Anime Tab

Onimai: I am Now Your Sister (2023)



This show is basically Re: Life combined with K-On!

Re: Life is a show about a guy in his late 20s/early 30s who takes a drug that magically makes him look like a teenager, and then he goes back to school and a takes a second shoot of living his teenager school years.

K-On! is a show about cute girls doing cute things. While the characters are supposed to be around 17-year-olds, like in Lucky Star, the characters look like babies for maximum cuteness.

So, why not both? Onimai is about a hikikomori guy in his 20s who wakes up one day and turns into a cute little girl (he is supposed to have turned into a teenager, but like K-On! and the other teenagers in Onimai, he now looks like a baby) and now lives his cute teenager girl life.

The art and animation are very good, in fact, a lot of the appeal of the show comes from some stellar animation sequences, and the jokes involving the main character Mahiro (which is a unisex name in Japan) are pretty funny. BTW, this show has an enormous amount of erotic scenes, and it is clear the authors have some fetish involving peeing.

Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon (2023)



Very nice. It's exactly what the title says: a guy who loved vending machines dies, but he is reincarnated as a vending machine with magical powers!

Very good show. It is not very serious, but also it is not a pure comedy like the previous show (about the guy who is reborn as a teenage girl, how basic? , this one is more innovative) but instead takes itself as a blend of comedy and (yes!) drama. I would say that it is one of the best shows of the isekai genre (just after Mushoku Tensei and Tanya the Evil).

A problem is the cheap ass animation and mediocre direction. Onimai had much better animation and direction; this one is barely above the average. Overall though I liked it more than Onimai.

I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level (2021)



Adapted from a novel, I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level is a relaxing slice-of-life show with a premise that seems almost random:

from MyAnimeList.

It was not an excellent show, but also not a bad show. The art and animation had a rather mediocre quality, and given that these yashikei shows depend a lot on the execution (since the plot does not really exist), those technical deficiencies reduced my enjoyment of it compared to a more polished show (like Onimai).

If nothing else, gotta love the titles to these shows.

Although not anime (there is an anime, of course), I recently found an entire omnibus of Death Note for $3 at a rummage sale.

I have been trying to look through all the Studio Ghibli's films I can. A couple days ago, I watched My Neighbor Totoro for the first time.

The show Death Note is very very good. It was really entertaining to the point it really got my full attention.

Ghibli's movies are on another level compared to most anime. They are also more universal in their appeal.

Most modern anime is now basically adaptations of novels written by bored RPG nerds who set out to try to write out the most absurd story possible in an attempt to make it interesting.

The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today (2023)



In the show "The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today," the main character is a 28-year-old overworked office lady who lives alone and never has time to clean up her apartment. So her apartment was a mess until a fateful day when she befriended a tiny cat she found on the street. As she moved the cat into her apartment, the cat thought the apartment was such a mess that he started to take the trash out by himself. After a couple of years, she gave a lot of food to the cat, and so the cat grew a lot, so he became bigger than her. The cat also started to walk on two legs as well, while the cat learned to be a housemaid and cook.

Now she has a clean and tidy apartment, and her cat knows how to cook great food, so her office mates envy her food (which she tells her office mates that she cooked, as she has developed the idea that maybe her cat is weird so its better to not talk about it to other people).

The show has great art and animation, way above the average. The direction is also good, but nothing special. However, the premise of the show was too simple to allow it to last a whole season, so it became a bit repetitive after a while.

It is good. I liked it as well. Besides Fullmetal Alchemist, I would say it is among the best I have seen (other series' like Tokyo Ghoul, etc., start well, but tend to mess things up in the end - badly). I will admit Death Note loses steam by the end, but I still like it a lot.

I've been watching Death Note, but I cannot force myself to keep watching now that Should I continue anyway?

Uhm.... yes?
Besides, you made it this far!

I know, I know...it is easier said than done.

I say the overall best anime show I ever saw still is PMMM. Although Haibane Renmei is up there, as well as Evangelion, also Made in Abyss and Vinland Saga among the newer shows (I just posted here the second season of Vinland Saga a few months ago, the nest show I watched this year by far). I have a soft spot for K-On! as well, but that shows operates on a differently as it's not plot based but instead focuses on the present.

I couldn't get into Made in Abyss. I wanted to like it, but it never caught my attention.

I tried watching Gantz recently, and I was so bothered by how unlikable the characters were, I was never able to finish it.

I've been considering re-watching Inuyasha because I remembered liking it a fair amount. Considered watching Dragon Ball (I watched it as a kid when it was on Cartoon Network, but I never watched it from start to finish, and then, watching the proceeding series').

I read the Dragon Ball manga a couple of years ago. It's really great stuff and very entertaining.

Mushoku Tensei Season 2 (2023)


Moshuko Tensei is the quintessential isekai anime. That is, among those anime shows involving a main character who usually is a Japanese living in modern Japan who dies and reincarnates into a fantasy world, Mushoku Tensei is the most representative show of the genre and also perhaps the most well made one: the art and animation is fantastic, it is made well beyond the quality of TV animation.

The second season is a bit weaker than the first season, and it is essentially about the main character, Rudeus, who struggles with erectile dysfunction. Even though the main character is about 16 years old (although reincarnated from a middle-aged Japanese, so mentally, he is like 40 ), somehow, he has erectile dysfunction, which is revealed to be a psychological block as the season ends.

Despite the very silly plot, the way its executed was entertaining enough to grab my attention.

My Happy Marriage (2023)



It's a very shoujo show, which means it's a show made for teenage girls and its writing is very, very feminine. This show features a main character who is an incredibly passive woman throughout the show who is abused by her stepfamily and saved by strong men (two different ones, just like Bridget Jones's Diary ) over the first 3/4 of the show. However, during the show's climax in the last episodes, the style changes a lot as the fantasy elements take center stage and it becomes almost like Dragon Ball as the main character learns to be less passive. The art and animation were very good, so despite the boring first episodes, overall it was worth watching.

Do It Yourself! (2022)



A very nice show about cute girls doing craftwork in making stuff like benches and treehouses. The art is pretty good and unique, escaping from the cookie cutter art style of most cute girls doing cute things (CGDCT) anime shows. The animation is also excellent. The characters are also pretty good. However, the writing suffers from the use of cliches.

Overall, a very good show but still not quite great. Way above the average for the genre although I found Onimai a bit better (being a show of the same genre, CGTCT).

Heavenly Delusion (2023)



Heavenly Delusion is great stuff. Yes, great. Perhaps the best anime show/movie of 2023 that I have watched so far (well, not considering the 2023 season of Vinland Saga which began a few years before). It's a post-apocalyptic show with a very mysterious and layered story, kind of like the famous TV show Lost (2004-2010) but here the plot appears to be actually smart, that is, it makes sense in the end. Although the end of this show is still far away as the 13 episodes released in 2023 are just the beginning of the story. I will certainly follow this show until the end.

The art style is also quite unique, although obviously Japanese, it's also distinct from any other manga and anime that I know. The animation is also pretty good (well, I tend to be selective regarding what I watch, so I never watch badly animated anime anymore).

Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost (2022)



This was a very light-hearted "cuteness porn"/comedy show. The main character is called a "slave" by the baby ghost she discovers while working overtime at her company. Japan has a problem that some people often work overtime for many, many hours, and some even die from too much work (karoshi), and this is a healing show that deals with this issue in a lighthearted manner.

In the case of the main character, it appears that her overwork is the result of her choices rather than explicit company pressure: she voluntarily takes work from her colleagues to appear nice and ends up working until 2 AM every day.

The art is pretty cute and I enjoy the very cartoony, almost abstract, art style.

Summer Time Rendering (2022)



Now, this is what I am talking about; this is one of the best anime shows I watched this year. It is a thriller/action/fantasy show that features time travel in a very similar manner to Steins; Gate.

The story grabbed me and made me watch its 25 episodes over only a couple of days, as it was very interesting. It had been a while since I watched so much anime. Overall, I enjoyed it a lot. Entertainment of the highest caliber. The art and animation are also top-notch, among the best for TV.