Scooped Up By an S-Ranked Adventurer ep1: It wasn't as bad as the title made it sound. This show devotes half of its first episode to flashbacks of the hero's childhood, which are clearly meant to establish a past relationship with the eccentric blonde beauty who taught him his amazing magic skills except that the writers think that they need to show way too many repetitive scenes to convey this. There are a ton of hints that there's more to his backstory than that - with scenes of the other mage's past trauma and hints at why she decided to raise her young charge with such tough love - but we then jump back to the present, where the hero is booted from his harem-like adventuring party because the party leader got his nose bent out of shape. The leaders of these evil ex-parties are always the exact same character, a sneering kind-of-ugly 'pretty' blond knight type with no capacity for rational thought, and it's never very interesting to watch the same scenes play out with the same cast of characters. Anyway, he goes to the adventuring guild and finds a dizzy, cute girl desperately looking for one last party member, offering him another chance for a supportive adventuring life, blah blah etc. The designs are quite nice and much more varied than the usual parade of clones, so visually this show held my interest well. And the main character doesn't seem to be a jerk, which is refreshing and uncomfortably rare. It's just a shame that every single story beat has been done a million times before.
See You Tomorrow at the Food Court ep1: Why does this have full-length episodes? The show's format - aimless conversations between a pair of mismatched misfit schoolgirl friends eating at a food court - is a lot to handle in such large doses. They veer between superficial topics and more philosophical observations but nothing ever happens beyond that; it's got a very specific target audience in mind and I don't think that I'm in it. It's also impressive how many brand tie-ins they've managed to achieve; loads of huge Japanese brands have their logos, food and storefronts in the background of each shot, which gives the series a strange, nostalgic, time capsule appeal beyond its narrative. I think I'd have got on with this much better if it was split into each of the mini 'episodes' which made up this giant-sized serving of small talk.
There's No Freaking Way I'll be Your Lover! Unless... ep1: Hidden away on YouTube, I only realised this was accessible to the UK by accident since Its Anime is horrible at being clear about their region locking. The story is simple, introducing us to an introverted schoolgirl who reinvents herself as a social butterfly and switches to a school where nobody knows her, where she makes friends with some trendy girls and ends up forming a genuine connection with one of them. Things then take a strange turn when one of her new friends confesses that they have a crush on her and while the lead isn't sure that she's actually looking for a girlfriend, they decide to alternate between experimenting with that and deepening their relationship as friends in between. The show is pretty watchable and I have to give it credit for sidestepping most of the genre's worst conventions. I respect the lead for actually doing something about her life instead of leaving it to Truck-kun, and her introversion isn't magically cured overnight - she still feels a lot of social anxiety despite pushing herself into the limelight. Her would-be paramour looks like a typical princess type but she occasionally lapsing into (silly) princely tropes which she dials back right before they become too overbearing; it's plausible that both girls would find one another interesting. Not sure that it will hold my attention enough for me to remember to check YouTube each week but I was pleasantly surprised by this one.
The Water Magician ep1: There's nothing really wrong with this show about a young man reborn in a generic fantasy world, it's just that there's also no real reason for me to want to watch it. The first episode stretches on for more than twenty minutes of happy-go-lucky narration as the lead learns to use water magic and explores, forages and hunts in his new home, telegraphing even the mildest moments of potential peril by describing entries he read in a book. I can see that the narration style probably works in prose but it's interminably boring as an animated work and this whole story should have been adapted properly to the new medium. There's a twist at the end where the lead is revealed to have an extra power that his divine benefactor (voiced by Koyasu Takehito and easily the most interesting part of the episode) had missed during the initial isekai briefing scene, except that it doesn't change anything meaningful in a world where he only talks to himself and a weird-looking dragon. Maybe the arrival of a new character in episode two will shake things up but I really can't be bothered to sit through another slog of low-stakes nothingness to find out.
The Summer Hikaru Died ep1: A compelling exploration of friendship, grief and good old fashioned horror in a sleepy corner of rural Japan. We're introduced to the lead who recently went through a scary experience when his best friend vanished in the mountains and was eventually found - except that he's not quite the same person that he was before the incident. I already knew that I'd like this from the reviews of the manga on this site and seeing it animated is a treat. There's a little bit of CG but it's used sparingly and most of the focus is - rightfully - on the scene-setting and characterisation, establishing the bond that the lead had with Hikaru before his 'change' and watching over him as he slowly processes what's happened. There's also a side plot about people investigating monstrous beings which is obviously on a collision course with the main story, so plenty of hints that the scale is going to expand. There are elements of Summer Time Rendering and various mysteries set in far-flung villages (it's a popular horror setting, after all) but so far, this show has a strong identity of its own as well. It's familiar yet different, much like Hikaru himself!
Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse ep1: What a chaotic jumble of dozens of different elements! It somehow holds together better than it should and I might give it a second episode to see whether it wins me over. Our hero Narihira (a deliberately referential name!) is a thuggish young man with good intentions, hanging out with other delinquents in modern day Japan and wondering why he keeps dreaming of another life. Within minutes, though, he's met a strange magical rodent and been flung into what I assume is another world, openly based on the Heian-era capital except with high tech innovations and attacking crummy-looking CG monster-things. Cue hot-blooded 'mind over matter' attempts to save the locals and the dream-girl he keeps meeting, and the discovery that there's a lot more to Narihira than anybody was expecting. Then there's another twist at the end to make things even crazier! The jokes about Narihira's rough, uneducated observations are average but I did find it genuinely funny how Abe No Seimei (yep) calmly glided through their interactions. The whole thing is genuinely a mess but it has a lot of energy, which made it a pleasant change after the slower-paced shows I'd been watching recently.
R
