This Week in Anime

Not Today, Truck-kun

Chris
Sylvia, I'm worn out from being on isekai roundup duty the last couple of seasons, so I am all too happy to be here doing the romcom one with you instead! Time to settle in for some cozy meet-cutes and cuddly chemistry and—

Wait, what do you mean one of the romcom shows this season hasn't aired yet? We gotta do the isekai after all? Sonofa...

I'll admit that was a pleasant surprise upon being saddled with this seasonal tradition this week. Even more remarkable is that much of the season's other fantasy-genre content is, like, regular old fantasy. Not reincarnation, not LitRPG, hardly a Narou-approved derivative in sight! It's kind of a miracle, and talking about some of them ought to fill the column out well, so Lynzee doesn't hex us for turning in a rundown of just a few shows.

Heads up to readers who turn to these roundups to see us suffer: We could actually have a pretty good time this go-around!

I was pretty happy to have Bookworm back, too, at least until I noticed the genAI used in the new OP. But WIT Studio already resolved to rectify that (bullying works), so hopefully that means the rest of the season will be enjoyable without any caveats.

But yeah, perhaps the presence of heavy hitters like Slime Time and Re:Zero caused other aspiring new isekai to keep their distance from this season. Not that everyone took the hint, as there's still one blindingly basic entry in the genre, complete with obnoxiously long descriptive title: The Strongest Job is Apparently Not a Hero or a Sage, but an Appraiser (Provisional)!.

This was the first one of these I threw on, and GOD am I glad it was all uphill from here.

The next time "six seven" shows up as a stat number in an isekai anime, I know my timeline is going to go bananas.

It's almost fascinatingly boring as a show, despite its ability to generate funny OOC screencaps.

Maybe that makes sense? The entire premise of the story is built around observing and explaining what things are, so huge swaths of it are just the characters standing around in fields looking at maps and droning on about adventures they aren't having and skills they aren't using. The small-for-his-age protagonist being a magnet for older women is a funny idea, but as you observed, it mostly provides a vector for basic-bitch fanservice.

It's stupid, but inoffensive, which means it's not gonna stand out next to all this season's other offerings that are really trying things. Which is definitely the case for the other "standard" isekai, My Ribdiculous Reincarnation. That's "standard" in that it starts with the regular "guy gets killed and reincarnated" setup, because everything else about this show is absolutely not the usual.

I can't believe we got a mixed media isekai this season! And like purposefully done, as opposed to the jank from KamiKatsu.

I'm shocked it took us this long to get "Pop Team Epic isekai," but I'll absolutely take it. You're right that the potential for anthology-style creative shifts in each episode propels a lot of interest in seeing where this goes week to week. I'm floored at the possibilities of a series taking the piss out of a genre while simultaneously using that approach to innovate in it.

It's enough to make me think the isekai genre's saturation, leading to a show like this being the surprise of the spring, might've been worth it.

Soejima worked on JoJo before this, you say? I'd never have guessed.

"Normal" also applies to another isekai this season, An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess, in that it's very much the now-standard villainess isekai anime mold.

I see someone's trying to carry the torch of absurd names from last season's The Villainess Is Adored by the Prince of the Neighbor Kingdom, at least. But try as you might, kids, you'll never be a Philine Sunfist.

It's not even the only villainess-styled show this season, so it can't stand out representing that genre. Hell, the potential for dueling reincarnations teased at the end of the first episode has also been done elsewhere!

So what's left? The fact that this is the one where the protagonist crash-dieted as an eight-year-old because she was ashamed of her weight? The point that her POV fiancé solves a problem for her in tedious fashion through the end of the episode? It's a bored shrug.

MAO is at least my favorite new show named after a sound my cat makes.

And yeah, even going in knowing Takahashi's contribution to the isekai canon via InuYasha, it can be a little surprising to spot the superficial similarities. Mainly, the "other world" is some time-travel situation back to an older-era Japan, plus all the classic folklore stuff.

But I also think MAO has enough of its own stuff going on. Mostly on account of lead girl Nanoka, who's got a spunky personality to herself, informing a different dynamic with main man Mao than Kagome and InuYasha had going on at the start. And she can dodge Truck-kun like nobody's business. We're not going that back to basics!

God, the monsters getting melted by the heroes' blood is such a gnarly trick; it hit for me every time.

Takahashi's pedigree and experience on display here really do let MAO be generally cool in a way a lot of other isekai also-rans simply can't be. It never feels like it's deploying any of these elements to chase trends or slot into a genre because, come on, it's friggin' Rumiko Takahashi, why would she?

And if that weren't good enough, it's not even the only adaptation from a storied manga author playing with fantasy in a way that's at least isekai-adjacent!

Hiromu Arakawa's Daemons of the Shadow Realm is also here to complete one of the most delicious "Holy shit, two cakes!" scenarios I've seen in a while.

I got a good laugh over how blatantly Gabby's design is just a genderbent Ed. But it works, and I wouldn't be laughing long if I actually encountered her anyway.

Honestly, props to Arakawa for assembling a whole coalition of awesome, lethal ladies in this series. Thank you for my life, however short it might be in their proximity.

At first, I really did buy it as unique styling for actual dragons, but as the story went on, I started questioning more and more what was actually going on. It worked out that I figured things out right about the same time the characters did—or rather had the truth suddenly, violently foisted onto them. It's sort of the opposite of MAO's otherworldly premise, except with less actual time travel and more of M. Night Shyamalan's The Village, in a way that made me extremely happy I went into it totally blind.

A mystery? As if plenty of people wouldn't be putting on a collar for her before she was finished with the sentence. Indeed, there's a lot to go over here, which I'm pretty excited for. This was one of the only shows of this roundup where I went back to sample the second episode, because I was just that compelled by its material and how it was presenting it. Studio Bones can produce the crap out of an Arakawa joint, who'd have thought?

Y'know, after Lucas and I just talked last week about the delays and scheduling weirdness around Steel Ball Run, causing consternation, I was worried that Witch Hat might not live up after so much of its own long-simmering hype.

But, uh, surprise! The adaptation of a universally celebrated manga by a team that took their time to make sure they got it right actually turned out pretty good!

Me, I was surprised by how much it apparently informed The Owl House. Obvious, in hindsight. It really is a show that manages what would be an impossible-seeming balance between pleasant, hang-out-able vibes and the natural stakes of such a world. It does so via clever world-building that runs counter to other stories about who can use magic and how, like the aforementioned Owl House, or Little Witch Academia.

I don't know that I should pervert the artistry of these magic circles by shoving the cool S into there, but I also don't know that I'll be able to restrain myself forever.

Instead, I'll try to focus my perversions where they belong, like the animators' efforts at detailing Qifrey in his bodysuit.

Look, one of the magic-learning shows this season has to be the measured, tasteful one, so the other one can be...whatever the hell The Classroom of a Black Cat and a Witch is.

I cannot believe my beloved How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord has had its magical catgirl finger-blasting dethroned as the most bawdily absurd method of fantasy energy siphoning.

They even indicate that they're going to do this multiple times! Spica playing tonsil hockey with the cat's sphincter may well be stock footage!

I don't know how well I can judge Black Cat and Witch for being what it is. It's stupid and trashy, its amount of panty shots is aspiring to Agent Aika levels, but by god nobody goes all-in on drawing magical cat ATM like that unless they're committed. Is that respectable? I dunno, but it might well be immune to criticism.

It's weird to say about a show like this, but while it's not for me, I'm kinda glad it can exist? This is the kind of anime people used to say all anime was like as a joke. And I'll take more dumb magic high school shows over more formulaic isekai any day.

And hey, it's not even the only fantasy anime this season with a first episode that ends with a surprise deployment of private parts.

On the one hand, I could argue the shackled princess fanservice was exploitive, but on the other hand, they were sure to detail her abs from every angle of the scene, so who am I to complain?

Right, even as it was playing around with the possibility of Stockholm Syndrome-informed power dynamics, I'm well-versed enough to know that said dynamic really does it for some people as far as fictional fantasy romance goes.

Plus, a key part of the show's thesis is that people who don't appreciate a woman who can kick ass have no taste, so it's quantifiably enlightened!

Stuff like that and the acknowledgement that it was Sera's side that was doing the invading and attempting to conquer the barbarians in the battle that led to her capture made it apparent that Warrior Princess and Barbaric King had more going on under the covers—er, hood, than I might've given it credit for at first. I think this is going to be one to keep an eye on, depending on your predilections.

Look, I'm just saying I've followed multiple artists for whom I know Veor is absolutely going to do it for them.

We already had A Talking Cat!?!, so we might as well meet our talking dog quota as well.

Kusunoki's Garden of Spirits is a show that meets the requirements for fantasy, and arguably isekai, in...spirit. It's also precisely the kind of easygoing that's going to agree with some viewers, after all the other tonal train rides we've taken with other shows tonight.

After I was just talking about knowing that shows like Black Cat and Witch and Warrior Princess and Barbaric King were targeted at particular audiences, I have to acknowledge the same for Kusunoki here. I don't judge people for wanting a chill time, but this was a borderline sleep aid for me. Not bad, just understanding what my preferences are!

Honestly, my main actual criticism of the show is that it can't commit to that laid-back approach for those who are here for it. Instead, it keeps intermittently cutting to scenes out of something like The Real Ghostbusters, and I'm not sure how conducive that is to the chill times that are this kind of show's selling point.

It's also an isekai, because Russia absolutely counts as another world.

This series does not get as dark as PunPun, even as I honestly did halfway expect it to swerve into that kind of surprise throughout the first episode. As-is, it's another on the level of Kusunoki, in that I don't know if this is for me, hell, I don't know if it's for a lot of people, but it's a level of earnest I hope finds the audience that will appreciate it.

As with so many other anime, it made me crave the experience of tasting flowing somen noodles. That kind of culinary exchange should be the intent of any story about traveling, from another world or otherwise.

Aaaaand we've looped back around to Always a Catch!, which I'd originally started for the romcom column before that got pushed, mumblegrumble.

It's fine! I'd be happy to talk about it in both contexts, because Mimi is fun and I support her in whatever (possibly punch-based) endeavors she finds herself in this adventure.

Also, because I wanted to watch the second episode of this one, but ran out of time, I'm not ruling out some sort of May I Ask for One Final Thing? style secret isekai twist as this show reveals more details about itself.

She's direct, earnest, and just a little bit dim, which is such a winner of a character combination for me. While the series is obviously borrowing a lot from the structure of the villainess series, it's clearly doing its own thing, and using that to set up the questions and mysteries powering it. It's why it works as a romance as well as a fantasy series, because it's built on emergent chemistry. And not for nothing, but Mimi's got pretty strong face game.

Hey, I jumped on this one as soon as it was available for precisely that reason, and was only delightedly surprised that we got to shout it out here as part of the fantasy genre expansion for the column round-up. See, the diminishing of the isekai genre rewards everyone!

I mean, it's got some reincarnation-adjacent mechanics just for good measure, but then, so did Symphogear.

I love that the designated attack cards of Symphogear have been supplanted by whole-ass framed music videos for Ghost Concert.

This first episode was kind of a mess of jumbled elements (garden), but then so was Symphogear's, so it's appropriate. Plus it thinks AI is dumb as rocks and seems to be incorporating that into its commentary on music alongside all the wild reincarnation-battle bits, so you know I'm here for that.

It's funny how just prior experience with this sort of series can get me to give it leeway. I had no idea where Symphogear would go either at the end of its original premiere, and admittedly Ghost Concert doesn't have quite the impact of Hibiki's legendary first silhouetted scary-face transformation sequence. But there's a lot to work with here, and I can't fault something for drawing me in on the value of its all-over-the-place fantasy craziness.

Like right now it feels like Fate/Grand Order filtered through a Symphogear soundboard and I can't tell myself that doesn't sound awesome.

We all have our fantasies, and if I've learned anything from this trip through the fantastical anime realm, it's that there's something for everyone. Even with isekai relatively pulled back this season, there's still so much on offer for every corner of viewership.

If this is the ultimate position of the genre, with a few entries entertaining creative takes on it while other fantasies flex in different ways, I'll take it.

No worries. We're getting cocky on this one, so I'm sure we'll get the torment that's coming to us with the summer lineup.