Fall 2023 Anime First Impressions Part 1

Ron Kamonohasi used the geass in the first episode of that show, so obviously I’m going to watch all of it. Guys, I think this deranged detective might be the cart driver!?!

Anyways, first impressions! There’s a lot of anime this season, and not all of them are garbage! In fact, some of them might even be good? One of them does that the geass after all, which as we all know is the truest sign of quality out there.

The Family Circumstances of the Irregular Witch

Episodes watched: 2

Now don’t get me wrong. Big titty giant hat dark skinned witch lady is Peak Character Design. That is not up for debate. The only character design that could possibly beat it out is the one for the cartoonishly simplified phoenix with a deep, majestic voice. And there are a few good jokes in here. But I feel like the author doesn’t actually know what a 16 year old is like. She acts like she’s 10, or at most 12. The aunts (also peak character design with the snake lady btw) say she’s going to be “acting out” soon, but at 16 one should have been acting out long before now. I guess this is what happens to homeschooled kids.

What I’m trying to say is the show doesn’t commit to its premise properly, and considering how limited the premise already is, that’s not a good sign. I gave it the old honest try with two episodes, but I’m already tired of the character dynamics. There’s not enough here, and what is here feels half-baked. As horny as the character designs may be, the actual content plays it very safe. If it committed to the comedy being raunchy and a bit blue then I think we could have had something. But that would require the witch to act older than a 12 year old, which she’s supposed to be!

Continue Watching? ❌

I’m in Love with the Villainess

Episodes watched: 1

I’ll give it credit for how much it commits to the bit. This lady is no-holds-barred horny to be bullied. It’s very one-note though. It’s like they took a joke minor character and made the whole series about them. Or took someone’s self-insert fanfiction about being horny for the villain and made it an anime. Which has been my problem with basically all these villainess anime. I’ve gone on this rant before, but they are operating on a meta-level so deep into fandom that, when you take a step back, the entire construction of its content is both ludicrous and boring.

Let’s use an example: You know how in Goblin Slayer everyone acts like goblins aren’t a big deal until they kill and rape a bunch of people? Are these special goblins who are more dangerous? No, it’s just because according to The Rules, goblins are weak mobs. Being the Goblin Slayer is supposed to be a semi-joke on the idea that being devoted to slaying the level 1 mob is somehow a life goal. Yet in the universe of the show itself, goblins clearly are very dangerous. The concept only works if you’re so deep in the meta-layer of fantasy RPG fiction that the idea of a Goblin Slayer is a funny idea.

This is a long way to say I didn’t like this latest villainess story. Why do we take the generic world of the magic academy as the baseline from what to build from? Why are we trying to make the stock bishies out like they’re actually interesting people? The entire story is operating on a level far too deep into fandom fiction that stops being appreciable by someone who is not already infected by the brainworms the genre operates in.

Continue Watching? ❌

Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions

I wasn’t expecting a comedy out of this. Or perhaps more accurately, I wasn’t expecting this kind of borderline absurdist humour. It was the part where our lead tries talking to the mad detective he’s sent to recruit, and has an entire conversation where the guy is lying face-down on the floor completely motionless. It’s such a silly image and their back and forth through that scene was pretty hilarious.

The concept is quite dark funnily enough. Detective kills people with the power of the geass persuasion actually no it totally is the geass, it has the exact same eye patterns as when Lelouch does his geass thing. This concept was done previously by Id Invaded where the lead was a detective who drove criminals to commit suicide. That one was taken quite seriously and the guy’s crimes of driving criminals to suicide is treated with the level of seriousness it deserved, leading to him being locked up. Here it’s all a hilarious, inappropriate joke. It would have felt worse if not for the proceeding few scenes of the guy laying down and chatting up a corpse with some pillow talk. We’ve been mentally geared up for this.

I’ve seen a lot of people make the comparison to last season’s Undead Murder Farce, and it’s unfortunately not a comparison that Ron comes out of favorably. It’s hard to beat that show when it comes to snappy dialogue. But where I think people are making a mistake is trying to compare the two as mystery series. This is clearly not a mystery. It’s a comedic buddy cop story that takes very dark subjects with absolutely no delicacy whatsoever and what you get on the other end is, at least based on the first episode, surprisingly funny.

Continue Watching? ✔️

Overtake

It was at the point where the race was about to start and we got a shot inside the car’s cockpit with the driver stretching their fingers and placing them on the wheel, that I had my sudden flashback to my childhood. I used to love Formula 1! I watched that shit all the time as the child. I fell off like two decades ago and the extent of my involvement since has been one time getting the F1 video game and enjoying it in all its insane difficulty. I got invested in the race and swept up in the main character’s excitement.

So I am going to watch more, but whether I recommend this to people who don’t get a sudden wave of nostalgia upon seeing a racecar steering wheel and doesn’t hear the words “go go go!” when the last light goes for the start of the race, is another question. It’s quite well made, but rather bland artistically (oh wow, I’m shocked Troyca made a bland piece of visual art, shocked I tell you). The main character’s dilemma of “forgetting how to ganbatte” felt very silly, like he was an idol and just needed someone to tell him to genki and he’d be cured. Except in this case the thing that told him to be genki was a racecar.

I’m not convinced this has legs. Or wheels. But it was fun to reminded that I used to love F1 so for that I’m at least giving it another episode or two.

Continue Watching? ✔️

Shangri-La Frontier

“God game” my ass. Come on man, I know you’ve been playing shit games for ages so your standards have dropped immeasurably, but good games are more than a lack of bugs. This game game opens with a long and nonsensical lore scroll that gives you zero information whatsoever. Its character creation screen is just you in a fucking blank room. The million different classes you get mean nothing to a beginner. The poor guy managed to pick a starting class that drops you in the middle of nowhere with no information on what to do or where to go, except for that the starting town nearby is called “Firsttown” or something silly like that.

Compare this a second to Skyrim. You open that game as a prisoner on a wagon. Instantly you have questions and a setup for what’s going on. The character creation is part of the opening setup. It then drops a fucking dragon on you as a way to say “hey bitch the game has started now”. Here the character creation has no context, you’re dropped in the middle of a bland forest, and there’s nothing else going on in the game at all. It’s the blandest fucking game in the world! Good combat can’t save something this unengaging.

You know why this is, don’t you? It’s the same problem I’ve been railing against since forever. That this setup is taken so for granted that the main guy just accepts that you have to start with a character creator and then fight early game mobs for item drops. He doesn’t do anything but fight bunnies and goblins for two hours upon starting the game! On a very fundamental level Shangri-La Frontier bothers me, since it’s literally just about a guy playing a game. There’s no stakes here. I don’t get it. It’s well made too, which makes it extra frustrating.

You know what would have been good? If when the shop keeper said “maybe you should try a good game” and he said “nah, give me more shit”. That part was actually entertaining. Let me watching this guy phase through walls because he’s playing buggy trash. I want to see that one girl get all dreamy-eyed watching this guy bitch about shit games. That would be unique and funny! Instead it’s a guy playing an incredibly bland medieval RPG with good combat mechanics. I just don’t get it man!

Continue Watching? ❌