Our long international nightmare is over – Shiki is back after a nut-busting cliffhanger and interminable three-week hiatus. And not much has changed except the OP and ED – the narrative hasn’t skipped a beat. If anything, this episode had a more somber, fatalistic tone than any before. Watching Natsuno’s […] Read more
It’s official – after two episodes, Shinryaku Ika Musume is officially the sleeper hit of the season. I barely had this on my radar but it might have been the second ep I was most looking forward to. There’s not much wrong with this show so far – just about […] Read more
This episode was the anime equivalent of a continuation bet in poker. We didn’t see much new, just a straight-up continuation of the state of events of #14. Surprisingly it was an anime-original, as it felt perfectly in context with the flow of the story. In short, the 88 Demons/808 […] Read more
Miko sighting!!! This is the series that I’ve seen compared to more other series than any this fall, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a bit of a chameleon – somber and reflective, yet occasionally rather silly and interspersed with nudity and hints of twincest and yuri. At the […] Read more
Words can hardly express how great that episode was – but this being a blog, I guess I have to try. For starters, I can now officially say this series is not at all what I expected. Rather than focusing on incest and titillation a la “Kiss x Sis”, it […] Read more
Whatever else you may say about Letter Bee – and I happen to like it a lot – you can’t say there’s any other show quite like it. With it’s bizarre Engrish names and general language use, lush backgrounds, offbeat sensibility and unabashedly sentimental tone it’s carved a unique “niche” […] Read more
Shinbo is back, with another manga adaptation – this time Masakazu Ishiguro’s Soredomo Machi wa Mawatteiru. Think Shinbo’s version of “Natsu no Arashi” crossed with “Working!” and you’re getting pretty close, though Shinbo always makes every series his own (for better or worse). What works? To start with, this is […] Read more
If you’ll permit me a moment of chauvinism, I’m strongly of the opinion that Bakuman is a series that’s going to appeal to males a lot more than females. To quote Moritaka’s father, “There are dreams men have that women just can’t understand.” Now, I don’t know if that’s true […] Read more
I place a high value on any series that can make me laugh – that’s a rare and precious thing. And this one does it consistently with its absolutely shameless brand of ecchi humor. I think what really makes SnO work is the total commitment the writers have to the […] Read more
From ZEXCS comes our second series of the season set in a high school on an island. This time it’s a six-year school with a traditional Western look and feel, and the male lead is Kouhei Hasekura, a “migratory bird” tired of moving around every few years with his parents. […] Read more