Wooper: July is nearly over, yet I’ve only ventured so far as to watch a trio of late premieres and a handful of second episodes for this post. I’ll have to play catch-up before the next one, though I’m likely to cover just four shows, with several of my summer favorites missing the cut. Panty & Stocking is better experienced than it is analyzed, Ruri no Houseki I’d rather watch at my own speed, and Takopi’s Original Sin may get a full series review in the future (no promises). For now, let’s run down what’s on tap in alphabetical order, starting with a doubly-named heist anime.
Bullet/Bullet – 1
Seong-Hu Park’s newest show aired too late to be included in our summer impressions, but despite its late start, there are already eight episodes available (with the remaining four coming in mid-August). I’ve only sampled the first of the bunch, and based on that truncated trial run, I don’t think it’ll join the biweekly rotation this season. My biggest disappointments are the car chases – 3D vehicles (which are poorly equipped for the series’ beloved drifting shots) are one thing, but the drab six lane highway where the mayhem takes place is what really deflates them. How are there no other cars on the road at the time of the episode’s central heist, especially when its (seemingly inaccurate) timeline places it at noon? Well, whatever. My overall enjoyment of last season’s Lazarus proves that I can roll with plot holes, so let’s talk about the characters, which are Bullet/Bullet’s X factor. We’ve got a talking polar bear and a robot with four distinct personalities (each voiced by different seiyuu), neither of whom are immediately lovable, but both of whom are strange enough to earn another shot. Then there’s Gear, the human auto mechanic and amateur parkourist who was more tolerable than I expected. The presentation here leans away from seriousness, at least so far, and Gear’s short temper, weakness for beautiful girls, and wiggly celebration upon completing the trio’s heist made him the leader in the goofiness department. This premiere didn’t win me over, but its amusing cast means the show may earn another shot before year’s end.
Clevatess – 2
Clevatess’s double-length debut may have dabbled in a bit of fanservice, but for a dark fantasy series, it was refreshingly light on sexual violence. Unfortunately, this follow-up episode fixed that oversight through implication. Captured by bandits, our main party of Klen, Alicia and Luna were taken to a bandit camp, where Klen heard the story of Nell, a slave woman who’d been pregnant three times (which you can bet resulted from nonconsensual encounters). Meanwhile, the camp’s leader deduced that Alicia was one of the 13 Hidenean heroes, and was threatened with rape to loosen her lips as to the location of the heroes’ Regalia. Oh, and we were “treated” to the last few seconds of a bare-ass spanking scene where Nell was punished for her clumsiness by a pair of grunt characters, because why not? Some amount of crude sexuality is to be expected from an anime in this subgenre, but given that the entire episode took place in a single location, there was hardly a reprieve from it anywhere in the script. The big picture storytelling present in the first half of Clevatess’s premiere was absent, replaced by the bandit leader monologuing about his money-making schemes and Nell recounting her (admittedly tragic) backstory. If there was a bright spot here, it was the cliffhanger, where Alicia escaped capture by throwing herself off a rope bridge, trusting that she’d survive the fall due to her newfound immortality. The final image of her bloodied corpse awaiting resurrection was a striking one, even if there’s no chance she won’t make it to episode 3.
Kaoru Hana wa Rin to Saku – 2
There are a lot of impeccably produced anime airing this season. City the Animation sits at the top of that pyramid, of course, but Kaoru Hana comfortably occupies the tier just below it. The consistency of its drawings is something to behold, especially those of its heroine, whose abundant hair complicates every shot in which she features. As for the background art, a great number of anime nail their exterior scenes, but end up faceplanting when it comes time to construct indoor spaces. This show doesn’t have that problem, if the multiple brick patterns in the Chidori boys’ karaoke room or the glossy wood-paneled floor of Rintaro’s home are anything to go by. Yes, it’s great that Kaoru Hana is such an attractive series – but it’s got problems elsewhere. It almost feels as though the script was hit by Netflix’s memo that characters in their shows should “announce what they’re doing” for the benefit of inattentive viewers. Manga adaptations sometimes suffer from this syndrome if the source material is speech bubble-heavy, but this one feels particularly blatant, with characters verbally belaboring actions like closing the curtains or spotting a girl waiting outside the gates of an all-boys school. And speaking of the latter example, I’m already wanting less surface tension and more depth regarding the ‘Kikyo Academy versus Chidori High’ feud. It can only serve as a romantic obstacle for so long before the animosity has to be justified – a bit of backstory would go a long way, especially if one of the main cast members is related to an alumnus who was personally involved in the rivalry’s inception.
Karaoke Iko! – 1
I didn’t expect this show to get official subs, being a five episode miniseries debuting so late in the season, but thank goodness it did – this was a great start to what’s bound to be one of summer’s least watched anime. The source material’s author, Yama Wayama, is known for writing BL-tinged slice of life stories that never fully commit to romance, so depending on your perspective, the relationship at the heart of Karaoke Iko (between an adult yakuza and a teenage choral student) may raise too red a flag. Personally, I think the naturalistic script earns the series a pass for its teasing nature – despite being roughly a decade older than Satomi, Kyouji values the younger boy’s finely tuned ear, and has a childish streak that helps to level the playing field between them. The plot here is amusing in its simplicity: the boss of Kyouji’s yakuza family is holding a karaoke competition, the loser of which will receive an embarrassing tattoo, so he recruits Satomi to improve his singing and thus avoid being inked. The younger of the two men has already gotten some nice characterization after one episode, centering on his insecurity about his voice’s pubertal changes, plus his frustration with his adult pupil is fertile ground for deadpan humor. On the visual end of things, Wayama’s distinctive character designs survived the small screen transfer, and the singing scenes respect the meter and lyrics of their accompanying songs (apart from just one cut with mismatched mouth animation). Ordinarily I might close with a wish for the production to hold out, but we’ve only got four episodes left – I think we’ll be fine on that front.
Leviathan – 2
Leviathan’s second episode had the same strengths as the premiere while shoring up some of its weaknesses, adding air-to-air combat on the British side of things and generating sympathy for Alek on the Austro-Hungarian side. Your mileage may vary on that last point, as the repeated use of the OP’s piano solo during his maternal flashbacks could annoy viewers looking for more musical variety. As for me, the moment I decided to root for Alek was when he lashed out at Count Volger, his fencing instructor. Volger had just struck him across the face for insubordination, and Alek responded by threatening to have him shot – only to realize his words held no weight, since he was on the run and thus had no power. Seeing him in such a pitiful position made me consider how thoroughly he’d relied on his parents’ influence in the past, as well as the scope of the opportunity he now has to regain his status without their aid. As for Dylan’s story, she got to be an action hero during the SMS Kaiser’s attack on the Leviathan, rescuing her former bully by going full Tarzan along the side of the giant whale. There are lots of neat elements to the British plot, including all the biopunk creatures used by the military (bats who vomit metal spikes over enemy aircraft to destroy their wings!), as well as an egg-toting female scientist who seems to have caught on to Dylan’s cross-dressing. I still prefer all that to the Austria-Hungary half of the story, but at this point I’m committed to following both halves for a full season.
My Melody & Kuromi – 1
I’m not invested in Sanrio as a brand, nor any of their individual mascot characters, but I’ll take whatever stop motion anime I can get, so I’m ready to venture into My Melody & Kuromi’s dream world this summer. Like Leviathan, its entire first season is already streaming, but unlike that series, this one is split into 15 minute episodes, a length that has worked well for previous Netflix titles (Aggretsuko, Rilakkuma and Kaoru). Based on some of the foreshadowing here, MeloKuro may morph into an adventure show down the line, so it remains to be seen whether shorter episodes will work to its benefit all the way through – but it certainly worked for the first one. Only a few short scenes were necessary to introduce the cutesy My Melody, the industrious Flat, the musical Piano, and the envious Kuromi before the show began planting the seeds of its future conflicts. Obviously there’s the sweets-making competition that will pit the two protagonists against each other, but there’s also a male narrator who speaks from the POV of an as-yet unintroduced character, and not everything he has to say matches the series’ fluffy, brightly-colored style. He’s at his most ominous in one of My Melody’s dream sequences, warning that her kawaii personality won’t always work to her benefit. And when the cliffhanger hits and My Melo finds herself transported to the candy-coated city from her dream, there’s a green-eyed figure watching her from the shadows. I doubt the show will get too spooky too early, but it does seem poised to tell a story about more than just eating strawberry shortcake with your friends.
The Summer Hikaru Died – 2
There’s a general lack of good horror anime in the world, so despite not being a fan of the genre, I’m watching The Summer Hikaru Died to see whether it’ll become one of the decade’s representative works in that field. I’m also watching because of its oddball direction, which was on display once again in this second episode. That includes rapid flashes of static and microscopically enlarged imagery, the use of real world photography, POV shots obscured by a character’s bangs, screentone backgrounds persisting behind people’s heads in wide shots, and more. It seems as though no technique is off limits in Hikaru’s quest to keep its audience off balance, including my favorite from this episode: the jerky, flickering depiction of a long-necked spirit that attacked Yoshiki in the woods. Creepy doesn’t begin to cover it, but just as unsettling was the vague method by which Hikaru “swallowed” the spirit to save his friend. How exactly his supernatural abilities work is my biggest question so far – the gym storage room scene where Yoshiki stuck his whole arm into the void of his friend’s chest didn’t provide any answers, though it was effective as a piece of homoeroticism. Elsewhere, Tanaka the hamster-keeping exorcist was saddled with a B-plot involving some of the concerned adults we saw at the tail end of the premiere. He’s the strangest character that this already strange show has to offer, so I’d prefer that he receive a lot more freedom than he got here, but his mysterious employer probably wouldn’t want him running too wild.
The post Summer 2025 Check-In – Weeks 2-3 appeared first on Star Crossed Anime.
