Golden Kamuy S5
Short Synopsis: The final season of Golden Kamuy.
Lenlo: And so begins another wild season of Golden Kamuy. I won’t lie, I have no idea what’s going to happen, or where this is going. But that’s kind of the charm of Golden Kamuy for me. You never know who will side with who, what wacky characters will show up, or who will win any given confrontation. In that sense, there’s nothing quite like it out there. As always though, you need to take this praise with a grain of salt. Golden Kamuy is weird, it is crude, it is often disgusting. There are a lot of dick jokes, casual conversation about skinning men alive, and a character who investigates by jacking off as he walks around to see what place “feels right.” Not all of it will land, it doesn’t with me. But at the core of this bullshit is a fun cast, a good story about a young woman figuring out the history of her people, and a man discovering a reason to keep living. Just… If you liked Gintama, I think you might like this.
Potential: 65%
Mario: I’ll be frank, it’s difficult to watch this show seasonally as it’s hard to keep up with 2 dozen characters, each of them with their own quirks. In fact, I felt kind of lost for the first 5-7 minutes before the plot started to make sense to me. It’s not hard, however, to get into its groove as Golden Kamuy finds the right balance between ridiculousness and seriousness, between crudeness and humor. While the entirety of this episode is just a set-up to catch a Jack the Ripper copycat, there’s an iconic moment when Asirpa stands tall between Sugimoto and Hijikata and manages to get these two stubborn men to cooperate. As this is the “final season”, we are reaching the climax of the series’ overarching story now, so I’m sure there will be even more iconic moments just around the corner.
Potential: 50%
Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers
Short Synopsis: 35 years after Demon Emperor Arago’s banishment from Earth, his forces have returned to do battle against a false quintet of Samurai Troopers.
Wooper: Given the nearly four decade time skip between this sequel and the previous Samurai Troopers anime, both in-universe and in the real world, I figured this episode would take things slow, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. No sooner were we granted a look at the ostensible lead characters than a set of gates emerged from beneath the ground, allowing the Demon Emperor’s forces to flood the streets of Tokyo like it was 1988. I say “ostensible” leads because the new generation of Samurai Troopers are little more than a political spokesgroup, lacking the mystical armor suits that made the original squad so formidable. Maybe I’m reading too much into the revival of a franchise I know nothing about, but this read like metacommentary to me, criticizing modern shows that lack the power of the works they exume. One of the demons even hummed the theme song from the 80s anime as he and his brethren massacred hundreds of Tokyoites in the early minutes of the episode. Was that meant to be a simple Easter egg, or a self-aware acknowledgment that Troopers 2026 is aimed at the same reboot-hungry audience as so many other series? I don’t know for sure, but I’ll give this show another episode to clarify its stance, as the hybrid 2D-3D animation appeals to me (even if the color design is too bright by half).
Potential: 30%
Mayonaka Heart Tune
Short Synopsis: A high school boy joins a broadcasting club of four girls to look for a girl he loved in the past.
Mario: Mayonaka Heart Tune is the second consecutive harem show I’ve watched for these First Impressions (the other one comes later), and overall the better one. Not that it had a high bar to clear, but the premise points to something similar to The Quintessential Quintuplets (which I like) – our MC has to figure out which of these girls is the one of his dreams. In addition, having them each focus on different aspects of vocal performance (like Vtuber, voice acting, broadcasting, singer) is an interesting concept to explore. That said, I am not confident the show has what it takes to carry that across, both writing-wise and production-wise. For instance, the scene when our boy Yamabuki is doing the self-introduction is just badly written. For visuals, I don’t understand the decision to have the flashbacks in muted colors. If it was supposed to be the time in his life that the main character cherished the most, you would need to go in the opposite direction, right?
Potential: 20%
The post Winter 2026 Impressions: Golden Kamuy S5, Yoroi Shinden Samurai Troopers, Mayonaka Heart Tune appeared first on Star Crossed Anime.
