having them say that only to cut to will in his head saying “I read in a book those wings don’t take damage”. Another example is when an important person shows up in the final episode and the group’s reactions clearly convey their opinions on him; however it is once again felt necessary to give a narration of the information. Both of these massively slow down the scene and remove the interest giving to the audience by having to piece together the already pretty spoonfed shown information.

The world building is so:so, it’s not a complete copy of fantasy tropes but it still finds itself pretty simple. The credits system is interesting but finds itself in a weird position as it becomes clear that the author intends to use it as a power scaling system. The magic system is nothing special and finds itself in the common midpoint between a clicky and defined system and my personal preference for the vague and awe inspiring undefined nature of the cosmos. The use of dwarves is pretty simple but I found it to be an effective way to convey the unfair and cruel state of the dominant society

As I said in the opener though I am critical of it I don’t hate Wistoria wand and sword, if it was some disgusting slop I would’ve dropped it at episode 4. It’s something that is firmly okay and I’m sure someone who has watched far less than me might even find it very enjoyable. But as it stands it’s got enough problems to chip away and it’s foundations and bring it down to a 6.

Karasu Wa Aruji Wo Erabanai - Yagatasaru (The Raven Doesn’t Choose It’s Master)

Another in a series of multi-cour NHK produced anime that have soso production quality but stand above on their ideas Yagatasaru is a court drama set in the fictional land of Yamauchi. I debated my placement as I think it’s criminally underrated but still has significant flaws that hamper my ability to wholeheartedly praise it. It sits at an 8/10 on the anime scale as a show that is pleasant enough to watch, very exciting at points but often takes an unideal route.

A recent pleasure of mine has been the court drama ... genre, starting with 2022’s Koukyuu no Karasu (raven of the inner palace) which immediately sprung to mind when starting due to its similar name. Both series blend the supernatural with court politics modeled off their respective eras to tell an old type of story in a new way. 2023’s immensely popular apothecary diaries would also appear to fall into this category however I will refrain from commentary as I haven’t found the time to watch it. To round out this list of similar shows I will drop the Heike story which is one of my favorite anime of all time despite its flaws which gorgeously tells one of the most famous stories in the history of Japan in a new light.

Yatagarasu is well aware that it comes from a long line of media based around the issues of court and politics (The NHK has been airing live action court dramas weekly for decades) and tries to subvert the expectations of the audience wherever it can. This tendency can if played wrong become annoying, cloying and frustrating but it feels very good here. The constant guessing around the nature of people’s hearts serves to place you in the narrative and is the strongest in the first arc.

The latter half was less enjoyable on this front and was still well done but moved a bit rapidly and ended up feeling slightly simple and arbitrary. This is likely in part due to a major reveal that requires the rebuilding of the antagonism dynamics of the show. I think that this ends up creating an interesting story that really blossoms by the end of the second cour but the unfortunate nature of this is that it leads to an early story style of weakness as it’s footing is regained.

Gender politics are largely absent from Yagatarasu besides some minor commentary on the expectations placed upon women. This is largely to be expected for a male led historical drama and I do not find myself very surprised here. Female characters are pretty consistently involved in the supporting cast and they are portrayed with deep inner lives which I like. Sexualization of female characters is entirely absent which is another plus. If I were to give an isolated ranking on this I would give a B+, far better than most anime.

I don’t have a lot to say about the animation quality, studio peridot did a passable job here. There is little harsh CGI as seen in some other low-medium quality studios (JC staff I’m looking at you) and the backgrounds look okay and can occasionally draw interest. I found the desaturated color palette to be inoffensive but largely uninteresting with the exceptions of the kimonos and other colored garments worn by various characters.


Yatagarasu seems unlikely to get a second season which is a real shame, it’s certainly something very interesting and has built itself up a decent fanbase. The novels appear to lack any English translation and since the anime is so far ahead in the first place it seems like it will be a long while before the content brought up in the finale is fully touched upon. For a show that likes to reinvent itself this is a real shame as I find myself quite interested in what happens next in Yukiya’s story.

**Isekai Shikkaku (No longer allowed in another world) **

An interesting if controversial premise that like many isekai of this style fails to fully capitalize upon it. However, It happens to be a concept that personally appeals to me quite a bit and it doesn’t fall flat on its face like so many of its compatriots. It manages to at certain points tell a somewhat poignant story that it blends with dark comedy even if other times one portion overpowers the other leading to disaster. For this reason I am rating Isekai Shikkaku as a 7/10 on the anime scale.

The comedy in this anime ... generally comes in a few forms, someone threatens sensei, sensei carries out an unexpected action, or one of the female characters is in love with him. I think it’s somewhat impossible to classify comedy as good or bad so I will just say my opinion on this and not factor it into my rating. I found the threat bits to generally get a light chuckle from me if they were integrated into the scene well, the unexpected actions ranged from an eyeroll to an actual laugh (rare for me!). The women in love with him bits were, as I think anyone who knows me would expect, completely uninteresting to me and I found them very annoying.

Following from the comedy's use of women the show has a baffling mix of some of the best (low bar) handling of women's issues in an anime to aspects I find annoying and off putting. The first thing you would notice upon watching the show is the truly terrible female character designs. There’s no defense for this, I don’t know why they did it, it undercuts the show’s messaging a lot and is a real shame considering that I think many of the other designs are pretty okay-good. On the positive end the show frequently touches upon women's issues from ostracization, marriage inequality, and the negative impact of traditional female roles. Reading some of Dazais’ work it’s clear this is drawn from his interest in the lives of women which he writes about frequently, Schoolgirl and the setting sun touching upon similar topics as seen in the show. Regardless it’s good, anime should do this more!

To theorize a bit more on the designs it’s very possible they are derivative of the worst aspects of the show. It’s clinging to isekai tropes, the more it tries to commentate on these directly or interact with them the worse it gets for it. The show is at it’s absolute best with simple character interactions and observations of humanity in the style of Dazai’s bibliography and it’s lowest when discussing chosen ones and magic swords. This habit is probably the source of the over saccharin and strange plot points which occasionally pop up throughout the anime. One of the worst of these is the rapping character who appears about midway through and isn’t utilization besides to commentate on isekai powers.

If you’ve made it this far I can now address the elephant in the room, the pretty big controversy over Isekai Shikkaku being made in the first place. The open question is it disrespectful to the memory of Osamu Dazai who himself died of suicide to create a character that is similar to him and draws from his literary works in this way. Reading through his works as I worked my way through the show I’m not so sure that the main character of Isekai Shikkaku “sensei” is intended to be Osamu Dazai himself. Dazai would frequently include gloomy suicidal or otherwise depressed writers through his works which while similar to him were in my opinion not supposed to be him, writers write what they know. If you accept this to be the case I think a possible intention of the writer may have just been to create a character in his style in which case I think that’s basically fine. The consumption of sedatives in harmful amounts being tied to a desire to not feel fully healthy is very similar to the activity of Naoji from setting sun for example.

Edit: A friend has pointed out that date at the start of the manga aligns with Dazai's suicide. This is pretty unfortunate and I still stand by what I said here about how the character is treated within the work. Maybe I'll return and write a bit more about what I think his personal thoughts on that would've been but that seems like a very fraught topic. Much of the discussion over his feelings about himself assume short story characters are self inserts which I strongly disagree with.

**The Elusive Samurai**

To start with this is easily the best show of the season and immediately kicks itself into my "things I would tell someone to watch besides it being a seasonal" category. In other words, I will be listing this as 10/10 on the two anime tracking sites I use (anilist mal). This show is *very me* taking place after the end of the Kamakura period and firmly integrates itself into this historical setting. It's full of little historical tidbits that are really fun to learn if you look after the episodes and fine to let slip past you.

The animation quality here ... is stellar with a fruitful blend of bright colors and the dark mudiness you would expect of war being contrasted against each other in a very impactful way. The titular "Elusive Samurai" is also highlighted though this well deserved budget which his movements feeling unthinkable if done any other way as he playfully dances around the battlefield.

Character designs are also extremely well done with even mob charecters feeling very memorable even after short appereances. (I now know multiple minor imperial officials by name!).

The comedy isn't always for me but this is something I will not hold against it as I am not the target demo for Japanese Shonen comedy. I will however note that some of the jokes I did find a decent amount funny which I found to be surprising.

Women charecters have some presence in the show but like many other members of the genre you an already feel them being sidelined by the 12th episode. There isn't much explicit misogyny but this is obviously unfortunate. This and Genba's pervert bit (Why does every show have this!) are probably it's weakest aspects. I don't think you should take this to mean there are no important female charecters as there are still 2 members of the band that are women fighters. Certainly a better track record than Naruto or DBZ.

Train to the end of the world is another in a long line of great off the wall anime. It's a wild ride that firmly sticks the landing with it's ending. Visuals are above average to good, limited CGI is used but it's well integrated and personally I found no issue with it. I generally find an episodic style to be slightly annoying but the really good quality of these episodes pushed it over the line for me. I'd highly recommend this show especially if you liked sonny boy (more serious and contemplative) the night is short walk on girl or Id invaded (more of ... a mystery style).