Chris
Lucas, by my estimation, it's half-past-the-season-o'clock! It's been a busy spring so far, and that means we on the stream team haven't been able to review all the interesting shows, but at least here at TWIA, we can check back in on some of them.
I mean, look, over on Amazon, they've got what they claim is the #2 anime: the new adaptation of the legendary Fist of the North Star! I don't know how that one slipped through the voting, but we oughta see by checking it out!
Lucas
You're absolutely right, Chris! And that's not even getting into just how foundational Fist of the North Star is to much of the anime landscape today! It is nothing short of a professional obligation for us to watch this new take on the series so we can understand just why this franchise is so formative and so highly regarded.
Anime was a mistake. A plastic-looking, poorly blocked, and amateurishly animated and voice-acted mistake.
I don't know how the hell titans of the genre keep getting saddled with these sorts of productions. Hokuto no Ken -Fist of the North Star-- feels like the unfortunate successor to Berserk (2016)—the core of the story's appeal is in here somewhere, but it's buried beneath a barely moving mountain of embarrassing CGI animation.
My exact thought as I was midway through the first episode was "how the hell are we getting another Berserk 2016? How did this industry not learn its lesson the last time???" I almost struggle to articulate just how overtly inadvisable this Hokuto no Ken -Fist of the North Star- from the moment it starts.
Just look at how these extremely 1980s character designs do not work when rendered with CG animation! This project should have been shut down the moment anyone in a leadership role on this project saw renders of these characters, and the fact that it's the number two anime on the "prestigious" Amazon Prime streaming platform is as depressing as it is upsetting.
If you think it looks bad, wait until you hear how it sounds.
Image via bsky.app
If Ken's voice there was meant to be a parody, it might actually be pretty funny, but, uh, it is not. They even pronounce 199X as "One-hundred-ninety-nine X"! That's beyond parody. There's a reason so many people thought this dub might've been an AI-generated affair when it first dropped. Unfortunately, it doesn't even have that excuse.
Yup, this is another Transperfect Media dub, which is a very affordable South African studio that largely works in voice over rather than voice acting, which is likely why so many of their anime (including other Prime exclusives like Ninja vs. Gokudo and The Dinner Table Detective) sound like the performers are phonetically reciting the script rather than actually conveying the meaning express on the page.
I just...what's going on over at Amazon Prime? How does a company that has the awareness to pick up medium-defining works like CITY The Animation, SANDA, and the upcoming Ghost in the Shell anime not know that this project isn't just a dud, but borderline offensive to people who care about this art form? I think Amazon's model of picking up one or two of what are set to be the most critically acclaimed anime of a given year can work as a business model, but also licensing so many stinkers entirely undercuts the reputation they're trying to build!
It's baffling! I am left baffled by every part of Hokuto no Ken -Fist of the North Star- release!
Baffling, but maybe less surprising if you saw 2018's prequel series Fist of the Blue Sky: Regenesis, wherein Polygon Pictures turned in a very, uh, spiritually similar effort.
This franchise has been cursed since the latter section of the original Fist of the North Star manga, I tell ya.
Well, considering everything Fist of the North Star inspired, I guess the franchise can still hold its head high. But man...if only there were a bunch of hidden gems from this season that weren't lucky enough to pick up weekly reviews that we could talk about to wash the taste of this anime out of my mouth.
I think we already solved the mystery of why nobody wanted to read weekly reviews, hawkin' it to that Ken. Now we can focus on the real diamonds (or at least costume jewelry) in the rough!
While we sang Kirio Fan Club's praises in our seasonal romcom column a few weeks back, I'm thrilled to share with our readers that it's far and away the best anime of the season that they probably aren't watching!
Such is the fate of many a HIDIVE exclusive release. If any anime is worth shelling out seven bucks a month for, it's this equal parts hilarious and gut-wrenching (kind of) romcom!
Kirio Fan Club was one I'd resolved to keep up with myself anyway, just for its positively winning premise. But then it came with an earnest Rebeccamendation for this column, and an assurance that it...goes places.
There were already shades of it in the premiere, but suffice to say it's got just as much drama to go with its romantic comedy!
I care far less about spoilers than the average person, but I'll keep things vague, as folks should really experience the reveal around the titular character for themselves. I will share, though, that my appreciation for this work shot through the roof when it made clear that Kirio being a "faceless cis-het male viewer stand-in" was less of a romcom trope and instead a means to reinforce the core themes of this story.
Kirio Fan Club also becomes so much more impressive when it starts juggling these overtly heavy themes with some of the most unhinged and consistently funny jokes I've seen from an anime in a minute.
It's not just Kirio himself; the show benefits from the whole cast expanding and getting fleshed out. An episode right after that dramatic reveal, we're dancing around, the show introduces us to Seira Tashiro, an unhinged yumejoshi shipper who winds up stalking/worshipping Aimi and Nami for their own devotion to Kirio (and each other). She might handily be the funniest character in the show so far.
I initially thought the idea of this show might be that Aimi and Nami were the outlying, unhinged characters in an otherwise normal romcom setting, and I'm so glad they've kept proving me wrong.
A complaint I have about a lot of media that focuses on young people is that they tend to skew too wholesome or too dark. Like, most anime about teenagers either depict them as plucky cinnamon buns like the kids in My Hero Academia or desensitized edgelords like the energy-drink-for-breakfast kids in Gantz. Kirio, though, manages to capture the fullness of this part of adolescence. Some characters are horny, some naive, some mature, while others have lived far more than anyone else should have to at their age. Even if this is an overtly exaggerated piece of media, it feels so much more true to my own experiences with being a teenager than just about anything else out there.
Also, whoever did the localization and subtitling for this anime deserves a raise!!!
I feel you can always count on HIDIVE's team for a good time, even when they're handling utter shovelware. So, of course, they will have fun on the sort of show where they get to show off accurately localizing a keysmash.
It is too bad Kirio Fan Club is HiDiving under the radar. It's the sort of show that makes for an utterly joyful (and sometimes sorrowful!) weekly check-in, and probably would've been fun to see real-time reviews getting to all its swerves.
And yet, somehow, it's not the most surprising and over-the-top anime airing this season! I'd say that honor goes to My Ribdiculious Reincarnation, simply because I have absolutely zero idea what this anime is going to look like from one episode to the next!
I can't even call this show a subversion of the isekai genre. Every episode feels like a deliberate middle finger to the many cynically produced and sociopolitically malfeasant works that fall under that genre umbrella, and I can't help but appreciate it thanks to that.
Many of our check-ins here are carry-overs. I covered the premieres with you or Sylvia in our isekai/fantasy and romcom columns. Gimme a break, I pulled double-duty for those, and they were like half the releases of the season!
And for much of it, it's very hard to complain about Ribdiculous Reincarnation. I get annoyed when we can't get one original isekai concept, but this show gives us two new ones per episode! I'm even fond of the handling of the framing device, which feels akin to the between-sketch interstitials in old kids' shows like Time Squad.
It's the sort of show I could watch forever, to say nothing of enjoying seeing its styles broken down week-by-week.
It feels like nothing short of a breath of fresh air (and I'm not just saying that because it seems to have as much contempt for The Rising of the Shield Hero as I do).
The localization in Rib Reincarnation is also rock solid, and its pathetically horny, inexplicably furry tail-wearing protagonist both feels like a good-natured roast of isekai protagonists and is energetic enough to keep each episode moving at a brisk pace.
And it's a real treat to get through each one. Many of the out-there reincarnation concepts are plenty funny. I was dying laughing at the tale of the Demon King's door that kept accidentally marking friend and foe alike.
But then you see the stop-motion presentation of that piece, and appreciate how so many of these segments go for Pop Team Epic-ass mixed media from a multitude of other studios and creators. My jaw was on the floor for most of the pop-up-book plot from the third episode.
But alas, this is where my affection for Rib Reincarnation begins to wane. Even a parody of isekai is still an isekai, and the format began to lose its novelty as the show went on for me. Even if I never knew exactly what to expect, the broad strokes of how an episode would unfold are cemented by episode three. Though my affinity for Pop Team Epic and its masterclass madcap antics are probably coloring my opinion here.
Yeah, that was the biggest fly in the ointment for me, where after several entries of wild creative swings, the back half of the fifth episode brings in someone who apparently loves it when you call him big sloppa.
It just brings all the creative energy of the preceding entries to a screeching halt. It stings after previous credits showed the love and craftsmanship behind the scenes for these other sketches, you then get to see the actors here, ready to apparently just have the rotoscoping slop filter slapped over them. Insulting.
Quite frankly, it's inexcusable and makes me skeptical of what Rib Reincarnation has in store for us in the back half of its production. I won't blame anyone who chooses to skip out on this show entirely for its use of AI, but fingers crossed, some real artists can get back behind the wheel and stick the landing after this unforced error.
It would have been fun to see a full weekly review call it out, but at least we're here. And at least there are still other shows with genuine artistry this season, which can also offer me relief from confronting that bullshit.
Okay, I promise I won't go on about Botan Kamiina Fully Blossoms When Drunk too much so soon after Sylvia and I already did shots of it a couple weeks ago, and I gushed about it back in the romcom column. But come on, this is still probably the biggest WTF from me at not getting weekly reviews after Kirio Fan Club.
In the spirit of holding people accountable, I'm fully with you. How did people not vote for the cozy alcoholism yuri anime to get weekly reviews!!?
And before people start sounding off in the comments saying, "Uh, there are other vices in Botan like smoking too," I'm aware of that, and that only proves my point further!
Botan Kamiina is a show dedicated to plumbing the depths of lesbian psychic damage that would necessitate such vices.
Though if we could dial things back just a little further and focus on one last high school anime in this column, I'm here to admit that I have been keeping up with Mistress Kanan is Devilishly Easy week to week, and it's still managing to punch above its weight class! Don't get me wrong, this is 100% trashy smut anime; but it's GOOD trashy smut anime, damn it!
Hey, I made good on my promise from that aforementioned romcom column and caught more of it, mostly for the promise of the gyaru demon maid! So it delivers on that!
Ami does really appeal, I'll confirm. I appreciate her screwing the teacher so hard that she passes out in her debut episode. In a series all about the titular Kanan being a thousand-year-old virgin, someone must get it.
Ami is such a good shit starter in this, dude. The main appeal of this anime to me is that every character in it is a weird lil freak, and she has the very fun role of being the person who exacerbates everyone's weirdest impulses.
Though with budding masochists and a comically ignorant angel rounding out the cast so far, she doesn't have to do much to get the other characters riled up.
I am amused that you can absolutely tell what the original author was primarily into. But even if they're budget-friendly bazongas not barely beautifully brought to life, lord knows I can't fault basic-ass fanservice in this period of actual censorship running rampant.
If we're about to enter into a global society where exaggerated anime titties and extended gags where characters try and fail to avoid pissing themselves aren't permissible anymore, then I'm gonna disappear into the woods until we can all agree again on some of the basics of what makes life worth living!
With that in mind, I can absolutely respect a reminder of simpler times and big-tiddie demon GFs like Mistress Kanan, even as I don't know how much more I'll keep up with it. Look, there are a lot of good shows this season, okay?
And I'm also continuing to check in and keep up with Ghost Concert: missing Songs this season. Which still isn't quite Symphogear, but man, few things are.
If today's anime community is anything like the one I grew up in, Ami is going to be making the rounds for a while, but Ghost Concert: missing Songs is actually a blind spot for me! Gimme the pitch!!!
Uuuuhhhhhhh Fate/Grand Order: The Musical? How's that grab you?
That sounds like something I would respect, never have the time to watch properly, but would come to learn a surprising amount about it through doujins and other kinds of fan works! What are the chances this hits a fandom critical mass and it's all over Bluesky and the forums I frequent in a few months?
Probably not good! As we get through these shows that didn't qualify for streaming reviews, I admit this is one I selfishly was hoping to get to do weekly coverage of myself, mostly on account of the alluded-to Symphogear connections. But it's an original series that's kind of understated save for its nifty music-video sing-off scenes, so I get why it didn't turn a lot of heads at the season's outset.
Still, the sixth episode had a solid amount of sauce on it, and it seemingly hates GenAI music, so that's something! I'll keep following it to see how some of its odder story skips and swerves shake out. But I admit it would probably be more fun to watch and discuss with a crowd of people. Once again, like Symphogear.
Hey, I'm always down for a chat about some of the less popular and undiscovered releases of a given season! Would love to make a Ghost Concert chat happen so long as schedules allow! Hopefully, our readers can get in on that convo too, after taking to heart from this column how the less discussed releases of a season often contain some of the most affecting, interesting, and weirdest works that this medium can offer.
And other times, you wa very not shock at why they didn't get picked up for weekly reviews.
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