Shin Samurai-den Yaiba – 01

Shows like Shin Samurai-den Yaiba are all the rage these days. Old chestnuts are being rebooted at an astonishing rate. And some of them (like P.T. Bon, for example) are not exactly household names these days. The mangaka of Yaiba – Aoyama Gosho – certainly is one. But that’s because of Meitantei Conan, not this series. I’ll state up front I have zero exposure to Yaiba in any form – what I knew going in I knew from the synopsis. And frankly I’m not that much of a Conan fan either – it’s never grabbed me in any of my attempts to get into it.

In point of fact, P.T. Bon is probably Yaiba’s closest analog in the reboot boom. It’s a lesser-known series by a huge mangaka, produced at a glamour studio (Wit) with a name director (Hasui Takahiro, Mob Psycho 100 III). It’s also good, at least so far – as Bon certainly was. This premiere is beautifully animated, which you’d expect from Wit. It’s also crisply paced and quite funny when it’s supposed to be. This series is very much a product of its time – it would seem more at home when Dragonball and Ranma 1/2 were first airing than it does in 2025. But this is anime now, and what’s old is new again.

For story, we have a feral lad named Yaiba who lives in the jungle with his irresponsible father and a tame tiger. They’re samurai it seems, and the boy is a freak with a bamboo blade. Eventually then wind up back in Japan (after being sealed in a box of bananas) and there have an airport run-in with the father’s great rival. a kendo champion, and his daughter. Stuff happens and Yaiba winds up living at the rival’s dojo, where he generally irritates the daughter and makes short work of the best student. After he follows the girl to school he meets who will become his great rival – Onimaru-kun. And the rest, as they say, is history…

It’s all quite fun in a very silly sort of way. Yaiba’s complete lack of social graces (he goes inside with his shoes on!) is the source of much of the comedy. Conan veterans are all over this production – most obviously Conan’s seiyuu, Takayama Minami, as Yaiba. But this show is definitely zanier than Conan, which for me is a plus. I don’t know if it’s something I’d cover, but for now at least it has the look of a show that will be an entertaining watch.

Witch Watch – 01

I’ll say up front, in no way did I expect to find the premiere of Witch Watch as charming as I did. Shinohara Kenta is a funny one for me. I really love Kanata no Astra (a LiA year-end top 10 series). But I don’t particularly like anything else he’s done. And that includes Sket Dance, by far his biggest commercial hit. I tried a few chapters of Witch Watch (it’s his Astra follow-up after all) and… meh? I didn’t dislike it but I really felt nothing.

Cut to today, though, and I really liked this premiere. It as that “two loveable goofballs” things going in overdrive. The two in this case being the oni boy Otogi Morihito and the witch girl Wakatsuki Nico. They have a history together, which basically involves him suffering at the hands of her dojikko antics until she moved away to witch school in 4th grade. Now she’s back, living at his house (long story), and totes in love with Moi-chan. And still a total dojikko, except now her ability to inflict damage has leveled up considerably as she can execute a few spells. She’s also requested that Moi be her familiar, with due to some sort of clan contract he has no choice but to accept.

None of this lit my wick much in manga form. And witches are a hilariously overexposed fad in animanga at the moment. So why does it work here? Hard to say, exactly. The tone does have some of the same charm (that word keeps coming up) Shinohara displayed with Astra – kids being kids in all their idiotic glory. Mostly, I suspect, it’s because director Ikehata Hiroshi (Tonikaku Cawaii, Kekkon suru tte, Hontou desu ka) is lifting the material substantially. He’s become one of anime’s power elites when it comes to couples, and whatever appeal there is to be extracted from this one, he’s wringing it dry.

To be fair, some of the material is pretty funny – like that whole running “so light!” gag. But the timing and delivery is what’s mostly selling it, I think. Witch Watch is one of Weekly Shounen Jump’s mid performers, but it’s getting two cours of what looks to be a very good adaptation (The OP is great too). With Ikehata in charge maybe it can maintain this level of quality, assuming the material gives him enough to work with.

Shoushimin Series 2nd Season – 01

I was pretty much checked out by the end of the first season of Shoushimin Series. Dropped the key in the slot, checked all the drawers, and out the door. But there was always the suggestion of something interesting here. Not surprisingly, with Yonezawa Honobu and Kanbe Mamoru behind it. And while it lacks the spectacular visuals of Hyouka, the backgrounds are certainly interesting and not out of a cookie cutter (neither is the writing, for that matter). So it made sense to at least give this second season a trial run.

The first episode was pretty decent on the whole. Interestingly it had relatively little of Yuki or Jougorou, who’ve gone from dating-not dating each other to seeing other people. She’s now flirting with the red-haired first year boy from the newspaper club, Takahiko. And he’s seeing Tokio, about whom I confess I remember almost nothing. You can never tell if Osanai is serious about anything besides sweets and entrapment, so who knows if her slightly mocking attitude reflects a lack of real interest in her kouhai. And Jougorou mostly looks uncomfortable with the whole thing, even when she’s not calling him “Jou”.

The MacGuffin of Shoushimin, of course, is the question of just how much of an evil criminal mastermind Osanai-san really is. Most of the premiere focuses on Takahiko’s investigation for the newspaper club (which is seriously one of the most depressing places I’ve ever seen) of a series of arson fires. Or so he believes, anyway, largely thanks to his best friend Yuuto leading him in that direction. The ending of the episode suggests that Yuki is the arsonist, but although all of the fires (though it’s not yet clear how the grass fire is) seem to be connected to her in some way, that seems too obvious (and she wouldn’t be that obvious about it). I suspect Yuuto actually, though that’s entirely a stab in the dark.

I got enough of that to give the series at least one more episode, though that may or may not include writing it up. I can’t quite give up the hope that Shoushimin Series is just a really late bloomer, and all of this will come together in a way that suggests Hyouka’s eclosion (though almost certainly only suggests it).