My Awkward Senpai
Short Synopsis: A clumsy office worker is assigned as a mentor for an enthusiastic new hire.
Wooper: Bukiyou na Senpai represents Japan’s quarterly attempt to convince anime fans that an ideal domestic partner awaits them so long as they join the corporate world like good boys and girls. As usual, we have a beautiful, busty office lady character in the cast, but this time the twist is that she’s… kind of awkward! Of course, that just makes her all the more endearing and approachable, which is a bonus for the earnest new recruit she’s been charged with training. Maybe I’m laying on the sarcasm a little too thick – this episode was too straightforward by half, but it wasn’t bad. The animation is far from first rate, but an effort was made to depict characters walking down stairs and along city blocks without taking shortcuts, which I appreciated. Kannawa-senpai’s monosyllabic utterances have a curt appeal to them, as contrasted with her self-critical inner thoughts, and her rosy memories of her own senpai’s helpfulness provide both a goal for Kannawa and built-in context for the latter character’s inevitable appearance. There are a few positives, then, but as far as the workplace aspect goes, I’m not expecting this series to distinguish itself in the slightest.
Potential: 20%
A Star Brighter Than the Sun
Short Synopsis: An awkward high school girl recalls her history with the guy she’s been crushing on for nearly a decade.
Wooper: Taiyou yori mo Mabushii Hoshi (TamaHoshi for short) is about as average a shoujo romance as you could imagine, with two childhood friends, an insecure girl and a popular boy, landing in the same class upon reaching high school. The on-screen text, the sparkly backgrounds, the lengthy inner monologues, the contrast between the Plain Jane female lead and her more glamorous peers – it’s all here. I don’t mind the familiarity, since the tried and true shoujo template appeals to me on a personal level, but I do have some criticisms here. This episode used way too much panning and fading, especially during its first half, which traveled all the way back to the main characters’ elementary school days. Engineering smooth transitions between the past and present is important, but those techniques were popping up even when the story was locked in flashback mode for multiple scenes in a row. Also, the fuzzy filter applied to the frame during said flashbacks wasn’t my favorite choice – hopefully it’ll be kept to a minimum now that we’ve gotten the main girl’s life story. TamaHoshi is cute, which is enough for me to give it another look in a slim anime season, but that won’t be sufficient for most fans.
Potential: 40%
Ranma ½ (2024) S2
Short Synopsis: Akane’s admirers search for Ranma’s secret weakness in an effort to break up their engagement.
Wooper: Its title may read 2024, but the Ranma reboot is still going strong in ‘25, and will likely continue to do so on an annual basis, given Rumiko Takahashi’s multigenerational reputation as the Queen of Romcoms. This episode served as a fine comeback, if not a particularly disruptive one for the show’s status quo, introducing a (very) minor romantic rival in Gosunkugi, voiced with a nice blend of harmless creepiness by Akira Ishida. The whole plot about his quest to discover Ranma’s Achilles heel, which turned out to be a debilitating fear of cats, was mildly amusing – the bits I liked the best were art and animation-related, as is often the case for me with this series. More than the content of this episode, I was fixated on the OP to see which new faces we might expect to make their debut this cour. Two of them jumped out at me, and one of them I knew by sight even without being a fan of the source material: Happosai, one of manga’s preeminent perverted sage characters, reviled by many a Ranma fan (English-speaking ones, at any rate). The other was Ukyo, apparently a crowd favorite, so perhaps the two will balance each other out; if not, I’ll finally get to experience the scene-ruining essence that Happosai apparently brings to the table.
Potential: ½
The post Fall 2025 Impressions: My Awkward Senpai, A Star Brighter Than the Sun, Ranma ½ (2024) S2 appeared first on Star Crossed Anime.
