Girl dates a nutjob. The thing I like the most about this show is how crazy it is. It’s basically shoujo romance meets its logical conclusion: normal girl dates someone she definitely shouldn’t and the audience has the expectation that he’ll grow and mature and they’ll be happy together. But then what makes this show …
John’s Picks for 2024’s Best TV Anime
Since at least 2001 I’ve deliberately tried to sample as many of the new anime TV and web titles released in Japan each year as I could access. I like knowing about anime. And I find that first-hand experience is useful because occasionally new series surprise me by being vastly different from my expectations. A …
Ameku Takao #02 — …In a Dennys
When you hear hoofbeats, think unicorns. Impressions: …Like I said, we suddenly jump instead of an especially nice Dennys. Why is there an entire tree in this restaurant? Anyway, the ‘large animal wound’ she declares to be a dinosaur fossil. Obviously. Like, we understand that bite marks and shearing blunt force are very different things, …
Ameku Takao #01 — Blue Blood
House, this is not. Impressions: This is what I was worried about. I say this with virtually every detective show, but it’s incredible that Conan is about the only one that actually gets them right. The journey is the thing. The investigation. The mystery. The twists and turns. Having the ‘genius’ character show up, take one …
Strongest Alchemist #01 — A Fetish for Popups
Who hurt you, director. Impressions: The whole giant pig encounter really sold this episode. He tries all kinds of magic attacks and the pig just sits there, invulnerable to all of it. Not animated. Not even moving. Stuff just bounces off of it. But the sound team didn’t get the memo, because they’re playing …
Salaryman in Another World #01 — “Acrimony is Good Actually”
This and no other brilliant negotiating tactics. Oops. This had its first episode premiere today, but will be airing the second episode onward on Mondays, beginning on the sixth. Impressions: We’re just getting all the overtly unsalvagably terrible shows out of the way first this season. Never mind that like 75% of them fall into …