Interest Stacks

Shoutouts to Bug Films for coming out the gate with such a nice looking show. There's a surprising amount of ambition behind this, and as someone who read the manga beforehand, I can't say I imagined an adaptation that would've looked much different. However, I also wasn't a huge fan of the manga in the first place. The fun of its premise quickly burns out and it becomes more and more by-the-numbers as it goes on, with its character personalities not being strong enough to carry the experience. Its adaptation follows suit. Once episode 1 ends, the series is basically over. Don't get me wrong, that episode is great. It throws all these concepts at you relating to the hell of living in capitalism and the miserable Japanese work culture, and the directing does a fantastic job of transforming from a grey vortex of depression into a colorful apocalyptic explosion once shit hits the fan. But then the shit keeps rolling. Why care? I'm not saying anything past the intro is outright bad, but it's nowhere near as entertaining as a show like Highschool of the Dead, which embraces ridiculous, high-octane action scenes that simultaneously manage to feel grounded, enhancing the stakes. Zom 100, in comparison, doesn't really feel like a "survival" show (despite the buffed zombies), it's more akin to a goofy pseudo-ironic horror film, but while also not really having the comedic chops to make that worthwhile. There aren't really any stakes, either, yet it occasionally asks you to buy into pathos based off of quite flimsy grounds. It's also true that none of the characters in Highschool of the Dead are very interesting by themselves, but that's why its method of putting them in dangerous situations works so well by drawing out human empathy. I just don't get the pathos in Zom 100. It's trying to do too many things. Too much about morals, ideals, politics, interpersonal drama, etc and not enough basic intrigue.

Also, the indefinite hiatus after episode 9 is a big yikes. It makes the whole project feel kinda hypocritical.

4/10
Honorable Mention

At the very least, I enjoyed its brand of cringe, like when Ichikawa creepily scraped the chalkboard to avert attention away from Yamada. Stuff like that was endearingly real. Unfortunately, most of the show is either "The Author's Barely Concealed Fetish" or overly cumbersome writing where it just tries too hard to create these complicated social situations, none of which are all that funny or interesting. Meanwhile, the romance, while it's sexually charged in a way you won't find elsewhere, which may please some, simultaneously beats around the bush for the sake of elongating the series into infinity ("wait until chapter 200 for them to hold hands" energy). For me, personally, it also has the same issue as a show like Takagi-san, where it's hard to get into just because of the main characters being minors and having such juvenile interactions. At least in Takagi-san, Takagi actually looks like a 13 year old and isn't overtly objectified like Yamada. This show is just begging me to use the term "male gaze." I'm trying to hold back. There was so much lampshading here, too, like the scene when Ichikawa was staring at Yamada talking to her friends and thinking "it's just like I'm watching Lucky Star!" What the fuck? So weird. Again, not an awful show, but not really for me.

4/10
Honorable Mention

Commendable for being a harem anime that isn't utterly detestable. The polyamory concept is actually pretty based and goes against the grain in a major way. I shit you not, there's even subtle commentary here on how the culture of monogamy promotes misogyny and low self-esteem in women. Aside from being woke af, this concept also makes it much less annoying to watch because the girls fighting over the guy's attention are legitimately in a relationship with him. Rantaro is one of the best harem MCs in my opinion purely for the fact that he's simply kind and thoughtful. He genuinely goes above and beyond to please every girl he meets, and you can't help but root for the guy. The show is also extremely horny as you might expect, but it's never too weird or exploitative, and in fact, I found Hakari's schtick to be kinda funny in a relatable way. Although, honestly, I didn't really care for most of the gags, especially the ones surrounding the vice principal or the unfunny tsundere shit. And at the end of the day, it still feels like a pandering wish fulfillment show primarily made for degenerates, even if it seems self-aware of this fact. I liked how the girls formed relationships of their own with one another, but the grim reality of fanservice romance shit like this is its purpose as a vehicle for waifu wars and porn is inevitable because it just doesn't have much to offer beyond some cutesy lovey-dovey scenes, so fans are left to fill in the blanks. Personally, I don't get much out of this.

4/10
Honorable Mention

Silver Link, arbiter of mid, I kneel once again. Just like the Villainess show, it's yet another "what if I relived my life but did everything right" type of thing, and this one is surprisingly wholesome and cute. And again, the gimmick is all it has going for it. Unless you get your emotional needs fulfilled from oujousamas saying ですわ～.

4/10
Honorable Mention

One of the more lauded shows from this year, and I can certainly see why, as it's got some nice ideas and a generically "good" production, but nothing about the content here was made for me. Its style of comedy is utterly annoying as well as unfitting of a period piece, the sources of pathos are often very confused because the only sympathetic character is Maomao yet we are told to care about a bunch of other assholes for no reason, and most of the writing is just explaining botanical concepts. Not that there's anything wrong with that last part, but the way it's handled makes it the definition of an episodic popcorn slop show with not much in the way of narrative intrigue. It's more like "oh boy what old poisoning methods am I going to learn about in this episode" instead of progressing a story. Maomao herself is a good MC, but like, 'good' in the way it feels like she was genetically engineered for https://www.animefeminist.com/ to praise - a half-compliment at best. I do like her IDGAF energy, even if the writing kinda flounders the fun by reusing the same jokes over and over without adding much spice to her reactions or one-liners, but she just feels a little too perfect. She does serve as an effective mirror of society's current views of such archaic systems by piercing through all the bullshit, and by being a smart independent women who don't need no man, but by proxy, her seemingly untouchable nature can lead to a sense of detachment to the horrible ways women and lots of other people were treated back then since she doesn't really have to suffer much consequence herself (well, aside from the whole being kidnapped thing). She just has that magic shoujo MC touch to make anybody fall in love with her, rendering the idea of conflict or intrigue totally bunk.

4/10
Honorable Mention

MORE YURIBAIT MOOOOOORE!!! GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG GLUG!!!!

I just wish anime like this would be unabashedly queer instead of doing this weird infantilizing moeblob shit, but gotta keep the smelly otaku audience watching somehow, eh? Whatever. It's a fine enough cute girl friendship show with lowkey gay vibes and relatable parallels to social anxiety and alienation (ha).

Better than Adachi and Shimamura.

5/10
Honorable Mention

PRECURESISTERS WE MADE IT!!! Heartcatch and Go Princess are my GOATS at the moment, but this one is good babykino. Sora and Mashiro are an incredibly cute main duo - I love their princess/white knight dynamic. There's more of a plot focus and the tone feels more varied in general, dedicating less time to the villains and more time to character interactions, hinting at this series' potential to be an actual anime. The boy Precure is handled well, officially making this the most "woke" entry in the series, possibly singlehandedly bringing down Japan's patriarchy in the process. Trust the plan, patriots are in control. I hate that fucking pig dude and his stupid looking minions though, and anytime there's an action scene I sleep.

5/10
#10

What I initially thought would be nothing more than 4chan cunnybait turned out to be...that, but while also containing more positive traits than I expected. The fanservice was certainly excessive, as well as annoyingly unfaithful to its source material (Studio Bind is like 100% pedophiles, what are you gonna do), but thankfully, it's not an especially prevalent aspect of the show. Most of it is focused instead on fairly normal slice of life antics with a thin trans theming, and it's fine honestly. The pathos was surprisingly decent - I liked the scenes where Mahiro connected with her sister over her newfound gender experience, for instance, but these kinds of scenes were few and far between. I can't help but shake the feeling I've seen almost everything in this show before. It just doesn't take many risks, and without the mildly amusing spice of its otaku transition propaganda premise, it would be absolutely nothing special. It really isn't anything special even still, despite the solid production work, but it had its moments and was mostly a fun time.

5/10
#9

Reads like a more sincere version of Your Lie in April, which I can definitely get behind, but most scenes in this show just end up feeling the same. This is effective in the sense it's a slow burn coming of age romance because it adds realism, but a show with as middling a production as this has a hard time carrying that weight. It's more of a "vibe" anime than anything, though, and even though it's a pendulum that swings towards boring most of the time, I still enjoyed its subtle tone, which often worked to give its dialogue more personality, like when the teacher asked the two MCs if they were using the club room to fuck. Lol. If nothing else, it's got a cute writing sense.

5/10
#8

Come on guys, let's be real here. This is just another entry in the "doomer femcel self-insert" shoujo subgenre. You watch this show to see the poor, abused Miyo get good things and be happy and then the warmth within the cockles of your heart tricks you into thinking it's anything but. While it is easy pathos, I can't deny it's also extremely effective and far from ill-intentioned, so it's tough to get mad. It's satisfying to see a likable underdog get their comeuppance, and the two leads here are definitely likable enough.

5/10
#7

An old classic reimagined at a bit of an interesting time, what with the recent rise of AI. Unfortunately, I feel like I was supposed to love this a lot more than I actually did. Aside from a few questionable animation style decisions and some ugly CG and digital effects, the production is overall quality as expected, but I'm not a huge fan of the colorful digital style. It just doesn't fit Naoki Urasawa's designs at all. The story itself is a pretty engaging mystery, but my problems come with the angle of the writing. Maybe this is an issue exclusive to the adaptation, but the episodes tend to follow too much of a predictable pattern. They introduce a robot character, have scenes to draw out sympathy for them from the audience, and then kill them off. Am I watching the next Texhnolyze or just another Key VN? These characters don't really serve much of a purpose, and it ends up feeling like the writers are just using cryporn to pad out the eventual mystery reveal. There's generally a lot of jumping around between characters of varying relevance that usually take up more screen time than they should, and the pathos is so predictable and bland (stop WAR! stop HATRED!) that it really feels like more of a time-wasting popcorn blockbuster than it should. The first episode was a great standalone story, but watching the actual plot unfold following this was wildly disappointing. If you structure an entire story around mystery box reveals only to have those reveals be lame & predictable at best or something that could barely be called an explanation at worst, what is the point? I'm not saying it was outright bad, it just wasn't fun, wasn't as heady as its contemporaries, wasn't as sad as it made itself out to be, and wasn't that gripping. It was just a show. Just something to put on in the background and casually admire every now and then.

5/10
#6

It was almost too easy to tell this project was being helmed in part by Watari. His subversive writing style had grown on me since the release of Girlish Number, and one of the things I loved most about that show was how it criticized the anime industry so directly and nonchalantly. Watari writes with a proverbial middle finger in the air, and he makes what seems to be a monumentally difficult task, judging by the rest of the medium, so simple: making an isekai fantasy entertaining. He was the perfect person to bring on board for this adaptation, because clearly the original author also has a preference for tearing down ideology. It tauts concepts seemingly taken for granted in these shows, like the hierarchical monarchies or the presumed straightness of every character, and asks: "Why?" It shows characters crippled by systems that should be beneficial to them, and Anis provides a much needed modern wit to punch up at the world’s foolish preconceptions in possibly the most clever and fitting utilization of an isekai protagonist I’ve ever seen. As its title suggests, there is a revolutionary spirit to the show not present in many others of its ilk: a willingness to tear apart the world's own internal logic, which gives it much more potential to say something actually meaningful.

That said, I've been unimpressed with its portrayal of supposed "lesbian" characters. So far, it’s more of a punchline rather than actual representation. While I am generally a fan of Anis' character archetype, and I appreciate how she is only IMPLIED to be from our world instead of spoon feeding us this information, her personality is a dollar store Marisa Kirisame at best and a Chisato Nishikigi clone at worst. I also find the show somewhat aimless and exposition-heavy at the moment, 3 episodes in, but hopefully that will change.

UPDATE: After finishing the series, I'm happy to report the yuri was in fact not bait. It was quite gratifying to see an anime actually commit to this, and Anis & Euphy ended up making the whole show as a result. Unfortunately, the verbose expository writing kinda got worse over time, and I was often not invested in what was happening in any of the plot arcs, so this show is somewhere in the middle for me. It was passable, and worth watching for the two MCs, but despite my appreciation for its lack of annoying tropes, I can't say anything else was ever anywhere above average. I can't help but feel like it being based on a light novel really dragged it down.

6/10
#5

This show is really cool because it's one of the only anime in recent memory to have drawn male nipples. Isn't it just the queerest thing how that's not normal? Well, anime catching Ls aside, this show is super stylish and directorially engaging. I love the character designs and drip, the writing oozes a British snark & wit that's very enjoyable, and there's a hefty amount of social commentary on racism and shit. Simply put, it's my idea of a good time.

6/10
#4

A genuinely enjoyable post-apocalyptic sci-fi romp with great leads and an ever-present sense of danger mixed with the spice of those more subtle, humorous moments that bring out a nice sense of humanity in the characters. Then you get to the incredible action scenes where it combines these elements and it's just bliss. It was fun just seeing these two explore and bump into various people who had their own stories, many of which you could just feel, even with sparse exposition, which I appreciated. But, again, I have to shout out the production, because the audiovisuals were often so good that they would nearly make me tear up by themselves. I'm not saying the writing is mediocre in comparison, but I think I would say it's "just good enough." Nothing mindblowing. It's rather familiar territory if you've seen The Promised Neverland, Attack on Titan, Black Bullet, etc, but to its credit, Tengoku Daimakyou is probably a bit edgier than any of those shows, not necessarily to its detriment. There are some HEAVY scenes in this show, sometimes to the point where I felt bad for those who could use actual trigger warnings. Still, I admired its boldness, and believe it to be fairly well-earned with its dark moments. I'm a sucker for a lot of the body horror scenes in particular. Real fucked up shit. Some parts of the show were more interesting than others, like, for instance, I think the first two episodes were slightly weak compared to the rest (some annoying 'anime humor' and a couple tryhard edgy scenes), but I don't know if that was the fault of the show. It needed to set up the world along with its stakes, and in the process, I just personally felt it wasn't playing to its strengths. I also thought the half of the story which focused on the kids in Heaven was not as engaging, because it lacked the strong character personalities of Kiruko and Maru. Regardless, great show.

Oh yeah, and that Weilin Zhang OP is fuckin awesome.

7/10
#3

Exceedingly charming. Essentially what you would get if you condensed every good aspect of shoujo romcoms into a single anime. It's got nice visuals, it's wholesome, it's funny without trying too hard, and it generally stands proud as one of the most progressive anime released in the past decade. There is a trans character, most of the girls don't look like copy-pasted anime barbie dolls with makeup on, the dialogue feels very up-to-date with its sense of humor and relatability, conflicts are not blown out of proportion like terrible shoujo shit, and it features ISHIKAWA PREFECTURE REPRESENTATION!!! PA Works didn't forget about Hanasaku Iroha after all.

EDIT: Feel mostly the same after finishing. I wasn't as interested in the dramatic bits in the second half, its resolution was overall kind of underwhelming (READ THE MANGA ENDING!!!) and some characters ultimately felt underutilized (or maybe I just love them all too much to ever be satisfied idk), but it was still amazing and a frontrunner for my favorite anime this year. While I would usually bank on a second season to ease my qualms, I have 0 confidence in that being a reality because PA Works basically never does them. It's unfortunate, because what I enjoyed were the character interactions and subtleties within their blossoming friendship, and it felt like there was less and less of that over time, and more and more of Shima's boring moping. I'm sorry, Shima, I don't care that you want to quit acting. Can I please have more of the girls talking about ice cream and fashion instead?

8/10
#2

It won't even finish its complete cour this year, but I'm confident calling this the best thing that came out in 2023. Eschewing the baggage of typical anime fantasies, we have something more akin to a Hidetaka Miyazaki-esque vision - one of a world constantly in motion, with mysterious, but consistent systems which are not explicitly divulged to the audience (I particularly love how it depicts the evolution of magic almost as if it were a science). The existence of magic and myths, not as an antidote, but mere fuel to humanity's vices and the universal law of history repeating itself. It's through this very subtly mature look at anime's typical fantasy that a slow-paced, yet emotionally dense story not seen since the likes of Yokohama Shopping Log and Aria is allowed to bloom.

Frieren is incredible for all of the reasons you could find in a surface-level analysis on here or by watching a flavor-of-the-month Anituber. The production quality rivals some of Madhouse's best, and follows the line of shows like One Punch Man and Sonny Boy as stupefying works of passion which feature a smorgasbord of industry talents all giving 1000% effort to elevating a creative vision far beyond what is normally possible (thank Madhouse for having decent working conditions for animators). Not to knock the manga, but the character acting, foley, digital effects, musical integration, and tempered voice work on display here is simply unmatched as an experience. Scenes like the first time Frieren cries are so rich with feeling they make the original material look like cardboard in comparison. It also boldly commits to a subtle iyashikei tone, the soothing nature of which brings out an unease, or otherwise nihilistic sense of peace in its portrayal of the unrelenting passage of time, a theme core to the series and Frieren's character. Frieren herself is someone I can't help but relate to as someone who doesn't know how to, or rather, why I should, connect with people. I've lost family members in the past who I never really felt close to, yet still cried when they were gone nonetheless. Am I just empathetic? Or is it because I misunderstand what a meaningful connection truly is? She has a hyper-specific interest in magic, and she does eventually find someone with whom she can share it, but this does not cause any major revelations to her by itself. Even after all she's been through, it feels like her philosophy is only in the process of changing, fitting of someone who experiences time so differently. Maybe she won't change much. It's hard to say whether she keeps to herself as an inherent coping mechanism, or just because that's what she prefers the most as a totally-not-autistic person. I like how the series doesn't necessarily judge her for not being a super caring, emotional, and outgoing person in this way. The series' philosophy on this is commendable, because it doesn't require Frieren to cry more than once (looking at you, Key), and even allows her to make jokes and reflect on the sad, happy, or mildly annoying memories of her realistically flawed comrades in some scenes so starkly realistic they end up being genuinely hilarious and heartwarming. We love to see an introverted queen winning.

But, while impressive, all of that is not enough for me to lavish praise unto Frieren to the point of considering giving it a 10. Frieren is special to me because it shows what stories are capable of in a subversive sort of way that reminds me of works like Moon: Remix RPG Adventure. It depicts a side to the usual tale of heroism that sheds light on the nature of these stories and what we see in them as a society. In Moon, the story is more about getting the player to empathize with the elements of a typical JRPG world. You don't fight and kill monsters, you free them by bringing them back to life. NPCs are not for your convenience, they have lives and schedules of their own. Frieren is similar in a different way. It's a tale of heroism inexplicably told in a reverse/scrambled order, that also isn't really a story about heroism as anything other than ideology. It's also a story about how stories actually never end. Reaching a book's final page is, in many ways, only the beginning. Not just in the sense of interpretations or fanfiction, but a collective will which may mythologize such stories, for it is only within art that many find solace from pure ideology. But it is also within art that the dredges of dogma often find root, prescient especially with Isekai anime co-opting fantasy to be explicitly framed as a getaway from the hellish conditions of modern capitalism - DEATH itself considered as the primary means of escape. In the process, we are often presented fantasy narratives which appear to parallel cultural narratives that exist temporally. However, the structures are not so different. In Re:Zero, for instance, there are multiple fantasy races, political struggles, rival nations, wars, and so on - all very typical of any modern Tolkienesque entry in the genre. The issue is that every action within these stories reeks of ideology. Subaru, like many, many other Isekai protagonists, must be appeased as a representative of the ideology which birthed him. This is a distortion of what I personally find value in with fantasy, that being how it can evoke alternate ways of viewing the world - free of the constraints of pure ideology. To this effect, sometimes less is more. Frieren is magical in this respect. It isolates moments which portray a simple humanity. Without an ideological conflict to push the story, you have episodes like the one where Frieren just looks around for a flower - and it is one of the most touching episodes of modern anime I've seen. Broadly, there are no complex geopolitical conflicts; merely a clash between good and evil, these concepts being loosely grounded so as to avoid associations with modern ideological trappings. Likewise, the characters are dichotomized between what people think of them and how Frieren knew them, further increasing the nuance and empathy with which we should understand others; not purely based off of what society tells us. Frieren has her own agenda - her own way of contributing to the world, and all of her contentedness comes from within. Call it an avid appreciation of Anarcho-Primitivism if you want, but the way this series strips back the elements of fantasy to bare human characteristics is its most 'healing' aspect by far. It makes me imagine a society structured differently - one more communal, more empathetic, not bound by axiomatic assumptions of how people 'should' be, and that is what anime fantasy should aspire to.

I briefly mentioned earlier how the passage of time is portrayed as "peaceful" in a nihilistic sense, but that honestly depends entirely on your perspective. To many, I would imagine the way months and years go by in the span of single episodes produces a hefty dose of anxiety, and it might get you to cherish your life more. This style reminded me of the presentation of the movie Synechdoche, New York, actually. The main character Caden is someone who had maximalized creative goals - essentially trying to do with art what cannot be done, and in the end, he never finishes his ideal play. This is like nightmare fuel for any person with artistic ambitions such as myself. Now imagine that, but not being able to accomplish everything you wanted after a THOUSAND years, with lifetimes of regrets stacking up behind you in the process. Scary, perhaps, but maybe a more hopeful outlook is possible: that the universe is so cool you could be given an infinite amount of time and never do or see absolutely everything. The "peace" within this can only be seen after accepting your own mortality and being content with what you have done. But while regret may not be very interesting, it is inevitable. Frieren, like Caden, was so caught up in her vices that she failed to connect with important people in her life, but she still has the time to make more connections. The horror of this will come when she actually does make a connection, only for the person to die. Would there be a certain level of connection that would be satisfactory to her? Or would she lament no matter what? This also prompts the question for Caden: would he ever truly *finish* his play, even if given an infinite amount of time? Kind of like how I just second-guessed my own review as I was writing it? Am I continuing to type words here because of an arbitrary idea of a "finished" piece in mind? Whoa. Too meta for me.

Well, the beauty of Frieren is it's abstract enough to be analyzed in a multitude of ways. Maybe all those words up there will be meaningless to me eventually. I live in America in the year of 2023. That won't be true forever. At the very least, I can say I won't regret writing this. Probably.

10/10
#1