KoiChoco follows up its best character-driven episode yet with a pretty darn good one focused on the “Election” part of the title. There have been more than a few anime over the years that have had student politics as a primary – or at least prominent secondary – focus. But […] Read more
If I could have picked any series to go on a two-week hiatus, AO definitely wouldn’t have been it. But it’s surprising how quickly everything came flooding back once the episode started. I still have no idea what’s happening, but at least I know what I have no idea about. […] Read more
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so they say – and if there were any worries about losing interest in KoiChoco after a two week Olympic break, episode 5 pretty much dispelled them for me. The upside with this show for me would be Mashiro-iro Symphony – a show that […] Read more
More and more the experience of watching Natsuyuki Rendezvous is dominated by the strong emotions in inspires in me – which is just as well, because after this week I have less idea what’s really going on than ever. I can’t help but feel that the key moment of the […] Read more
In the interest of protecting his self-esteem, I shall refrain from the use of the term “Lesser Panda”. If there’s such a thing as a representative Shirokuma Café episode, this was it. You had Panda-kun generally being a completely self-absorbed baka, Penguin-san being tormented, Shirokuma-san puns, Sasako-san being a Yamato […] Read more
Hot damn, is there any anime that doesn’t instantly get better by adding Tomatsu Haruka? Yet another hard show to blog, this one. There’s really nothing fancy going on here – just very good comedy that gets the details right most of the time. Between the machine-gun pacing and the […] Read more
Damn, this show is hard to blog. You know the drill by now. Lots of good stuff happening on-screen, but not a lot of interpretation necessary. In the episodes where politics and strategy don’t play a big part (this was definitely one of those) Kingdom is one of the most […] Read more
It’s taken us quite a while to get here, but the journey was certainly rewarding. Episode 12 I have to give full credit to Shouwa Monogatari, because episode 12 really felt like a penultimate episode should. It ramped up both the drama and emotion, and managed to recall all of […] Read more
“Who Cares About Meisei?” Well, Adachi has given us another excellent chapter – but in the process, also a reminder of just how frustrating it’s going to be to read Mix as a monthly manga. And even that’s assuming he doesn’t lapse into the irregular updating schedule that’s been his […] Read more
So long Narihira and team: it’s mid-Heian now, and time for a new cast of characters. Utakoi kicks off its mid-Heian arc with a return to squarely romantic themes, and the two-chapter format that opened the series. The two stories featured are fairly low-key and both feature poems that broach […] Read more