This Week in Anime

Editor's Choice Part Two

Chris
Well, Coop, looks like it's our turn in the TWIA Christmas party. And just as Steve and Lucas started with seasonally appropriate peepers, I can also ring us in with some holly jolly heterochromia.

Never say we aren't dedicated to the reason for the season here.

Either way, they've got the power of Santa and anime on their side, and I'm not one to test them.

Lynzee and Rebecca, pictured above, have been generally great about throwing out recommendations and reminders for the column all year, so it only seemed fair to throw them our Lists of Shame and see what they picked out. And what they inflicted on us via their own tastes. I feel like I learned something about my bosses just from some of the stuff they chose to "gift" me.

Looks good to me!

Haikyuu!! is also the only of those shows I have full and proper experience with, myself, so why don't you set that one up first, Coop? Mostly because I'm shocked a sports anime die-hard like yourself hadn't experienced the good Volleybois before.

I can already sense a lot of double entendres overall in this column, so we might want to ration things out.

A lot of these formative genres, such as sports anime, inform each other in ways I noticed with my own gifts.

You can definitely feel it was operating on what was modern Shonen Jump pacing at the time, yeah.

The long-form nature of the story lends itself to slowly getting to know the other team members, whether it's seeing how Daichi operates or, speaking of heels, figuring out just what Tsukishima's damage is.

Not that they all need so many complexities. Tanaka is the best boy simply because he is Tanaka. Easy.

My sister and I rewound that bit three times the first time we watched it; we were laughing so hard. It's unbeatable.

There are three Christmas gifts for Chris under the Christmas Chris here! In the spirit of giving you led with, I'll have you choose which one I open first.

One of these things is not like the others, at least in the format I sampled it in, anyway.

Dezaki is quickly becoming a Christmas tradition in my household, after you gifted me Aim for the Ace! last year.

So Dear Brother was Rebecca's first Rebecca-mendation, finally prompting me to crack into this Blu-ray set I've had. Dear Brother is one of those series that's legendary among both my peers and the broader oldhead anime scene overall. And as a lover of melodrama and the extremely normal schoolgirls that enact it, I'd always known I'd love it if I just checked it out.

And love it I did! Do? I plowed through the first five episodes in time for this column, and I'm absolutely going back for more of Riyoko Ikeda's tale of the triumphs and defeats, the epic highs and lows of high school socialites.

Lynzee is also in this one, for some reason.

It's funny, of course, because when I think of Dezaki, I think of him doing work on something like Aim for the Ace!, where his directorial abilities can really complement stretching...thinner animation resources as effectively as possible via stylization. So imagine my surprise when I popped in Dear Brother and saw how lush this thing looked! Even the trademark postcard memories feel less like an embellishment and more like an attractive garnish on top of that rich meal. And speaking of Aim for the Ace!, it is interesting to clock some parallels out the gate between Dear Brother and those turbulent tennis times. Primarily the inciting plot point of seemingly average girl Nanako getting drafted into a highly desired school activity (an elite social club known as the Sorority, in this case) is so similar to what happens to Hiromi at the start of Aim for the Ace! (and by extension, Noriko in Gunbuster). Though at this point, I can understand that this is just something of a common trope in the annals of classic shoujo, which makes a formative work like this so neat to watch on top of just being darn entertaining. And yes, also intense. Like I said, I'm only five episodes in and things are already getting heated.

You could say the same about so many shonen standbys. Riyoko Ikeda is Riyoko Ikeda, so I think she's allowed to do whatever she wants within the framework she was so influential in. This includes stuff like the girls' school "Prince" character, who is, of course, named Kaoru.

There's volleyball again. More parallels!

Parallels aside, I am impressed with the ways Dear Brother innovates. Knowing what bits I knew about the show before, I wouldn't have predicted that the "Brother" Nanako wrote her letters to had his own part of the plot with its own twists unfurling. This show's so dramatic, its framing device has drama. Plus, I get to watch Kaoru wrecking fools and Saint-Just tripping out. I get how this can be a lot for some people, but I'm having a great time, and I can't wait to check out more.

How about you let me know, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon??

Well, it's good to know it doesn't just feel like it's...stringing you along at the start.

I'll admit that string and the fact that it's got litRPG baked-in game mechanics is still about all I know about DanMachi, and the latter element will always be a turn-off. But I also know this series has kept truckin' for so many successive seasons now, and earned accolades from critics and viewers. So I admit it's probably not fair to judge it based on the failings of its derivatives. Or at least it's a case where we didn't know how good we had it, given how far seasonal litRPG light novel shovelware has fallen.

See, having some potent personality and world-building elements beyond the stock RPG Maker stuff really goes a long way toward selling stuff like this. And yeah, getting pointed at shows we might not watch under our own motivation is a big part of recommendations in this spirit of holiday giving. Especially when they are this impactful on major genres like DanMachi is. Makes me less trepidatious to check it out myself if I ever have to for the sake of a column or something, I'll say.

Ah, the fun kind of self-awareness, as opposed to the exhausting referential type these series so often have. I'm glad you wound up enjoying yourself! Now, did you want to make like a cat and knock another gift down from my pile for us to bat around?

I don't know if I'd call myself a degree-holder from the bar association, but I am a fan, and I'd always been curious about HypMic based on that subject matter and the hype it drummed up for itself ahead of the anime's release in 2020.

Also, Lynzee was cool enough to gift me a Blu-ray as part of this column, which was an absolutely cackle-worthy delivery to get.

I try, even if it'll be a long time before I can really go toe-to-toe in a freestyle battle. HypMic is one of those musical multimedia projects like my beloved BanG Dream! and D4DJ, so I'm at home in that structure. This also necessitates it having just a bunch of boys. A smorgasbord of street-style fellas of so many stripes. And I get it. I like guys as much as the next dude, and a marketing push like this means you need to shotgun-blast the archetypes out there to capture as many eyeballs as possible. There's a requisite cute pink-haired one, but how can I not love the perpetually exhausted office-worker guy? This does mean the first episode makes for a rough first impression, as these kinds of projects often do, since it's just an exercise in throwing all the guys at you at once alongside the background of this odd woman-led anti-man manipulation based on the absurdity of magical rap battles. Meaning said raps are the main action they need to impress the audience, and...well...I said I'm no expert, but I've got enough experience to know these aren't the best beats out there.

At least the guy Kimura's playing in this series isn't him posing as a different ethnicity.

I will give credit to HypMic that it doesn't come off like it's directly lifting the Black American culture that formed Hip-Hop here, and is instead a very Japanese-culture-based series. The different crews each represent a different district, like Ikebukuro or Shibuya, with all the lovingly stereotypical traits you'd expect to find in a homegrown handling of that. Now, whether the rhymes within are similarly reflective of those local styles, I can't say as much, since Japanese rap isn't something I have as much experience with. What I can say is the main complaint I saw about the rapping in this show from others when it first premiered: these guys have almost no flow. I get the impression a lot of them were picked to be able to pull off the multi-threat of being voice actors, live performers, and decent enough rappers, but most of their verses have very stiff readings of the rhymes, and I feel like there's at least one guy in every crew whose job it is to just clumsily ramble quickly over the backbeat with little sense of actual rhythm.

Oh, almost certainly! Just as I enjoyed Love Live! without digging most of the music, the trick with HypMic is that once it's past the initial barrage of introductions and the boys aren't spitting mid over the entire episode, it becomes a pretty entertaining show in its absurdist way. Give me a robber hijacking a restaurant with an explosive vest of microphones or the Shinjuku guys stumbling into a murder-mystery any day, I'll eat this kind of irreverence up. Also, much like Love Live!, the production carries things pretty well, even if these guys are hardly Jurassic 5 or Del the Funky Homosapien. The karaoke lyrics over the raps are an appropriately gaudy touch, and I gotta give major props to the adapted rap lyrics for the subtitles credited to Kotoha Consulting (including T. Emerson, Chika Kumaki, Bicky Byrd, and M. Nishino). As seen in the subs for Ya Boy Kongming!'s rap battle episode, this kind of effort can make or break a show with this material.

So yeah, there's a lot to like, even if it's not in the actual central gimmick of the show, and some of the stuff I've seen about the ending of this season means I'll probably at least motivate myself to finish off this first Blu-ray set.

I am simply not immune to cute boys, even if their rhymes are weak. In some cases, it can even be endearing. And speaking of which, I seem to recall a lot of people being endeared to the subject of your third gift...

I mean, I could compare it to other cartoons of that contemporary era you mentioned, if only because Bojji really does resemble one Steve Universe.

Ranking of Kings is one of those shows I watched a bit of as it was airing, but didn't keep up with, even as so many of my peers were raving about it. I can still clearly remember the emotional effect of that premiere episode, though. To say nothing of being wowed by Wit Studio's brilliant animated adaptation of Sōsuke Tōka's idiosyncratic manga art.

I'm glad to see it's still being recommended by those who watched it. This feels like such a unique series that shouldn't fade as simply a great seasonal anime.

You (and Lynzee) are absolutely making me think I need to re-pick up Ranking of Kings. For all the slag I talk about the seasonal churn and the forgettable chaff that results, it's great to be reminded that there are still modern classics being made that stand the test of time.

That would be the illustrious Love Stage!!, and much love to Rebecca, but I'm still not sure how many quote marks I need to put around "gift" in this case.

I don't know that I can say it's that bad! At the very least, it's extremely funny to follow up the prestige powerhouse of Ranking of Kings to cap our Christmas cavalcade with this terrifically trashy romp.

Amusingly enough, Love Stage!! is a series I do have some prior awareness of. My sister was a big fan of this show when it came out in 2014, and assures me it is great. That frame of Izumi getting stripped is burned into my memory because she used it on her social media for ages.

I mean, it technically is showing a gift being unwrapped. On that note, so long as I'm here...yes, boys are cute. Izumi's brother Shogo is voiced by DAIGO, notable for also appearing in the Cardfight!! Vanguard anime, and as the future version of Kamen Rider Gotchard in Kamen Rider Gotchard. That's neat!

Less neat is his fixation on brotherly love with Izumi, but by the standards of Love Stage!!'s bizarro BL world, that's not even that objectionable.

In line with other exploitation entries like this, Love Stage!! does love to advance its relationship via rough seme Ryoma being a jerk to Izumi (while also being homophobic at first) before whirling around to attempted sexual assault. Like you do. Is it "good"? Not necessarily, but it is entertaining in an absurd way that moves fast enough to not let you dwell on the issues in a show that took itself halfway more seriously. One minute, Ryoma is questioning his orientation and intentions toward Izumi, the next minute, he's gushing over him because he finessed him into cosplaying SpongeBob. I can see why this thing was probably a blast to watch week-to-week with other people.

I read and watched Citrus; I'm not averse to trashy, melodramatic queer fiction. I suspect Rebecca gifted me Love Stage!! just so she'd have one more person to relish the reactions of. Or possibly because she knows that, like Izumi, I am also a cute boy who appreciates magical girls.

Either way, I already got like halfway through this brisk, ten-episode series, so I'll probably end up finishing it. I've got multiple people counting on me.

Maybe if you're good, Santa will give you Sound! Euphonium for TWIAmas next year, and you can learn about the band club!

Thanks again to Lynzee and Rebecca for the illuminating gifts. And to everyone else, be sure to send your wishes to the Christmas Chris! She seems to know all about wind instruments.