Don’t let the title of this post deceive you, reader. This isn’t a sharp left turn into chronicling French President Emmanuel Macron’s married life, nor is it me announcing that I contacted an old teacher and got down on one knee for a short-lived matrimony. Instead, we’re diving back into my community college days where I watched an ecchi anime known only as Why the Hell Are You Here, Teacher!?
Known in Japanese as Nande Koko ni Sensei ga!?, the series is about a quartet of female high school teachers of different personalities and subjects who develop romantic feelings for their students. A slice of forbidden fruit that can’t work due to a power dynamic that this anime seems to have a lot of fun with and far from the only series animated or not to try this. Most other anime go the “incest = wincest” route of forbidden fruit. From what I’ve seen, there’s a bit of overlap between teacher-student romance and office worker romance, appearance-wise as both tend to feature smartly dressed love interests with professional presentations, but under scrutiny these “professionals” aren’t immune to clumsy f[clicks]k-ups from time to time.
What I remember from Sexy Teacher, Bombshell Wife was that the four teachers all behaved different in front of their respective classes compared to their love interests. Language teacher Kana Kojima was dubbed “Kojima the Demon” because she’s known to be demanding in class, but in front of her love interest, Ichiro Sato, she can behave just like Hinata Hyuga, albeit less creepy. Art teacher Mayu Matsukaze is a busty shortstack with a demure personality, affectionately nicknamed “Lady Matsukaze” for her kind personality. Cupid’s Arrow also makes a fool of her when she’s next to her love interest, the towering gentle giant Rin Suzuki who “helped” her deliver important paperwork. For romantic backstories, this is right up there with a comedic plot of being helped by the protagonist and the “help” in question was just a dropped pencil, or a notice of an untied shoe. Well, it’s simple…
Gym teacher Hikari Hazakura is a trademark, tanned, big tittied tomboy, the kind who’d encourage a novice swimmer to improve by starting at the deep end and giving an after action report, hoping to see her students become Michael Phelps. One student, Takashi Takahashi, is the one she gets real touchy-feely with. They later develop romantic feelings with each other. Finally, there’s the school nurse: a Kuudere named Rei Ayanami Chizuru Tachibana, who’s been dubbed “Absolute Zero,” and the nickname isn’t lost on her in the series. She wants to be closer to the students, notably one Ko Tanaka, and over the course of their arc, they grow so close they lose their virginities together in a love hotel. Going further than Kojima who was engaged to Sato at the end, a bonus chapter reveals that they started a family together. Obligatory, “silent in the streets, freaky in the sheets.”
Ecchi funtimes all around, but with most anime these days merely advertising the manga without guaranteeing a longer run, the anime covered four arcs spread across a miserable 12 episodes. We’re far and away from the likes of Azumanga Daioh and few are expecting a Yotsuba-to! adaptation anytime soon, but AzuDaioh was able to stretch and progress a four-panel manga over the course of 26 episodes in 2002.
But expanding on a romcom could ruin it, you’d argue and if The Way of the Househusband on Netflix is an indicator, then yes, putting effort where it isn’t needed and ignoring it where it is needed would’ve netted us a piss-poor adaptation of Yakuza Yesterday, Husbando Today. So why don’t I look back at Why Does My Teacher Want My Heart? as fondly as others? Largely because of its length.
I gave it some slack yonks ago when I watched it because it did make me laugh with the short time I had with it and also the horniness at the time was on autopilot. My braincells fired up at the end when all the teachers and love interests got together toward the end to announce that some of them were dating, engaged, married, or expecting.
And then it just ended. I didn’t know at precisely at the time, but with only 12 episodes, it felt like more could’ve done even with just the Fab Four and their Lovely Maidens. The source material even lists more than just the characters that got to the anime. So, is this a recommendation in favor of the series or not?
Again, the braincells were out to lunch while the horniness took command, but looking back it’s nothing more serious than a “haha look at this fanservice” gradually evolving into “you may now kiss the bride.” My post history is the evidence needed when I say that I’ve seen this s[bells]t before. It’s also evidence that I know what I like and while I’m not gonna say it wasn’t up my alley, if I’m gonna watch ecchi/fanservice/hentai, a plot can go a long way. Came for the booba, stayed for the story gambit and this may be part of the pipeline into erotic fiction, or it may have been a bit earlier than that… Hmmm…
I cannot say with certainty. For my recommendation, you’re more than welcome to see I Found My Wife in High School, and She Wasn’t a Fellow Classmate up to the last episode and continue in the manga to see what didn’t make the cut, it has 12 volumes and the anime was followed up with an OVA I haven’t seen in 2019. But for something somewhat more grounded, feel free to pair it with 2002’s Please Teacher!
Off topic, I simultaneously adore this old art style and can’t disassociate it from some hentai I’ve seen or read recently.
We return once again to a currently serializing manga slated for an anime adaptation in the near future. The manga in question debuted in September 2023 and was licensed for western serialization by the likes of Viz Media: Kagurabachi.
Created by up-and-coming mangaka Takeru Hokazono, it follows the story of a young man on quest for vengeance after his swordsmith father is murdered by evil sorcerers and his seven Enchanted Blades are stolen from their home in the mountains. Not exactly the most unique story, all things considered, but I’d be the last to say it’s aping something along the lines of Demon Slayer as far as inspiration goes. Young boy lives with family in the woods has life flipped-turned upside down when screeching plot device orphans him. Though, that’s the point of divergence for Magical Sword Journey as Kagurabachi merely gifts the protagonist with dead parent instead of demon imouto. Also, the protagonist is older than Gonpachiro Kamaboko being 18 instead of 14, so Hokazono can put more wild s[tenchu!]t in the plot, and boy does he.
The protagonist of Let’s Go Get My Dad’s Enchanted Swords is Chihiro Rokuhira, made noticeable by an all-black outfit consisting of a blazer under an overcoat, one of the few remaining katanas at the hip that wasn’t stolen by the antagonists, and a giant scar on the left side of his face.
The manga alone gives me the impression that the goal wasn’t about originality but instead just writing an epic action tale of vengeance because Hokazono’s a grown man and no one besides the legal system can tell him what to do. The antagonist faction is a group of sorcerers known as the Hishaku, a small but formidable force in bed with other factions like the Sazanami Clan of sorcerers and the Korogumi Yakuza group, the latter of these felt typical with the Yakuza becoming more involved in supernatural phenomena in Japanese media as of late. Pick your favorite example, mine has to be MHA’s Shie Hassaikai.
Like many villain groups, the combined might of the Hishaku, Korogumi, and Sazanami is primarily based on ignorance, but the main connecting element extends beyond the magical blades of Chihiro’s father, Kunishige. The main plot device is a little girl named Char Kyonagi, the last in a line of regenerators. No matter who nabs her, they have the key to immortality in their hands, and the traditional Shonen trope is to protect her whilst searching for the swords and making sashimi out of Kunishige’s killers, which does happen, though Chihiro’s general attitude in the manga is so cavalier that I can’t help but imagine most anti-heroes from the late 1990s and early 2000s. The unsmiling, scarred visage of this edgy 18-year-old is a contrast to the similarly themed BLACK TORCH and its cocky, but confident 17-year-old animal lover and learning that Hokazono took inspiration from the likes of John Wick and Quentin Tarantino films shows that this was a deliberate choice.
Cross cultural pollination strikes once again, first through Disney Company’s namesake meeting with Astro Boy’s creator, then through Hirohiko Araki’s manliest 1980s playlist and now with this green mangaka enjoying western cinema. Part of a cycle that is guaranteed to keep on turning like a dharma wheel. All of what I’ve been writing so may make it sound like I’m taking the piss out of the manga and thanks to memes like the one below, you could get the wrong impression that the manga is far from good.
However, the meme tourism has done a bang up job boosting its numbers globally. Sitting at a sexy 2.2 million copies in circulation and growing, it isn’t every day that memes bring something to popularity. The “ah… eto, bleh!” meme from 1995’s You’re Under Arrest has found a new life online, and 2019’s Joker made even more famous the set of stairs in the Bronx, to the chagrin of many natives, myself included at the time. With the internet and animanga going hand in hand over 30 years strong, something like this is almost guaranteed to happen again in the future.
The manga is currently at over 80 chapters and I’ve only read six so far. For my assessment, although there’s nothing concrete about an anime adaptation, it’s put together like it needs one. The manga panels of Demon Slayer only go so far but with Ufotable flexing their tax evasion with artful animation, and CloverWorks doing the impossible by overloading the color palettes on The Elusive Samurai in nearly every scene, the animators’ fingers will look like nubs with dried blood as they bring this dark fantasy manga to life. As it stands, the studio tasked with conducting the anime will be CyGamesPictures, responsible for bringing us Umamusume, Princess Connect! Re:Dive, and Zombieland Saga. With how dark and broody the manga comes off as, it makes me think of all the graphic novel panels from Max Payne and the overall vibes I’ve gotten from Silent Hill 2 clips.
At least the themes match. Max was able to lie to himself for two-and-a-half games before it came crashing down like an absinthe hangover in the final installment where he found himself pulling a look that would’ve gotten him mistaken for a South Florida kingpin in 1986. Looking it over now, we haven’t really had a lot of dark animanga that’s been able to stand the test of time. The closest examples that come to mind for me are Berserk 1997, Elfen Lied, and Akame ga Kill, three critical series where only a chosen few have plot armor, but it’s treated less like a luck stat and more like a discipline that slips away as easily as muscle memory.
As much as I love the influx of Kawaii Sugoi characters being as dangerous as cotton balls, I’ve gone on record saying that variety is the slice of life and I’d like to see more dark series get their own. I’m fully aware they exist, but with so much animanga defaulting to lightheartedness as of late, few other series get the attention they need. It also doesn’t help that Seinen is overlooked in favor of Shonen usually for not having heart-pumping, corpse-reviving, zombie-apocalypse-beginning action scenes, and Seinen and Josei are where more of the mature storylines exist.
I know better than to say darker series are few in number, and while I’d rather the tourists not barge in and ruin it with their holier-than-thou moralitybabble, it would help some if there was a bit more marketing. It helped yonks ago on Crunchyroll/VRV when they were advertising Golden Kamuy and I think it can help here. Thankfully, the memes have helped propel both it and its mangaka to fame, so perhaps in the future we’ll get even more dark manga to join the rest of the lineup getting anime adaptations these days. I don’t even care if the endings are happy or not so long as they’re fulfilling reads. The expectation for Kagurabachi to reach new heights and have a lasting legacy is clearly there, and I wanna see where it goes in the next five years or so.
Doesn’t get any simpler than the title, eh? I’ve gotta confess first that I was so busy all week preparing for Army things to last the next few months (not a deployment or rotation, that would last way longer) that I didn’t even think to look at my topics list until last night and even then I was so tired I didn’t have much prepared until this morning save for this opener. Now that I’m well-rested and caffeinated, I’m going to spend this post talking about my journey into hentai, some of my favorite artists, and some updates; one related to work which may or may not have an impact on future blog posts, and one that covers an event in the city where I’m currently stationed.
Now, what is hentai? If you’ve been around the internet or can call yourself a veteran weeb, you might have instantly thought of an image involving an anime girl, tentacles, or in some cases, both. By which I mean a tentacle girl.
And there’s a reason the image of tentacles of have stuck with the genre for decades. For as long as art has been a thing, humanity has been sculpting, painting, and carving images of exaggerated and unrealistic human or humanoid bodies, to include depictions of deities. Travel the world and tell me about all the fertility statues you can find. In recent memory, I’ve stumbled upon a photo of this Indian Yakshini statue.
Shame the head’s missing, but simply what’s left is enough inspiration for countless artists, even today. Observe:
In the context of hentai and overall Japanese pornographic works (live and drawn), the term “hentai” originally carried to connotations denoting strange or inexplicable behavior, not necessarily erotic or sexual in nature. Over time, the term has been so associated with animated porn that search engines preface that the results are censored or otherwise NSFW. For erotic art in Japan, early sources of erotic works of art can be traced all the way back to the Heian period. Theoretically, a daimyo who had some control of the Taira or Minamoto clans at the time likely had a stash of erotic art. Maybe a samurai clan had a treasure trove up until the Meiji Restoration or priceless art where everyone’s bits are out. Who knows?
One of the most famous erotic artists in history was one Katsushika Hokusai and his painting “The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.”
An early depiction of a woman being sexually pleasured by countless appendages and a fixture that will grace the genre centuries later.
From these humble beginnings, come manga. The associated wikipedia page clarifies that what you think of as manga today meant something completely different during the Tokugawa period. I’m not talking about animanga series set in the Edo period (a completely different topic that I have no problem exploring in the future), manga at this time wasn’t made up of structured stories like a serialization or even a yonkoma. The pictures were unrelated and predictably more difficult to make, but if it can be put into a book format and follow a kind of plot with boobs, d[foghorn]ks, and p[tiger]y playing some kind of part in it (and not just in a playfully teasing manner) then by all accounts it’s an erotic manga. These days, we know them as doujinshi, the Japanese term for a self-published work that not a lot of people realize is itself a broad term not necessarily exclusive to hentai and not always limited to physical releases. Name your favorite artist on Twitter or Pixiv or Bilibili, they may or may not have dabbled in putting plot to artwork. Here’s a sneak-peek of one of my favorites:
Source: Tatsunami Youtoku
After manga came adaptations into the form of animation/anime. Classic examples to some of you veterans may include Bible Black or Sailor and the 7 Ballz or for all you Eva fans reading this, the enigmatic Human Salvation Project (the latter of these I found out about yesterday morning). All classics, but none of them are the oldest examples of animated hentai/porn, neither in Japan or elsewhere. Saberspark has an example of one such animation from the late 1920s. His video is below with more details.
Channel: Saperspark
I stand corrected, a link to his video is here with more details. The wikipedia page for the short film is also linked. Six-and-a-half minutes and not too out of place for the Betty Boop-era.
The true earliest form of animated hentai was an Osamu Tezuka directed film adaptation of the 18th-century Middle Eastern folktale 1001 Arabian Nights. There’s two films with the same name released a decade apart in different countries. The American produced 1001 Arabian Nights released in 1959, and the Japanese produced One Thousand and One Nights released in 1969. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that the father of Astro Boy is behind this one. When your contributions kick a genre or medium into overdrive you have to go multiple different places. Still fascinating to see Tezuka’s name on such a thing.
Not as famous as the 1972 raunchy animated film Fritz the Cat, but preceding that film by about three years puts more points in that basket to me.
The more accurate adaptation of the Middle Eastern story isn’t the only one with Tezuka’s name on it as he also helped direct a raunchy retelling of Cleopatra’s life. After that erotic and hentai-like adaptations lay dormant and sparsely touched until the mid-1980s. Considering their laws addressing such material is from the late Meiji era when lines on maps were the most important thing in the world, in Japan’s case all hands on deck would be needed for such endeavors and leaving erotica uncensored was grounds for imprisonment. These days, it still is, which is why so many doujins and even live-action porn, known in Japan as adult videos, are censored even though the intended demographic is 18+… I won’t lie, I was a horny teen once.
I’m not a lawyer and I can’t argue in favor of either censoring or uncensoring Japanese porn and hentai, but what I do know is that the restrictions in place have inspired many geniuses ever since. An uncensored penis is how the artist gets slapped on theirs with a giant dildo bat not seen since Saints Row, but similarly shaped phalluses are not, which is all an artist needs to simulate pentrative intercourse or self-pleasure without the addition of censor bars, pixels, or more recently the lightsaber effect. The earliest of phallic replacements for the penis was tentacles which brings me back to Hokusai’s famous painting. We began with the likes of an octopus or other cephalopod caressing a naked woman’s body and have not looked back ever since.
Nowadays, references call back regularly to these early depictions of hentai online with comments showing tentacles in any such manner being some amalgamation of “I’ve seen enough hentai to know how this ends.” The genre wasn’t even done evolving. Where else could you find erotic anime-style scenes? Video games. Specifically, visual novels.
You might be familiar with early attempts at adult video games and the continuing legacy that I’ve found myself a part of recently, and that’s just speaking of the west where earlier depictions have fallen into controversy even in the wild times of the 1970s and ’80s. The time where the sexual revolution helped boost many names in porn and the video game industry hadn’t found its legs yet. The most infamous examples of adult-themed video games with any such action come in the form of the controversial Custer’s Revenge and X-Man, the latter of which is notorious for the pixely depiction of a Civil War and Indian Wars general George Armstrong Custer taking advantage of a bound, nude Amerindian woman.
Crazy that it took until Mortal Kombat and Night Trap to create the ESRB. Considering this s[bricks]t exists, it should’ve happened sooner.
From woodblock ukiyo-e print to manga to moving frames to playable frames, having dumped all that lore on the history of anime pornography on you, before I list my favorites, I must make another confession. My history with hentai is simultaneously a blindspot and a poorly-explored endeavor. Some of my recommendations come from the appropriate subreddits, but I’ve made a habit of saving so many posts and links that it’d take longer to find and paste the links into a browser than it would to view it all. As for what I have seen, Reddit’s not the only place I’ve seen what can be classed as hentai. Pixiv, Danbooru, Gelbooru, and even Twitter allow users to view and/or upload porn in some manner, though Pixiv and Twitter require age verification, Twitter especially recently.
My introduction to hentai actually came in the form of ecchi series like High School DxD and Shimoneta (both of which I’ve written about already). Shimoneta had a message about censorship hidden in between all the boobage and panty shots while DxD didn’t exactly have that same message and was merely about angels and devils with a side of T ‘n A, which sounds like the worst possible way to describe the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise.
Credit: u/thot_patrol117, s/EvangelionMemes
Try not to look for deeper meaning amongst the Eva memes. It’s not the deep. But the franchise definitely is, if you’re willing to take Hideaki Anno at face value.
I believe I’ve said it before that DxD and Shimoseka were gateways to pornographic animanga and I hold onto that dearly. They got the ball rolling by proudly showing Rias’ tits and boldly displaying the consequences of a horny (read: predatory in this context) awakening and thus led me to discover more hentai series. I’ve seen many and read many but my personal favorites have to be as follows:
I Want to do Sexy Things with my Tall Younger Cousin
Seika Jogakuin Koutoubu Konin Sao Ojisan; and
Twin Milf
Admittedly something of a one-shot with an incest angle, the central themes of this plot boil down to a tall girl fetish. The fantasy lies in a shorter male scaling a taller female like summiting Mt. Everest on the journey to her Mt. Everests. See what I did there? It also does away with the cutesy embarassed trope. The two main leads are hardly what I’d call shy, in fact, they both confidently know what they want with hints in the doujin alluding to a history of having done this type of thing. What really reels me in is the tomboy trope of the female lead. Cute and playful, she reminds me of Tomo Aizawa from Tomo-chan is a Girl in some ways. Hardly anything deeper than surface level though so those who wanted some drama may have to look elsewhere.
Created by Kurosu Gatari, it translates to English as Seika Girls’ Academy Official Sanctioned Gigolo. This one does have a plot to go with the mountains and valleys. A man with a friend in debt agrees to share some of that debt to help the first guy get back on his feet, this means he has to repay the remaining debt and to do so he takes a job as a gigolo for an all girls’ school. The test involving sex with the dean of the school, before passing and being allowed to exercise this blessing on a select number of students. The operative logic behind this move is hands-on stress relief seeing as sex is a great way to relieve stress and burn calories.
Each of the girls is unique in their own right, one of them having deep-seated daddy issues that don’t arise until she reluctantly uses these gigolo services herself where she gradually evolves from bitch of the school to stern hand. Getting d[monkeys]ked down by the school man-whore softens her up so much that it leads to a personality change. From punishing a tiny infraction to brushing it off like a levelheaded adult, I haven’t crossed that bridge yet but with so many stories corroborating this, a little bit of bumping uglies does seem to go a long way. For the male lead, he’s drawn like an ugly bastard, but is merely just a middle-aged gentleman facing an unusual problem. Debt he can handle, but feeling like a hooker to pay some of it off over time was the last thing he was expecting. What makes his situation more tricky is that he’s married with a daughter no older than the girls he’s getting paid to sexually pleasure, so life at home gets extra awkward when his side job is to mingle with girls like this to make some extra cash. So if you want more drama than the last entry’s “tall girl fantasy,” have at it.
Created by a master of MILF hentai Tatsunami Youtoku, Twin Milf is exactly as advertised on the tin, identical twin sisters with voluptuous body types. A college student and avid soccer player/fan is neighbors with a thick, busty woman. In one such incident, water leaks down into his apartment where she comes down personally to apologize, only for him to accidentally grope her breasts and realize she put something on very quickly (i.e. no bra). From there, he spills the beans to his best bro who’s stuck with a tsundere girlfriend who doesn’t suffer perverts. Main MC presumably runs into his MILFy neighbor again only she’s more perverted than originally introduced and invites him to f[cannonball]k her in her own car.
It isn’t until after this he realizes she’s a twin and the rest of the series takes off. Like Kurosu Gatari, Tatsunami has a type and it’s a woman so thick the clapping of her ass cheeks alerts all of Western Australia and part of Jakarta.
These aren’t exhaustive recommendations as I have more from the same artists and then some so consider this another gateway that I’ll leave open for you to enter.
Now for those updates: without revealing too much, starting on June 16 and continuing until October, my unit will be travelling periodically back and forth between Fort Bliss in El Paso and a missile range in New Mexico. Thankfully, the first week will only be about three days long since Juneteenth is a federal holiday that I have off, so I can get the next topic out in time. We won’t be there during the weekends to my understanding so until later this year the posts will see a Saturday or Sunday release at the latest. If not, then delays are to be expected.
For the event happing in El Paso, I’m currently writing this whilst I have a ticket to an anime convention in El Paso lasting June 14 and 15 until the evening hours. I don’t exactly plan to write about my experiences in detail as each one is different, but it will be my first one in a different city, having attended one in Augusta during AIT last June. If I do, it’ll be more spur of the moment than regularly scheduled.
For the longest time, I’ve been on the fence about this series. It came out in 2021 adapted from a manga that already had a surprisingly high female fanbase, so clearly they were the ones looking forward to the Ranked Raping Ecchi. That might sound harsh and considering what I’ve watched in the past, may bode poorly on me. I’m aware of how that comes across and I know damn well I’m not one to judge. I’ve been eyeing up Rias Gremory merch for a few months now; I’ve come around to Anna Nishikinomiya after a few years, despite her being a committed (and scarily athletic) serial rapist; and I believe Monster Musume’s best girl is Suu (Centorea is a runner-up); but Redo of Healer has a sign posted that reads “No God Will Save You if You Pass This Point,” not even Kratos.
So to that I ask, “Will Satan be the one to save me? Because I’m letting curiosity take the wheel on this one, but I’m not sure if I should apply the ‘surprise’ principle on this one.” Well, this time I didn’t go in as blind as I normally do, I read the summary elsewhere and after a few episodes, I learned that the main genre is “rape and revenge” pioneered by cinematic pieces like I Spit On Your Grave, a notoriously awful movie that even I’d think would land me at a war crimes tribunal.
Basically, the main healer, Keyaru, plans an elaborate vengeance scheme. Having retained the memories of a previous go at life, he carries the weight of that hatred and uses it on the people he was supposed to help, members of an explicitly corrupt kingdom and their royal family, most notably the princess and heiress Flare, who gives her ilk her blessing to repeatedly abuse and molest poor Keyaru in exchange for goodies.
On the one hand, I shouldn’t kink-shame—technically, I’m kink-asking and kink-observing. But on the other hand, I have to draw a line somewhere. There are corners of the internet I know better than to explore because I want to maintain my sanity as an adult, and in this case, as much as I love ecchi and hentai, this merely goes to show that I’m a firm believer in the Love Making Philosophy of Sex, as in, two people who are inseparably in love with each other in the kind of way that makes you cringe but also want nothing more than good things to happen to the couple.
That’s not here! Even after Keyaru has gotten his revenge on the rotten royals, he continues to rape and reshape this world from below the belt. The infamous second episode has a “cathartic” torture scene against the princess Flare. Once he’s finished, he irreversibly wipes her memory and gives her a different personality under the name Freia. Did I mention there’s no heroes in this series? What about the female fanbase? Which is what I’m kink-asking the most.
I’ve been to a certain part of the internet that has explained to me like a college professor on the concept of “consensual nonconsent” whereby in roleplaying, both partners (or more) agree to have sex in a manner that replicates a raping—and in the right mood under ideal conditions, that’s… quite kinky to say the least. Obligatory, treat me like a princess, f[glass breaking]k me like a whore. That part I understand, and I just want clarity on whether this is the aspect that led to the majority female fanbase.
So how’s the rest of the series? Honestly, it follows a formula. Keyaru, now going as Keyaruga, encounters a female enemy, she gets depowered and Keyaruga uses his d[bong]k as a baton to knock them into line. There’s harem anime where all the girls love the male MC unconditionally, and then there’s Redo of Healer where the girls neither have a choice nor a real chance to fight back. Even if they try, they lose… to his d[munch!]k. Now, I’m not particularly saying they’re guilt-free themselves; some of these girls have used and abused Keyaruga in his past life, hell, some of the men molest him too. Maybe it’s me, but if diplomacy is a tool at my disposal, it’s the first tool I’m using to get a word in edge-wise. Even in anger, I’m not using my d[thwack!]k as a cudgel to punish my enemies. I’d sooner do to my enemies what Kratos did to Hercules, and I can imagine an ancient Greek coroner trying to make heads or tails of the tomato paste that used to be his face.
It still has some of its shock value, but for lack of a better choice of words, most of it was blown on the first two episodes and they were each 65-70% flashback to when Keyaru was drugged and gangraped at the princess’ commands. S[bark]t, I mentioned Kratos in this blog, I can almost see the comparison if Kratos in the Greek saga went “Full Spartan.” Though the comparison isn’t as apt as I’m implying here. Kratos will only strike if you keep annoying him; Keyaruga will knight you as a sex slave with his penis if you’re female. If you’re male, then your innards have never been more delicious to hungry wolves. Add some salt and you’re gourmet cooking.
Do I recommend Redo of Healer? Before I get there, I want to live up to this blog’s stated mission purpose for once and say that I like what it does. It knows it’s a vengeance story about a hateful bastard intent on taking home the gold in the Rape Olympics. I like that it keeps that consistency in the face of criticism that, fortunately for it, never came because its release window coincided with that of Attack on Titan and that show’s dodgy as hell CGI for that season. Having said all that, I won’t try to sway your opinion one way or the other, just that if you choose to view this for yourself, do so with a particular mindset. Understand the concept of revenge before going in, pick your favorite vengeful fictional character to use as a reference point. I used Kratos as one such example, but if you want equally or more violent examples, you can use that—Hanzo Hasashi, for instance. Come to terms that the sexual assault and rape is taken more seriously this go around. It’s not like Shimoneta where it’s a great big punchline; it’s as much a weapon in Keyaruga’s arsenal as it was (and disturbingly is) in most of the genocidal wars and regimes from real life in the past 50 years (from Vietnam, to Bosnia, to Darfur, to Rwanda, to Uganda and elsewhere). I don’t know about you, but I’m not rooting for or against anyone. I’m merely watching the raindrops come as they fall, and I think that’s a good approach for those who choose to watch this.
If you’ve reached the drinking age in your country, consider taking a swig before watching an episode or two. But mind your drinking. I did it twice, and no hangover can erase the memory of what I’d seen in the first two episodes.
And I thought this was pushing the envelope… やれやれだぜ。
I don’t even know if I’ll read further into the manga…
Out-of-schedule topics haven’t been a thing on this blog in over two months since I wrote about BLACK TORCH rising from the grave. The next topic will cover an anime I was really on the fence about watching, so take this one as a calm before the storm, so to speak. And thankfully one I’d been looking forward to for years.
I’ve written about this manga before in the past, so here’s the cliffnotes version: college student Koichi Haimawari doesn’t fit the bill to be an officially licensed hero and so moonlights as Nice Guy in his neighborhood, as a sort of friendly neighborhood Spider-Man sans the tragic death of a popular brand of rice. One night, he and wannabe popstar idol, Pop-Step get jumped by a roving band of misfits and saved by this universe’s answer to Batman with a dash of Frank Castle sprinkled in.
Keep in mind, that that’s how the manga begins. The rest of the story covers a pivotal plot detail in the main storyline involving the Shie Hassaikai Yakuza’s use of an experimental Quirk-altering drug called Trigger, used to boost an individual’s Quirk to often disastrous results. The main tell that someone’s been using it is through their tongues, leaving them stained black from overuse. The main structure of Vigilantes is that the Pro-Heroes often can’t or (according to Stain) won’t stop smaller slice-of-life crimes as they’re expected to, so vigilantes tend to pick up the slack though under the cloak of darkness because vigilantism is illegal.
The hero system in this universe is used to denote what makes a villain, not a hero. Strict boundaries are put on heroes to stay within the law and legal limits, but villains and vigilantes aren’t bound by the same obligation. Even though a vigilante can cover a hero’s blindspots, not all of them subscribe to the same heroic ethos that binds most ordinary Pros so the legal system sees them as villains too, even though vigilantism birthed this same system. This is explained by one of Koichi’s senpai, Makoto Tsukauchi.
I’d highlight these as spoilers, but they’re more an explanation of the hero system as portrayed in all MHA media, adding nuance to a picture portrayed as black and white. Obligatory, honorable thieves, untrustworthy law enforcement; we’ve seen it all before, but to apply to superheroes tilts the picture significantly. The anime debuted last month and as of writing this is currently at eight episodes.
I cannot say for certain how many episodes or seasons it will have, but considering the cultural phenomenon MHA has become as a franchise in the last decade, it’s more than just a welcome addition to the franchise as a whole. It also fills in a few missing plot points from the original as a prequel set two years before Midoriya and Bakugo step off for UA High.
Going off the first episode, the anime opening follows the art style of the manga sticking closer to its western comic inspiration than the original does. Observe below:
Channel: TOHO Animation チャンネル
Studio BONES doesn’t miss a beat. Establishing shots of all the characters present, stylistic choices and art direction to fit them all with their appropriate themes – Koichi is shown using his Slide and Glide Quirk with the animation beginning with All Might and ending with Knuckleduster to show he’s gonna be different than his idol; Pop-Step dancing first with silhouettes of herself before they’re supplanted with fans who take heavy inspiration from Cyclops and Wolverine especially; and Knucklduster appropriately left an enigma for an upcoming reveal that manga readers already know. I made a promise not to spoil anything until we get there, so my lips are sealed and I will not ruin the surprise. The internet’s gonna lose it, I swear on it.
It sets up the anime well and I once again have to come to terms with simuldub. Growing up, most anime would take years to dub in English, let alone a different language from Japanese. Nowadays, thanks to social media, budding voice actors can contact dubbing studios, showcase their talents and through some other methods the public won’t see, they may be considered for certain roles. Voice actors have more insight into how this works, so don’t look to me for gospel in this aspect. I’m not a voice actor.
For what it’s worth though, the English VAs get the tone of voice really well. Kudos to their director. Confession: I was imagining the voices of Koichi, Pop, and Knuckleduster to be some variation of Todd Haberkorn, Kari Wahlgren, and Christopher Sabat respectively, though that may just be my own fantasy. Natsu Dragneel, Haruko Haruhara, and Piccolo walk into a bar… well, that’s just a fanfic now, but the manga gave a lot of leeway to imagine their voices until they were confirmed. Instead of legacy, the industry is giving rise to new faces. They don’t exactly have any household recognition yet like the aforementioned, but the grind of voice acting should put them on the map for future projects.
Credit: u/LolyHumter, r/TrashTaste
Characters this time are more varied and complex being on the older side. In the case of Koichi, with him being in college as opposed to high school, he’s shown to be much less insecure of his Quirk than Deku was. Granted, he wasn’t Quirkless at the outset, but we see the differences in a protagonist with a recently acquired Quirk and a protagonist who was born with one. Also being older makes him somewhat more humble in my eyes. Deku still has admirable goals, but I recall in the first episode how foolish several people thought he was wanting to be a Quirkless hero, until All Might saw him in action. I like underdog stories as much as the next guy, but there’s something refreshing about a character who doesn’t think about their powers all that much, merely using it as another tool in their arsenal.
Pop-Step is written completely differently than Uraraka. Not wanting to be a hero for the sake of her family or thinking that much about heroics on the whole. She already uses her Quirk for impromptu concerts so it’d be a bit ridiculous of her to try, although in the Vigilantes storyline, she technically is one by proxy. As the youngest one, she’s in high school being hinted at being around 16 or 17 years old (despite what some online have been saying, especially concerning her choice of costume).
Those tights are an anime addition. Beneath that in the manga it’s all skin. The manga art shows more funny enough.
Lore-wise, this was her choice, but character design-wise, sometimes you gotta look at the writers and wonder…
But why get anal (no pun intended) about character designs? Manga readers know that Midnight used to look like this:
This costume design caused lawmakers to rewrite acceptable costume laws. If it wasn’t for that, a good portion of her career would be even more scandalous than it probably already is.
Kazuho Haneyama is instead very tsundere-coded. She’ll lend a helping hand and use her online influence to implore her loyal fans to keep a keen eye for Trigger users and encourage them to stay away from it. I’ve talked before briefly about my thoughts on East Asian idol culture, but if there’s an argument in favor of it, it can positively influence followers of a certain idol to raise awareness where it’s necessary. So Kazuho means well, but the tsuntsun comes out a lot when in close proximity to Koichi who unfortunately falls for a lot of the same traps that most would in his position when next to a tsundere. But she at least didn’t become the same type of Shonen female the genre’s been stuck with for decades.
I’m not as hostile to her as others have been, but Part I left a lot to be desired.
Finally, there’s Knuckleduster whose backstory is so heavy it needs to be shipped on a transpacific cargo ship. So keeping in line with where the anime is, he’s a dark gray character who lives up to the Batman comparisons even more than he lets on. Not to mention his first encounter with Shota Aizawa – better known as Erasure Hero: Eraserhead – shows that even pure adrenaline and energy can leave even the Pros tapping out for a breath of air. Coupled with the rest of his screen time and that brief encounter with just Aizawa reveals a few things about them. 1. Next to his first encounter with Koichi and Soga Kugisaki, you get more clues that he’s done this type of thing before, most likely in a past life; 2. The Pros shouldn’t rely so much on their Quirks for work, because they’ll eventually meet a villain or worse who’ll give them a run for their money (see the Paranormal Liberation War arc for more details); 3. Without endorsing his methods, Stain has a point about the Pros. Save for All Might, far too many heroes never know what they’re up against until they meet a Sisyphean endeavor, like the War arc in the main series.
On a final note, this post should be even more persuasion to check out the series in whatever medium you see fit. It’s still airing on Crunchyroll as I write this, so if you have the means to do so, check out it there. Or if you can’t or won’t for personal reasons (I won’t judge, and I can’t considering what I’ve been talking about for the better part of two-and-a-half years), you already know what I’m gonna say.
Animanga came to the western Anglophone world in the early 1960s with Osamu Tezuka’s magnum opus Astro Boy, and about 20 years later came Dragon Ball and its more famous successor Dragon Ball Z, both penned by Akira Toriyama. Since then, the floodgates have introduced not only more anime to follow, but also different ways in which one defines a certain era.
If you’re a weeb/otaku like myself, you can probably point to pivotal series of each decade. Dragon Ball in the 1980s; Ghost in the Shell, Yu Yu Hakusho, and Cowboy Bebop of the ’90s; Clannad, Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, and K-On! across the 2000s; Sword Art Online, Attack on Titan, Date A Live, Kill la Kill and Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? of the 2010s; and finally this decade, we’ve had Keep Your Hands off Eizouken, Oshi no Ko, Bocchi the Rock, Jujutsu Kaisen and several more slated for release this decade.
Basically what I’m saying is that different anime define a decade. The 2000s in anime was defined by the moeblob, where many animanga series ascribed to a cutesy art-style and theme. Not just in character design, the characters themselves did things “cutely” too. Or rather, they did normal things in a cute way. They didn’t fight monsters or go on fantastical journeys or acquire magic relics. Often they attended their daily lives which overwhelmingly revolved around high school. Joining the moe trifecta of Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star comes K-On! A series about an extracurricular club centered around light music.
It starts in a nonspecific part of Japan (since the mangaka Kakifly is from Kyoto, I’m gonna imagine it’s somewhere in Kansai), four high school girls become a part of an after school music club in order to save it from disbandment. The four main leads are Yui Hirasawa, the ditsiest, silliest guitarist in the series; Mio Akiyama, the lead guitarist afflicted with stage fright; Ritsu Tainaka, the loudest girl even without a drum kit; and Tsumugi “Mugi” Kotobuki, the rich and physically strong one on keyboard.
For a series dedicated to light music, the actual musicmaking takes a backseat to the girls simply goofing off after school. There is musicmaking but a given estimate would put it at somewhere near 35 to 40% of the actual screentime, across both seasons. Not to mention, this is still a series that debuted in the 2000s, so music players like the iPod and digital song downloading wouldn’t be as popular and prominent as opposed to cassette tapes, Walkmans and the like. Even then, keep in mind, these then-new devices wouldn’t look like anything what we have nowadays. Touchscreens and smart devices have come a long way.
From what I’ve seen though, analog tech is one of the few ways the series shows its age and that’s merely 16 years old, in line with the corresponding ages of the characters at the beginning. Come the second season, they gain a fifth member, the pigtailed rhythm guitarist, Azusa “Azunyan” Nakano, who takes her role as guitarist more seriously than Yui or even Ritsu does with her drums. You’ll notice that at this point in this post, I haven’t mentioned plot and this ties in with including the likes of Lucky Star and AzuDaioh in that all three have the same basic plot: f[guitar riff]k and all.
Gigguk, at the time, was less forgiving of the anime as a whole, with most episodes in some manner boiling down to goofing off with a cup of tea, something that didn’t really jive with him, which may be in some way related to his musical past.
In contrast, Gigguk’s good buddy Joey “The Anime Man” Bizinger favors K-On! over Bocchi the Rock, and that’s an opinion I hold though not for the same reasons as Joey. I don’t doubt the existence of people that stiflingly shy; part of it has to do with everyone praising it at the first hurdle. Perhaps for Gigguk, there’s more realism to Bocchi than K-On! and I can’t do much with either man’s opinions on the show.
For what it’s worth, he did warm up to it after a few years have passed though not by much. For me, ignoring outside influences and the layman’s opinion on one or the other, I haven’t seen Bocchi yet and I don’t think I will, at least not this year. I had trouble wading through the first episode of WataMote, but at least Bocchi’s not a sleep-deprived femcel.
For me, this puts Tomoko one flight of stairs lower than Bocchi, at least in the beginning. I’m not really one for cringe humor.
On its own, K-On! gives me the impression that it’s not trying to take itself seriously in the slightest. It’s not exactly a comedy like AzuDaioh or Lucky Star and fortunately for it, the jokes aren’t subject to translation mishaps like the former. I humbly accept it as a show about high school friends goofing off outside their club activities and their studies.
Is this why I like it? Well, call it a palate cleanser from all the one-piece finding, dragon-ball hunting, Hokage-aspiring, soul-reaping action of most Shonen series. I don’t always want action, sometimes I just wanna kick back, grab a drink of my choosing, and watch people somewhat like me just screw around. If this isn’t a convincing argument to at least check out some of the first season, consider the uncommon music scenes. Adding music or musical anything as a genre type to a series means adding some original scores and music to the series beyond the opening and ending music, both of which are impressive in their own right. Select scenes in the anime dazzle with the change in lighting and art aesthetic giving it an animated music video feel which is not necessarily the same as an AMV, though it does set itself up for that. I did some quick googling and there are some AMVs with K-On! as the main animation piece, and the series has produced some original songs, so it’s not the most devoid of music, but it could’ve benefitted from a few more scenes at the end of a few episodes.
You can still enjoy the series for being all warm and fuzzy but for those of you who want a series dedicated to musicmaking, my recommendation there goes into Beat & Motion. It’s coupled with a look in animation so it feels more like an AMV-centric manga.
No word yet on whether it’s been slated for an anime, but if it is, yes please. I want more.
I’ve made it a point several times that I don’t default to isekai, but I don’t remember clarifying what that means. I make a beeline for shows I find interesting, that some of them are isekai is pure coincidence. I’m not an isekai junkie like Gigguk or an isekai avoider like The Anime Man. I’m in the middle of it, all things considered. Of course, I’ve made it clear that I don’t always find contemporary anime to watch, but the subject of this week’s blog was all the rage when it was airing.
Alternatively titled Okaasan Online, Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target attacks began life as yet another light novel but from the late 2010s rather than the early 2010s, complete with a manga adaptation as a companion piece running concurrently with the light novel. Shame it was subject to a simple 13-episode series, though this might be par for the course for series that only run for the same length of time as a single US presidential term. The unofficial name for this series is called MILF-sekai and the reasons below explain it better than the cover for the light novel:
The MMORPG parody is strong with this one.
The gist of the story is an ungrateful, angsty teenage boy named Masato Osuki tries to push his clingy mother, Mamako, away. Both of them are suckered into an isekai video game and go on an adventure together, interacting with other characters who have fallen for the same trap. The best joke this series tells is that it plays coy with the incestuous, MILF-y tropes that accompany the genres without exploring them on purpose. The most the anime will do is strip Mamako naked and have her son comedically fall on top of her in the second episode. Damn, I’ve read NTR doujins and felt less cucked there than in this series. That’s pretty much the height of the MILF antics, but the OVA has more to show in that regard.
As far as actual plot goes, Masato’s relatability comes in the form of wishing he were someone else with a doting mother whom he wishes was a different person, at the outset. Then he meets the future members of his party and their mothers and annoying as it may be to have a mom, let alone parents, who embarass you at every turn, it’s better than one with godly expectations or one who can’t help but let their vices enslave them. In the former example, one party member, Medhi, has a mother who’ll chastise her in private for not being perfect like a Cell after losing a competition, leading to feelings of doubt and self-loathing in the poor girl. For the latter example, party member Wise and her own mother, had a frought relationship in real life and used the game as a means to better bond, but when Wise’s mother learned that she could make a harem of men at her beck and call, she made a beeline for that and never went back. At least it beats what this girl was going through:
I’m almost tempted to catalogue some of the worst mother’s in media, but I don’t wanna abandon my faith in humanity just yet.
The show’s ecchi-leaning comedy make it the butt of a few jokes, but it’s not like it doesn’t know what its talking about. It’s different from a thinking man’s anime, but has a lot of the same story beats as one. Between the JRPG satire and the ecchi satire, it tries its best to split them evenly, though lacks in some other areas. I want to blame this on the anime for cramming so much into so little time, but on the whole that does nothing to specify which anime I’m talking about, for this series specifically, that’s an inaccurate and misleading conclusion to draw seeing as the light novel and manga were still running when the anime was airing in 2019, putting it in the category of yet another anime promoting the source material. And as a manga reader, I’d rather explore manga naturally than be given homework. At least not every series does that to me:
I’ll put this one in the timeline somewhere.
So how does Okaasan Online work as a series? Fine… it knocks out the important points like Kazuma at the batting cages, and generally speeds through them in about one or two episodes. But it also doesn’t really explore anything in much detail beyond “here’s a trope, give me my laughs.” Funny enough, the anime doesn’t do this as perfectly as presented. Two characters’ origins with their own mothers are explored, but one such character, Porta, is a one-off. No such relationship status between her and her own mother are revealed in the source material or the anime; she’s simply the little mage that behaves the most like a little sister to Masato and young daughter to Mamako.
Now that I’ve written that, Porta behaves the most like a little puppy or a kitten. The party leader status is shared between mother and son and awkward as it seems to point this out, they’re like the parents to the other three girls even though Masato and Mamako are mother and son. F[Nyan]k, even I couldn’t avoid the incest trope. Again, not explicit or even acted upon in any media, but it’s there.
So, Tiberius, do you recommend it? Eh, I’m indifferent. I watched it all the way through and 20-year-old me felt naughty things thanks in no small part to the visuals. Fast-forward five-and-a-half years later and looking back, it may have served as a gateway to lewder and racier things without meaning to. Basically, what I’m saying is, before, during, and after its run, the series has been outdone. I won’t persuade you to watch it or dissuade you from doing so, just know that while you could sit down and spare some time to give this one a watch, it co-exists with better shows, so don’t expect me to show up at your door at 3AM like this:
Add it to your isekai library if you feel like it.
Remember when I said that I don’t particularly gun for isekai anime? Well, it’s not because I have strong feelings towards it; it’s quite the opposite. I’m indifferent. A few good isekai will make the rounds and come up on my radar a few months after people finally stop yapping about them… except in this case where I discovered this one due in large part to its upcoming and currently airing anime adaptation that I haven’t been able to access through the usual channels.
Created in March of 2020 (flashbacks), the manga follows middle-aged salaryman and damn near everyone’s Ojiisan, Kenzaburo Tondabayashi, 50something pencil pusher whose reward for the consideration of a young boy’s life is an isekai journey into an otaku blindspot of his that is more of a specialty of his daughter, Hinako: an Otome video game, known as Magical Academy: Love & Beast. For those who don’t know, the Otome genre of visual novels and JRPGs consists of a female protagonist and series of branching story paths that determine the fate of the characters in relation to the MC. More often than not, the MC faces a challenger in the name of the sadistically evil villainess as a competitor for the affections of the same male romance targets.
In recent times, the isekai genre has begun to saturate with a twist on the formula by inserting Truck-kun’s victims into the minds of the listed antagonists. And in the case of My Dad’s in an Otome Game?!, Mr. Tondabayashi is an ultimate fish out of water. Or he is in regard to this specific genre. As luck would have it, Kenzaburo and his wife, Mitsuko, are expert otaku having been adolescents and young adults during the boom of the 80s and 90s. So Hinako’s parents are intimately familiar with some old school anime that have found new life online in memes, not the least of which include this:
There’s a story of a Japanese man who, at his first job in the 90s, spent a significant portion of his paycheck on VHS tapes of Yu Yu Hakusho, Hajime no Ippo, Captain Tsubasa, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. That man now works in a museum where most of his collection was donated. The rest sold well online for a collective hundred thousand yen. I made that all up, but how far outside of reality is that?
As a result of Kenzaburo’s and Mitsuko’s experience in the medium, they practically raised Hinako on the same animanga series that shaped their youths. And like the child of an otaku, she went on to discover her own favorite animanga genres. Something I share personally having grown up on Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z, while my mom and uncle were also present for DBZ’s western debut alongside Speed Racer.
Following the isekai-ing incident, Kenzaburo navigates the game with his limited knowledge unknowingly aided by his family back home. The set up is not dissimilar from tackling a problem with an outdated but still effective solution, sort of like fighting a modern war from the trenches or on horseback. Mounted riflemen!
The fish out of water comedy in this anime is the contrast between Kenzaburo and the in-game villainess he’s currently piloting. A nasty wench named Grace Auvergne, she has a reputation for being as delightful and radiating as nuclear fallout. Toxicity is more than just a System of a Down song and Grace pre-takeover was a textbook mean princess. Berating the help, unrealistic standards, short temper, a cutthroat attitude, and a silver tongue sharp enough to dice your soul like onions on a chopping board.
Post-takeover, Kenzaburo overriding her character has transformed her into a firm but considerate character. She respects her servants equally, lifts their unforgiving standards, lengthens her fuse, and although still confident, she’s not a show-stealing showman. She let’s the game’s protagonist Anna Doll get her time of day, assisting and dare I say playing cheerleader for her.
This is the result of Kenzaburo empathizing as a father, and although I’m currently watching subbed, the comedy has transcended the language barrier. It’s never not funny to watch Grace/Kenzaburo attempt to be an intimidating villain and have his better nature overpower her villainous intent. He’s aware of his role as the primary antagonist, but can’t help but be a gentleman. He simply spent too much of his adult life living well.
Now you may have caught on that I listed Kenzaburo as another of Truck-kun’s victims and he is, but perhaps because he’s built like a brickhouse compared to the popsicle sticks Truck-kun normally runs over, he’s spared death in favor of a coma. So Truck-kun only gets half a point for this. Aside from that, Kenzaburo’s condition is stable physically while mentally he’s extrapolating with incomplete information on a genre he’s not intimately familiar with, but will try his best to play his part. The keyword being try, because the first few episodes do him no favors whatsoever.
As of writing, there’s 8 volumes, 4 of which have been translated online and the anime recently concluded with 12 episodes. Of the available services to watch it for yourself, there’s HiDive, any pirate site for our unscrupulous types, and would you have it: YouTube. For now, anyways. It’s only a matter of time before the Chad uploading them as they air gets the channel terminated for theft.
Channel: WOLF RECAP
Let me use my Made in China Nostradamus powers and say this channel will go under before October 2025. Watch it while its fresh! Or get HiDive; I’m not your boss.
Sometime in 2018, Bleach mangaka Tite Kubo released a one-shot manga known as Burn the Witch, starring two lead female MCs: Ninny Spangcole and Noel Niihashi.
Kubo expanded further and added more chapters in October of 2020, and in March of 2021, it was given a three-episode OVA the length of a movie when combined. On the left in the picture above is Noel Niihashi, a surprisingly well-rounded kuudere and I don’t just mean her uncanny appearance to a capital letter P from the side. Oppai is truth > flat is justice. Don’t let her surname fool you however; though a romanization of an existing Japanese surname, her connection to the land of the rising sun lies in her creator and, in lore, is merely surface level. Like Ninny, she’s a Londoner who’s never even set foot in Japan, but is so in love with the country that if she woke up in Wakayama would have a heart attack seeing the kanji on all the street signs.
Credit: Twitter @9431116
This fanart of her as a Shinigami from Bleach is a great representation of her both in another canon and if she activated her inner weeb past her name. On the right of, there’s Ninny Spangcole, a flat is justice tsundere who tsuns more so than she deres, moonlighting as a singer as her cover. Together, the girls are witches under the organization known as Wing Bind, whose mission is to control flying dragons, hence the name.
Fantastic reading, 10/10. Noel is best girl. I recall keeping track of the upcoming OVA adaptation in the latter half of 2019 and watching it all in full subbed, and as much as I default to dub, I have to come to the defense of subs this time around. Not because I thought the English VAs did terribly or didn’t have a good voice coach, but because of the direction the dub went. On a whim, this came to mind and I decided to look up the dub on YouTube and what made me despair so hard was that the English dub failed to acknowledge the UK as the setting.
I’m not exactly asking for a cigarette-breathed Cockney cocking about, but the manga did such a good job of translating and Britifying the dialogue as shown by the slang. Knickers, mostly, but its the dead giveaway that we’re in London. And sadly the only giveaway as it puts the story in London, but doesn’t do too much with it. A not insignificant portion of it retains its Japanese-ness in the setting and style in some subtle ways. My exposure to contemporary British culture is limited at best, but with some movies like the Three Flavours Cornetto and shows like The Inbetweeners, The IT Crowd, the original The Office and several others, it’ll probably be the closest measuring stick to use to assess the Britishness of a property and in just that department, Burn the Witch is underdeveloped.
I still fully endorse and recommend it be given a read. Even if it’s missing some generic British accents at best to really sell it, it does a good enough job connecting it to Bleach. Yeah, this spinoff is connected to the same property with Noel and Ninny being part of the same Soul Society as Ichigo and crew, just its western branch in London while the eastern branch is in Tokyo.
It’s funny, I initially intended for this to be a rant about the accents in the English dub, but on reflection, it’s not that big a deal. It’s not the first anime to use Americans (majority Texans) to voice non-American characters — you know who you are, Black Butler and JoJo Parts 1 and 2.
I’m kidding, I digress.
As far as recommendations go, consider Burn the Witch as something extra if you’re a Bleach fan, or if it’s been a while since you read/watched Bleach or haven’t touched it at all, then you don’t really need the strongest connection to Bleach to enjoy it. The Soul Society connection is only shown in a single panel/scene anyway. Easy to miss or brush off.
See? Told you she was more than a kuudere, and the fans didn’t even have to touch her like NGE and the Rei Chiquita memes. Also, if you’re still on the fence on the one-shot, this article can give you more insight.
Will there be a continuation or elaboration on this series in the future? Time holds the answer. For now, it’s best to see it as a passion project in the short term. Some one-shots do go on to have more interesting lives and afterlives and my optimistic side sleeps at night dreaming of a world where Burn the Witch continues while my realistic side knows that predicting the future is the most useless thing to do these days. You don’t even have to turn the news on it, the news turns you on… non-sexually, you weirdos.
Normally, I’m not one for popular and currently airing anime darlings. You know that by this very blog, but if it wasn’t for Creepy Nuts performing the opening of Dandadan then I probably would’ve given it a wide berth until it died down. Something I’m still trying to do with the likes of Frieren before I let it bless my eyeballs beyond the memes.
Credit: Twitter (x.com@TopGyaru)
I’ll be patiently waiting for a while.
Dandadan comes to us from another disciple of Tatsuki Fujimoto’s, one Yukinobu Tatsu, who like his sensei used his talent to bring us a story about a pair of occult chasers, one nerdy one gyaru and the quest to find the nerd’s testicles.
Don’t bother competing in No Nut November anymore, lads. This boy has won for eternity. But I’m jumping the nutcracker, let’s rewind a bit.
It begins with gyaru and Ken Takakura enjoyer, Momo Ayase, breaking up with a guy after he behaves like a jerk with a load of beef jerky. A final plea is answered with a kick to cheek and before we know it, she drags her depressed ass back to her gyaru friends, Miko and Muko, who do show to have their girl’s back in times like these. In another classroom, aspiring ufologist, coincidentally also named Ken Takakura (though baring zero resemblance to the late actor), reads his space and extraterrestrial magazines in disturbance while other boys pick on him. Typical.
Momo barges in like any other gyaru and equally shows and feigns interest by inspecting his reading material. It shuts the bullies down for the time being, but little Ken goes back to find her, confessing that she’s the first person to ever show even 1% interest in an interest of his. Momo doesn’t really care about aliens, initially claiming they’re not real in favor of ghosts. Ken himself also shows indifference in ghosts and the paranormal. Part of the gag involves the two initially connecting only to fire back at each other with fierce debate over what’s real and what isn’t.
In the first of these gags, we get the plot where they challenge one another to investigate areas of interest notorious for ghost or alien sightings: Ken is challenged to take on the myth of Turbo Granny, based on a real-life yokai of the spirit of an elderly woman said to run 100 km/h. This isn’t the yokai’s first appearance in anime; other references exist, but my favorite comes from season 2 of Mob Psycho 100. In kind, Momo investigates an abandoned building said to be famous for a number of UFO sightings. Both think the other is full of it, and are subsequently proven wrong: Ken gets got by Turbo Granny and Momo is damn near sexually assaulted by the aliens, all of whom are identical and reproduce by harvesting the genitalia of the females of other planets, so Momo’s not the first almost victim of such a thing. Harrowing.
That’s the first episode and it gets even nuttier and squirrel-ier than that, ironic since Ken, from then on dubbed Occult-kun/Okarun to keep the fantasy of the real late Ken Takakura alive, spends the duration of the series finding his nuts hoping they haven’t been taken by wild squirrels. This introduction to the other’s paranormal belief exposes/curses them with supernatural abilities. Momo gains the ability of telekinesis while Okarun gets possessed by the sonic-footed yokai, able to transform into a being with the same powers as the namesake urban legend at the sacrifice of his testicles. The lore differs depending on who’s telling the story, but it consistently shows little variance between tellings. Turbo Granny is said to be the protector of the spirits of young girls who were the victims of malicious crimes. Sort of like if the real life Highway of Tears had a protector deity for all of its victims.
Don’t let this spoiler for the first episode turn you off from the rest of the series or the manga. I’ve said before that I live for the occult and mystery stories like this and Dandadan satisfied that itch for a time. It’s not what I’d call unique, but it’s definitely crazy enough to get a recommendation from me, especially when demons show up halfway through the anime’s run. It’s a supernatural adventure story to retrieve a boy’s d[gong]k and balls. The anime has 12 episodes available for view on Netflix, Hulu, Crunchyroll, and Muse for those of you in Southeast Asia, or your favorite pirate site of your choosing with 18 volumes of the manga continuing the story past that.
Now to live up to this blog’s name and make a declaration: I think Dandadan is a better series than Chainsaw Man. Here’s my explanation:
Characters: the cast of Chainsaw Man are all inherently flawed compared to the cast of Dandadan given that in the former, they’re mostly adults or confused teens. Real-life adults as we know aren’t guaranteed to act their age assuming the adage of “we don’t grow up, we grow old” is true. And CSM is proof of concept. In contrast, Dandadan, though ridiculous, focuses on a bunch of high school kids who I never really expect to be better or know more than the adults, though I’m not really here for that. My viewership comes from the display of supernatural powers and beings f[glitch]ng around on Earth.
Setting: I know CSM is a dark series, but at times I feel it does its job a bit too well in some areas. Denji, through no fault of his own, is an uneducated circumstantial victim. No home, no family or friends that live to see tomorrow, and seemingly no future beyond surviving and finding true love and bonds. A lost puppy who tries no matter how many times he gets kicked to the curb. Meanwhile, damn near every woman he talks to is, for lack of a better term, a hot f[tiger roar]ng mess. Spoilers incoming: Power rarely showers and has the B.O. to prove it; Reze played with Denji’s feelings just to get to his chainsaw heart; the Justice Devil cut down Asa where she awoke with the powers of the War Devil; and Makima, one of the worst offenders so far, groomed and puppeted an absurd number of people. This video explains it more concisely. Dandadan is also quite dark if you think about it, but it has more fun with its premise in an Invader Zim/Johnny the Homicidal Maniac sort of way. There is an existing threat, but consider how embarrassing it would be if an alien race or a ghost or a demon was bested by a 15-year-old. Just about an average episode of Invader Zim, except where Dib gets a W for once.
Plot: Let it be known, dear reader, that CSM debuted in December of 2018. Denji, having no family, wants one as a stepping stone to a normal life, but the world of CSM gets in the way to an absurd degree. Rotten luck or not, forget bad actors being the reason we can’t have nice things — nice things just don’t exist in this world. Dandadan has a similar level of craziness about it, but reading its chapters or watching the anime, there’s no sense of dread or despair. This could be a quirk of Fujimoto’s unpredictable writing in contrast to Tatsu, their storytelling philosophies, the themes in their respective stories or some combination of the lot, but if Dandadan is taking me to an amusement park, Chainsaw Man is burning it down not five minutes after we’re done for the day and went home. Speaking of which…
Art: The grotesqueness of Chainsaw Man is a big give away that the world inside is quite ugly in contrast Dandadan where the world is colorful and quirky and doesn’t take itself as seriously as CSM does. Different philosophies again in the making of the respective manga perhaps, but I don’t feel that Dandadan’s characters are assholes. CSM tends to leave me feeling indifferent with each chapter, increasingly reluctant to wish Denji good luck when there’s no such thing as a guarantee. I used to be able to predict story trajectories, but congratulations, Fujimoto. You’ve done away with the fun of theorizing.
All that said, I still wanna see where Fujimoto is going with Chainsaw Man. Dandadan? I’ve yet to hear news of a second season, and with the manga still running, nothing’s stopping me from picking up where episode 12 ends. Though more to the point, I’m getting tired of anime releasing 12 or 13 episode series. We used to have two-cour series, now we’re lucky if a series’ first season can get more than 10 episodes. I’d rather the Undead Unluck method of 24 episodes like the old days, as long as the animators get to go home.
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