Tag: seinen

The Gyaru Trifecta: Years Ago, Recently Finished and Going to See?

Tiberius1 Comment

I’ve had quite a lot of time to think about this genre.

Since this blog began, my specialty has been animanga coupled with video games, film, and television. Within animanga, there are several genres within this medium I always make a beeline for and in recent memory it’s focused on a single archetype: gyaru-centric romcoms. I know I don’t write the most about these, but they are noticeable enough that I can’t help but circle back to them. From a series I took a peak at thanks in no small part to a WatchMojo video about s[flies buzzing]ty girlfriends to one that I’m pretty sure was in the line up of Google searches whilst looking up the first one. Completing the trilogy of gyaru romance anime is one that was fawned over in online forums and by anime-themed media outlets for breaking some old tropes… apparently.

Even though I’m a writer, some things still fly over my head at times. Not gonna say outlets like Kotaku or Comic Book Reader are straight-up drowning in manure but to borrow a quote from Tactical Bacon Productions, if games journalism is the corpse that keeps in twitching, animanga journalism in the hands of guys like these are the gasses that keep causing that same corpse to burp every now and then. Be that as it may, these outlets have their moments of journalistic brilliance; and to compare the likes of My First Girlfriend is a Gal to Hokkaido Gals are Super Adorable to My Dress-up Darling would seem impractical considering what they all cover, not to mention Dress-up Darling forms the “Going to See?” part of this post’s title. Still, it got enough love and exposure (and memes) for me to get the gist of it from just the introductory blurb, so rather than treat my imminent analysis of This Gyaru Wants me to Make Her the Cosplay Queen as a holy text, take it more as a shaky summary from a dubious narrator.

Years Ago:

I’ve went over this before, but this was the first series I ever viewed with a gyaru deuteragonist and based on the writing and characterization it’s 100 percent a relic of its time. Basically, Junichi Hashiba asks a popular gyaru, Yukana Yame, out on a dare who teases him at every turn only for this mutual joke of theirs to form into something genuine. It’s a 10 episode series whose purpose was to promote the original written source material, and at the outside. Junichi’s prime motivation was to punch his V-card with an anatomically-blessed girl, personality notwithstanding, and you initially get the impression that Yame is the queen of keep away, dangling a carrot in front of a stick like Makima from Chainsaw Man but way less malicious or vile.

The initial motivation by Junichi puts him in the same shoes as Highschool DxD’s Issei Hyodo but they diverge not just in the types of characters they are or are going to be or even the types of series they represent. Issei may be a pervy degenerate, but I don’t recall him having friends that low. The most they’ve ever done as a trio was spy on the girls changing a la Porky’s, but without Issei, they’ve just been getting jealous that the school bombshell and occult club leader Rias Gremory reciprocates wife vibes. For Junichi, what he’s gone through was a series of shot-in-the-dark dares with little expectation and even build-up so his Surprise Pikachu face is apt considering his reaction in episode 1.

Channel: Ben Senpai

All things considered, for all the praise Dress-up Darling got for breaking the mold, it’s not like any of that was absent in Hajimete no Gal, though this series didn’t break the mold 100 percent. There were still a few tropes, some of which may or may not disgust you, the viewer, but the one that separates this from the other two series is the characterization of the gyaru. Yukana’s not a walking Hokkaido Tourist associate like Minami Fuyuki, nor is she a doujin otaku like Marin Kitagawa. She’s the embodiment of the stereotypical gyaru and by all accounts, your countries archetype of the standoffish, at times bitchy popular girl. When I was growing up the centerpieces for this archetype on TV wound up being the cheerleader types, the overconfident pretty girls even though this flies in the face of the reality on the ground. Not that there aren’t those types of girls, but that the description is grossly overrepresented when they really might only make up some 5 percent of the actual high school or even college cheerleaders. F[broken glass]g Hollywood and their f[meows]g tropes.

But I digress. Both Junichi and Yukana start the series as sleazy opposites, but they later grow to become two sides of the same coin, especially when they realize how much they have in common. Now I have to dig into the reserves of my memory banks to specify those commonalities, but on the surface, they both have a series of friends who root for them every step of the way. Last time, I focused on Junichi’s loli-loving, pedophilic friend, Minoru Kobayakawa, but on the other side is Ranko Honjo who holds sole self-proclaimed rights to Yukana’s virginity, downright threatening to take both hers and Junichi’s before he gets a turn. And that description alone is probably vague enough to make the more cultured among you think back to a similar sounding doujin… one that I don’t mind checking out. No, not for research purposes, I wanna add to this fortress I’ve begun building for myself. I wanna build an NSFW dungeon.

Have my opinions deviated any from my initial description of this series? Hardly. Even now that I’ve got a summary open in another tab on my browser, I’m glad to know my memory isn’t that f[plastic wrap]ked. Recommendations? Well, the anime’s only 10 episodes so finish those 10 then go to the source material if you want some more.

Recently Finished

At the risk of sounding like I’m pissed or making this post a correction of the record from s[burps]t said before by the typical media outlets, Hokkaido Gals is another one that breaks the mold especially in the Gyaru space. Actually, that aspect isn’t even worth mentioning anymore with more and more romcoms debuting with gyaru protagonists/deuteragonists who are less and less of the standoffish type and more and more of the lovey-dovey, “How to Be a Loving Wife” type, which calls back to another meme that floats around especially some of the wholesome forum posts online.

More power to you, ghost of Shinzo Abe, but your subliminal messaging seems to be working more on the mangaka’s mindscapes than it does on their audience. Not to mention the international audience being more likely to have started families than the Japanese and Korean audiences if the demographic statistics aren’t completely fudged over.

For tropes broken and in serious disrepair, Kitami Gals Are Like C-U-T-E, puts us in a notoriously freezing part of Japan. Gone are the days of waiting for a regular winter in Tokyo of all places; come up to Hokkaido where it feels like the northernmost part of Minnesota regularly. Speaking of which, that’s precisely the accent used in the English dub of this series. Fuyuki, Sayurin, and Natsukawa all were cute in the manga, thanks to Kai Ikada’s magic, but the gongs of kawaii sounded the loudest when they were given upper Midwest accents! Holy North Dakota, I didn’t think it would open up a blindspot in my US geography; exploring the Deep South at the expense of the Midwest and Mountain states.

It doesn’t deviate that much from the established gyaru norms though, seeing as the girls all still dress like gyaru albeit adjusted for a colder climate… somewhat. Fuyuki is definitely the equivalent of that one kid you know who’s worn shorts and sneakers in at least 20 inches of snow. I’m not sure if there’s a European or Asian variant of this, but I wouldn’t put it past a Korean or Finnish kid to try it at least once before. Maybe in the age of pen pals they might’ve heard of the phenomenon through the grapevine, who knows?

Refreshingly, Fuyuki, Sayurin, Natsukawa, and Tsubasa, the main male protagonist, aren’t fickle like the protagonists of My First Gyaru GF. Naive and wishy-washy, definitely, but not fickle. Comparatively, they may be less confident seeing as Tsubasa grew up in probably the most average, traditional Japanese household prior to moving to northern Hokkaido while Fuyuki was born to be a gyaru, fashion accessories and cell phone in hand, Sayurin adopting the look sometime in between intense sessions of Animal Crossing and Natsukawa unconsciously marrying the library. They each get along swimmingly as friends, but unlike Yukana and Junichi who have plans to f[door closes]k in the imminent future (or at least entertain the idea), none of the characters in either the anime or the manga (up to the chapters I’ve read, which isn’t that far from where the anime ended) have expressed anything beyond a close bond crossing into romantic development. Spoilers to follow: the latest of these developments involves a friend of Sayurin’s practicing for a swimming competition where after practice has concluded, Sayurin tearfully confesses to the friend (a tan gyaru, holy s[surprise music]t, there’s a lot of them) that she’s fallen in love with Tsubasa. As far as I’ve read, she’s the only girl to announce these feelings publicly to anyone and there’s tens of chapters for me to thumb through so I’m in for further developments as soon as I can find a manga hosting site that doesn’t redirect me to another series or refresh with every click. The things I face as a content pirate.

Going to See?

The darling of 2022, My Dress-up Darling did get its praise for breaking the mold in several areas, notably for giving us another shy, uncharismatic protagonist. Wakana Gojo isn’t Monkey D. Luffy; he’s more like Tanjiro Kamado in the sense that he has a big heart. From what I’ve seen at the outset, he wouldn’t take up arms or get into a street fight, not at least without a kick in the pants to get him up to speed. Gojo seemed to be more the type to let things wash over him without resistance stemming from an incident where his love of hina-doll making was grossly insulted to his face by a girl who we later learn had a crush on him.

Add the Guts theme from Berserk and you’re accurate to what little Gojo-tan felt that day. Fast-forward a decade and hiding his passion was what got him through the years until Marin Kitagawa, our lovely gyaru deuteragonist and thinly-veiled stand-in for Sydsnap, plays the part of the extrovert adopting the introvert. It was a joke at the time that this blonde girl looks and behaves like the actual aforementioned YouTuber down to a T, but the joke was scarily accurate to Kitagawa’s character wholesale. Like Sydsnap, Kitagawa does have a passion for a lot of the typical otaku interests and hobbies, especially the ones specific to female otaku (IYKYK), among them hentai and eroge and the less savory tags for each of them.

But the one that makes up the title of the series is cosplay, which she’d like to do with more polish but is unable to due to a lack of dress-making experience. Enter Wakana Gojo whose specialty is dress-making for hina-dolls. These combined forces make her an unstoppable force in the cosplay scene and the more they hang out the more Kitagawa realizes that this off-the-cuff ad hoc union has developed into a blossoming romance, though only she realizes this as it takes Gojo more time to understand what he feels when she’s around–which circles around to an age-old trope that has its roots in many series across the globe called “Everyone Knew but Them” where the couple is unaware that they’re a couple, but the hints were picked up more easily by their friends and other outside observers. Let this meme explain:

Are they dating? Worse, they’re stupid.

But whoever said love was straightforward? We weebs and otaku would fall for inanimate objects if they came to us with a bouquet of roses and dinner plans to an expensive French restaurant. I’m not making that up, by the way. One of the teachers from the Soul Eater series was about to drop everything to be happily wed… to a toilet.

I’ve talked before about thumbing through the latest chapters of the Dress-up Darling manga out of curiosity and hearing that the girl who first prompted Gojo to isolate himself and his hobbies from the rest of the world was coming back to apologize for her childish behavior back then, claiming jealousy over his hina-dolls. Unreciprocated crush plus dense boy equals “what’s that? you like something more than me?! You’re stupid!! I hope [my lawyer has advised me not to continue this example]!!!!”

While writing this post, I was curious if I was able to watch the full series without having to upgrade to premium and sure enough as of writing, Crunchyroll is feeling generous with this series in particular and it isn’t even a legacy series like One Piece or Dragon Ball. I may see it for myself and continue on in the manga where the anime finishes like normal. It’s just a matter now of putting it in the timeline somewhere.

This is gonna be the biggest animanga fortress I’ve ever built.

Anime I Haven’t Seen (Will I?)

Tiberius3 Comments

Onto something somewhat related

This blog is dedicated to various forms of entertainment. The default is the Japanese medium known as animanga — a portmanteau of anime and manga, or Japanese animation and comics/graphic novels — joined together with movies, video games, and more. Since I’ve begun this blog two years ago, it hasn’t deviated very much from this promise and so far I’ve given my opinions and recaps on all the series I’ve seen, games I’ve played, etc. But for something slightly different, there’s the subject of anime I have heard of through the grapevine (read: dedicated subreddits) but have yet to watch myself.

Not anime I have in the pipeline, mind you; anime I haven’t seen and don’t have concrete plans to do so. Now this isn’t an exhaustive list of animanga series. There’s always gonna be series being produced and adapted. Even as I type this, some madlad in Japan is hard at work crafting peak fiction. Whether that series becomes a hit, I cannot say. I’m not Shueisha, or Kadokawa, or Dark Horse Comics. So here, I’ll talk about series I’ve heard of and whether or not I may view them based on a variety of factors. If your favorite happens to be on here, forgive me if I’m not immediately convinced to give the viewing it deserves. Also, expect a few jabs here and there; it won’t color my opinions on the series in question. Keep in mind, the factors that play a part — fanbases included.

1. My Dress-Up Darling (2022-)

      Between The Saga of Yukana Yame and So, Like, Tokyo Ain’t the Only Place to Find a Gal, Ya Know?, I’m far from immune to the gyaru aesthetic and on my radar and my Reddit feed came The Gyaru That’s into Cosplays by none other than Shinichi Fukuda. To be fair, I checked out the more recent chapters on a whim after randomly delving into the dedicated subreddit. I was desperately curious to learn if there was more to the opening scene than just “introvert origin story” and sure enough there was. Not gonna spoil that, just read the manga or check it out on MangaDex if you’re impatient like moi.

      The basic gist is a young Wakana Gojo takes up hina doll sewing; a girl who thinks he’s cute discovers this and tells him he’s cringe and he learns to never share his passions again. A moment of silence for our star lead. Fast-forward to high school and a gyaru cosplay queen (who may or may not bare a striking resemblance to Sydney Manetapho (née Poniewaz)) named Marin Kitagawa discovers Wakana’s passion for sewing and requests his expertise to craft perfect cosplays. Over time, they fall into the “gradual lovers” trope from their own perspective, but slight spoilers from recent chapters, it evolves into the “everyone knows but them” trope. As in, they hang out so much that the surprise was that they weren’t dating prior to Kitagawa’s announcement of love, and it was inevitable that Kitagawa would let that cat out of the bag, as Gojo would be too embarrassed to tell the truth about how he feels. Not that he doesn’t want to be seen with a pretty girl like Kitagawa, more like if he’d confess, immediately slam his mouth shut, then pray to what he calls God to change the subject in .5 milliseconds.

      Channel: Crunchyroll

      It’s sweet, romantic, and one that I’m not too certain if I’ll ever get around to viewing. What kept me away was the hype. Audiences tend to be fickle and malleable and only those dedicated to a medium are gonna stick around long after the final episode of “Season 1” airs. The rest will move on because they can’t read. Now that the hype is at rest, I’m at a better position than I was to view it after clearing my current list (that perpetually expands like a f[bricks falling]king brick in the wall). Giving Light-footed Hojo a rewatch dubbed and watching Cute Girls Playing Music Cutely, whichever one I finish first (the former), I’ll have to replace it with Dress-Up My Gyaru Bestie.

      2. Fullmetal Alchemist (2003-04; 2009-10)

      The darling of anime with all the awards to prove it, like Gigguk I have yet to see this masterpiece for myself, but unlike Gigguk, I’m not waiting on an arbitrary moment in the far-flung future before I sit down and watch Halfplastic Wizardry. It lives on through the same tired-old memes about a girl and her dog, but more to the point, I would have nothing of value to contribute to the consensus. It’s like yet another European Theater WWII game. It’s not gonna stand out unless it does something extraordinarily unique and I doubt I’m the man to deliver. People love it, people hate it, people aren’t the most enthusiastic about it. That’s a lazy man’s consensus and much like my eventual venture into Pokémon decades later, I’m gonna find stuff I like and don’t like but otherwise not have strong opinions on Hiromu Arakawa’s masterpiece.

      Aside from praise for Winry, of course.

      3. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (2023-)

      Outside of living like an emperor on anime forums and subreddits, The Tale of the Racist Elf is known for doing a few things differently as hinted by it’s subtitle. Beyond Journey’s End as in, the story didn’t end after the DM declared the evil king dead. Acknowledging the after-story with engaging characters, Frieren runs with the concept and builds on as a sequel to a nonexistent story. Anyone can start a DnD campaign and see it through to the end, but I haven’t heard of anyone continuing long after the story has finished.

      Will I ever watch such a phenomenal show? If I was writing this before the adaptation was announced two years ago, probably yes. Now that it’s lived up to its promise, there’s no reason for me to put it off. Maybe I’ll do it by the Spring or Summer. Who knows?

      4. Redo of Healer (2021)

      Its reputation precedes it. It gained notoriety for various scenes involving emotional abuse and sexual deviancy, things I’m not opposed to in fiction, but the shark that keeps me away from the water comes from the fanbase. Outnumbered by the majority female fanbase, if what I’ve heard about the corrosiveness of the fujoshi community is to be believed, then in a nonsexual way, any man who wanders into territory where women are the majority (not necessarily target) demographic will be eaten alive.

      Contrary to the blog’s name, I avoid rocking the boat because it’s a damn good boat and as I said, there’s f[nom]king sharks in the water. Let me enjoy my limbs before I get tired of them. Now, there’s probably gonna be a few who recall the horny trio post from October and wonder why I’m drawing the line at Revenge of the Cock Slap. Well, between Rias’ boobs (where miracles happen), Anna Nishikinomiya’s legs (where Niagara Falls can be found) and Monster Musume (where slime girls exist), all of those have fun with the concept. White Mage Do-Over takes itself more seriously with the subject matter and while I’m not a kink-shamer, for once I have to put this image of Our Lord and Savior to address the fanbase.

      I’ll still keep my mind open if someone can convince me that How Dare You Boot Me from the Party is more than just a ginormous Lady Boner.

      5. Oshi no Ko (2023-)

      Another series with an interesting reputation online, I’m the furthest thing from the target audience for this. I barely keep tabs on western celebrities (except for some legacy names), I clearly have no business attempting to break into East Asian idol culture. And from what I know, I’ve seen enough of the business side. Oversimplifying the business of idols, they’re held to impossible ideals under sweatshop conditions to present a falsified image of themselves manufactured by their higher-ups for a worldwide audience. What makes this dangerous (apart from Oshi no Ko’s first episode) is that a select few deranged fans have learned the truth and, sucked in by the parasocial activity, took matters into their own hands; homicide, suicide, damn near terroristic threats when they learn that the idol in question was hiding children or a family or was probably a victim of sexual assault. I’d say, “what were they expecting,” but to add onto this, this can happen to anyone. You’ve definitely listened to a podcast and vibed so much with the hosts that you imagined they were beyond the screen or headphones. But they’re not.

      The insistence on perfection in idol culture and the “rug pull” at the lack of perfection keeps me looking in from the outside with disbelief and disappointment, and that’s just at the content. As for the fanbase, well, incest jokes are king in that corner, but unlike The Twisted Graves Siblings, there’s nothing close to dark comedy here. Again, I make known my normie status and I highly doubt I’ll check it out for myself, unless someone Saul Goodman’s an argument for this courtroom judge.

      Without malice or enthusiasm, I want to be convinced.

      Once again, there are other series that cross my path that I’m either on the fence about or fully committed to avoiding or not depending on multiple factors. I entrust fans of X to persuade me to join their creed, perhaps by presentation or whatever else works. They’re clearly convinced that their series of choice has merit, as am I so inclined to watch Lady Rias in action after so long, and I want to see what the hype is or was about. Maybe I can decide then if the series speaks to me with certainty.

      Genshiken: A Full Review*

      TiberiusLeave a comment

      Well, more episodes to cover at least

      Gonna have to be entirely honest here, the timeline I gave myself to fully watch Genshiken couldn’t be adhered to. Life got in the way. C’est la vie. But now that I think about it, having covered series before only partly, halfway, or most of the way through, it got me thinking that I don’t necessarily have to complete a series to review it. I think I get more mileage if I watch enough to understand without necessarily having to complete the series. Completion does help, but to quote Jack Torrance, “All work and no play makes [Tiberius] a dull boy.” Now to the review.

      It wasn’t long ago that I caught this anime by way of one of the anime subreddits and in that clip, four otaku speak wildly to a normie about the beauties of a niche Japanese rape game.

      Not necessarily a turn off for weebs, if the Redo of Healer’s overwhelmingly female fanbase is any indicator and certainly not one for me as I ventured into this anime expecting more off-the-cuff conversations and it’s a lot more mellow than that clip would lead anyone to believe. As I’ve said before, it’s an anime about a quartet of otaku, sometimes joined by the sometimes Y otaku who has himself a girlfriend hellbent on shaming them into being normal. As a weeb, I take offense, but knowing what I know about the internet when this anime was on air in 2004, she wasn’t the only one yelling this from the heavens.

      Further, even I have my limits on my own hobbies, though limit doesn’t necessarily mean quit. Moderation is the key. So as I watched more of Genshiken, the more I saw of the slice of life aspects, similar to shows like Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, and K-On!, but instead of a multitude of cute girls doing cute things cutely, it’s a bunch of college dudes taking half the share of the oppression shared by gamers because they were brave enough to say no to the rat race by engaging in their hobbies. But it does share a similarity with the aforementioned series, namely progression. Azumanga follows the girls throughout high school; Lucky Star does the same even if it’s famous for talking about nothing, and K-On! adds to the roster in the form of Azunyan, weak to the power of the headpat.

      Credit: r/HeadPats, u/BTN099

      The slice of life genre has its detractors who balk at the idea of a show about f[pages flipping]k and all, but as someone who enjoys many genres SoL being one of them, it’s a nice break from all the methamphetamine fueled action found in Shonen or the isekai singularity. I like beating up ghosts or searching for the One Piece or defeating space Hitler as much as the next guy, but I don’t always want to see that. Something something variety, something something slice of life.

      Besides, Genshiken is a series that speaks to weebs because it’s about weebs. You definitely have nerd friends and may yourself be a nerd in some aspect, especially if you’re subscribed to this blog or check in every week. We all have that circle of friends who geeks out over the same things. I had mine in middle and high school and I met mine both times I was in basic training and when I was in AIT, and that passion turned from video games to anime (but of course, games are still a major part of my life; I’m currently building a gaming PC).

      Credit: Naumovski

      The passion is what speaks to me, this collection of nerds coming together to discuss the important things in life, such as Oppai, Medium or Flat — which is a trick debate because all size makes the wood rise, especially when paired with thicc thighs that save lives. I do recall that rant on the character of Saki Kasukabe and her intense criticism of the medium of animanga as a whole. Watching further was the right choice and I do recommend continuing the series in whichever form you find best as further episodes see her eating her own words every time she gets humbled.

      No one can be this dedicated to animanga, you say? Well, conventions beg to differ. Childish, you say? Well, yesterday’s weebs are parents now — see Latin America’s love of Dragon Ball for more details. Women are definitely not interested, you say? Well, not only does my comment about Redo of Healer having a massive female fanbase stand tall, but so does a new character introduced in Season 1: Kanako Ono:

      Makes me think of Tomoko Kuroki from WataMote.

      Beyond that, Genshiken is a chronicle of passionate animanga geeks whose love of the medium is not tempered by naysayers and is surprisingly large to newcomers and tourists. Once again, for those who wish to view the series, I implore you to find whatever piracy site works best for you. Most anime streaming sites (read: Crunchyroll) aren’t guaranteed to have the full series.

      Now That You’ve Tasted My Saliva, Wanna be My Boyfriend?

      Tiberius3 Comments

      Perhaps romance has always been weird

      No matter your relationship status, you’ve definitely seen pictures and memes or heard stories through the grapevine about how certain people are made for each other. When applied to fiction, fanbases notoriously put certain characters together and creatively put whatever circumstances they can concoct to make it happen in their own fanfics. Sometimes it works, but other times it’s more or less an appeal to a certain character for a variety of reasons. And as you might expect, other aspects of the fanbase can get perverse in this matter. This typically happens when a series is presented as neutrally as possible. The series I’m talking about here starts off in a strange position by virtue of its own title:

      Nazo no Kanojo X or Mysterious Girlfriend X gained fame at the time of release for one of its characters, Mikoto Urabe, releasing the sluice gate she has for a mouth and leaking all of her drool. A sane man would probably be put off by this aspect, but curiosity overrules sanity and the other character, Akira Tsubaki, licks some of the drool she leaves on her desk while napping during lunch. Why would he do that? Don’t bother looking for answers to that question because it goes unacknowledged for the remainder of the show.

      Urabe is a riddle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma. She’s introduced as the new girl and in the first episode bursts into uncontrollable laughter. She’s awfully cagey for a girl romantically involved with Tsubaki, and more or less prefers this sort of arrangement, even keeping a pair of scissors tucked into her underwear. Of all the talk you hear on social media of fighting back suspected and would-be rapists, Urabe is ready to make sashimi out of anyone. S[sword unsheathing]t-talking is for the weak.

      Credit: SoundwaveSuperior69 on DeviantArt

      Tsubaki meanwhile is the polar opposite of his girlfriend. An open book with an evident circle of friends and interests, you don’t really have to guess what’s on his mind, what he did or what he’s gonna do next. Obligatory: run-of-the-mill male protagonist ends up with “quirky” female protagonist. There’s a name for this specific trope and I won’t rest until I learn it! The closest would probably be manic pixie dream girl, but I personally think that’s a dubious label to throw into this.

      Either way, the two are practically ripped from the bizarro world of shipping. Whereas established characters will be randomly paired by the fandom, mangaka Riichi Ueshiba started out that way. Call Urabe a foil to this slice of bread we call a male protagonist with her hentai protagonist hair, anti-molestor blades, unorthodox outlook on life, and obsession with saliva. The last of those being the tamest fetish I’ve seen or heard of, and no I won’t elaborate on what I think is the wildest one I’m aware of.

      So that’s them as individuals, how do they behave as a couple? Initially, I was gonna say that her cagey personality gets in the way of things, but on closer inspection, it feels a bit more like she wears a slightly longer pair of pants. Think of it this way, Tsubaki is smitten yet nervous around her due to a lack of dating/romantic experience whereas Urabe has scissors rated E for everyone… and I do mean everyone. She sets hard boundaries, but will make concessions to let her Tsubaki into her space. Her flavor of introvert is honest yet taciturn as she won’t even fake a smile for a picture. Lack of sportsmanship? Considering, she talks to only like two or three people all anime, that’s an easy assumption to make though I’ve heard it explained (can’t remember where, sorry) that most of the action happens offscreen. In this case, any number of wild stories can be made about the girl and Ueshiba may or may not elaborate further. Actually, it’s possible to argue that Urabe herself is in some capacity an extension of Ueshiba, the mangaka.

      A quick googling shows that the number of interviews he’s done is close to the number of fingers on the average human hand. Photographs are even more elusive as I’m certain there don’t exist any that he’s agreed to share. Even without any expectations, I knew for a fact that Urabe would live up to the mysterious moniker but for it to likely be connected to the man who conceptualized her character is practically “write what you know” in living color. And in this instance, Ueshiba seems to be the only one who knows. Not that he’s the first or only one to subscribe to that philosophy.

      Now why am I watching this anime? Once again, I’m doing so on a whim. The romance does intrigue me, but more so the appeal of Who’s This Drooling Girl? is the fact that it’s a break from the action-heavy series we’re getting these days. It had its 15 minutes of fame a decade ago, but now that more people are paying attention to other things developing in contemporary manga (as well as disappointing endings), going to series only five people globally know about is a nice change of pace.

      I’d also like to highlight how much of a deconstruction of many tropes Urabe is.

      Unlike most other characters, she leaves the audience and the characters guessing. Again, not the first character to do this, but one of the few who does it in less overt ways. The most she’ll do is test whether you can stomach her drool (that sounded better in my head (>_<)); if you can succeed, you two are meant to be. If not, well the effort was made and the question was answered.

      Based on my description of her in regard to Tsubaki in general, it sounds like I described a yandere, but Urabe isn’t like that. She shows that she cares about him, but is the last person who’d reach out for a hug from him, especially in public. She’s like a planet: her gravitational pull reels him in, but not too close. As explained in the series (and this blog from 2018), she doesn’t need him to be physically close for there to be a bond. Her drool does the heavy lifting for her there. More than just a test of her connection to whomever tastes it, it’s properties seem to activate different senses and feelings especially in Tsubaki. It’ll make him sick, feel pain, give him a window into Urabe’s true feelings; I’ve never heard of anyone’s saliva doing that so the bond is either that strong or she’s aN aLiEn?!?!?

      Again, neither Urabe nor Ueshiba will elaborate, so that’s up to you to decide. For what it’s worth, the manga has 12 volumes, 13 episodes and an OVA ripe for the pirating. Enjoy having questions go unanswered.

      Also, Urabe can definitely make twintails work. Shame it’s only in one episode, but fanart thankfully picks up the slack.

      Shimoneta, High School DxD, and Monster Musume: Horny Trio

      Tiberius5 Comments

      The three that carried me in community college

      Yonks ago, I mentioned an upcoming post that was initially meant to be just another double bill, but it occurred to me that there was a third series that I felt was appropriate to lump in with the other two. These are the three anime that I watched all through college:

      1. Shimoneta: A Boring World Where the Concept of Dirty Jokes Doesn’t Exist
      2. High School DxD, and;
      3. Monster Musume

      And we’ll go through them one-by-one. The titles of each should be a giveaway but just in case: each of these series contains sexually suggestive themes, language and imagery. Reader discretion is advised.

      Shimoneta (2015):

      Another anime to get its start in the world of early 2010s light novels, Shimoneta’s concept is exactly as it says on the tin. All language of a sexually suggestive or provocative nature is illegal and if uttered, the speaker(s) is/are arrested by the Decency Squad, a specialized morality police unit whose purpose is to track down and subdue anyone who dares utter such obscene words.

      How do they know people are saying s[poop]t, f[moans]k, and ass? By the collars around their necks. They’re designed (read: programmed) to monitor different trigger words, I suspect, by way of detecting the movements of the mouth when certain words are spoken, sort of like how most YouTubers, TikTokers, etc. have to censor/monitor their own speech to keep from the Demon of Demonitization at bay. (Side note: f[plastic wrap]k the algorithm for doing that to our favorite creators.)

      One such character is the protagonist, Tanukichi Okuma. He’s a brand new student to Tokioka Academy and a witness to the indecency of another character he meets later: Blue Snow, real name Ayame Kajou. Ayame takes the alias of Blue Snow whilst on a crusade to dismantle the shackles of this dystopian system of policing speech by way of challenging the response time of the Decency Squad. Under normal circumstances, suggestive language is how you get slapped on the dick (or in Ayame’s case, the tits), but she evades that by dialing a number on her cellphone that deactivates the collar on her neck for three minutes a day, letting her unleash a bevy of inappropriate sayings.

      Based on her appearance here, Ayame adopts a Clark Kent persona when around others only to don a mask (a pair of panties, yes, really) when it’s time for her 180 seconds of lewd infamy.

      The series isn’t just a man vs society conflict at play, there’s an actual antagonist in the series and she starts off as innocent and pure until the following happens to her:

      Channe: Khánh Senseii Anime Kiss

      The birth of the villainess of this series. Anna Nishikinomiya begins the series as the class president of Tokioka, but after a mishap in one of the episodes, Okuma plants a kiss on her by accident. If she had any knowledge of even romance, she’d probably have a normal reaction, but this unleashes metaphorical and literal floodgates. She conflates love with lust and 85% of the scenes that she’s in is a display of female-on-male sexual assault/rape. I’m not kidding.

      Obviously, it’s played for laughs in the series and there’s a lot to be said about societal discourse surrounding male victims and their female perpetrators (a discussion I’m not qualified to talk about on a blog based on entertainment, but would have no problem entertaining in mixed company), but without getting too dark and focusing mainly on the central theme of the series, Shimoneta is a display of the consequences of policing morality and human behavior. If you’ve been on the internet for quite some time, you may recall an era when cancel culture went haywire and a small fraction of forum posters chastised trolls online to hell and back for a few racy comments here and there. Not that it was unwarranted, the internet around the time of the GamerGate controversy was an interesting time to be on the internet, but interspersed with genuine policing were impromptu witch hunts conflating ignorance with curiosity, and this went beyond just suggestive or provocative commentary, lest we forget the cultural appropriation vs appreciation argument that was prevalent at the time. Though these days, the conversation has moved towards intentionally ignoring sex organs, due to a variety of factors that have massively influenced the internet. Sorry, digressing.

      In Shimoneta’s case, it proves how difficult at the least; Sisyphean at the most such a task of policing even speech can be. Not to mention a shortfall that accompanies the series from start to finish about how to go about this. You’ll notice that speech patterns themselves are the main crime, not the physical aspect itself. Now, there would still be procreation which this world would likely allow for survival’s sake, but another conversation can be had about how conspiracy to commit is addressed more seriously than an actual crime in this world.

      This blog from 2018 has more to say about Anna herself and with a finer brush than the broadstrokes I employed here.

      Having said all that, I still recommend this anime for anyone wanting a closer look at an example of how bad overpolicing behavior can get or if you just wanna see the most athletic Japanese school girl in the world hunt down the object of her “affection.” Beware her homemade cookies, IYKYK. Now onto:

      High School DxD (2012-2018)

      My personal favorite for being R-rated and uncensored, the light novel ran from 2008 to 2018, ending around the same time as the anime’s fourth season. Whereas Shimoneta’s content is light on explicit nudity and fan service, High School DxD throws the censorship to the wind. Back during the Funimation days, the English dub played up both the nudity and the jiggle physics. From threatening to get naked to actually getting naked; I like the progression so far.

      In High School DxD, Kuoh Academy recently transitions into a co-ed school for the new schoolyear. A few male students enroll, likely taking advantage of the 8 to 1 ratio of girls to boys in the hopes of scoring big before Kuoh fully integrates. One of these boys is a massive pervert and otaku named Issei Hyoudo. He initially fits the bill of a stereotypical otaku in all but appearance. Body pillows, an alarm clock with different anime girl archetypes waking him up every morning, an extensive hentai and porn collection shared with his two other friends, and a MIGHTY NEED to get some titty.

      It just so happens that one particular set of breasts happens to belong to this devilishly gorgeous redhead, Rias Gremory. More than just a sight for sore eyes, Lady Rias is a fierce fighter and one to defend those she cherishes to her dying breath. Outside of battle, she’s a kindhearted young woman, compassionate, and reliable. She’s the head of Kuoh’s occult club, thinly masking her connection to the paranormal as a devil herself and making great use of the common tropes associated with angels and demons/devils: angels are depicted as bone ugly to ward off evil while demons are depicted as drop dead gorgeous to tempt mankind into following their id. In an ironic twist, the series depicts devils as more heroic than the beings they fight against.

      As much as I make that sound like an engagement wearing the clothes of praise, there’s an actual plot behind the plot here. It takes a lot of cues and tropes from the Christian bible with the concept of angels, devils, and fallen angels. Following the devils, their depiction seems more sympathetic in the series as the factions do have a fair share of shady and unscrupulous characters. The overall plot plays up the biblical angle with the fan service going into overdrive, so Rias, Issei, and the Occult club are all (knights) in service of Satan, or in this case, in service of one of those appointed as a satan. To quote Anton Szandor LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, “if you’re gonna be a sinner, be the best sinner on the block,” and it seems that Issei is guaranteed to live up to those ideals.

      The juxtaposition of magical action and theological babble with T and A and convenient panty shots is what kept me going until about halfway through the fourth season. When it comes to censorship, normally I’m an opponent depending on the company I’m with. Throwing out f[crunch]ks, s[footsteps]ts, damns, asses, and other such forbidden words in a room full of bureaucrats allergic to the sun makes you seem immature compared to a gathering of mobsters, gangsters, or even servicemembers, all things considered. I censor swearing and nudity here for presentability and professionalism, but seeing as I’m writing about a trio of anime that joke or outright show you uncensored boobs, if it wasn’t for the presentation, this whole blog would have no reins. Before we move on to the third and final series I want to talk about, let this ending convince you to watch High School DxD if the above hasn’t already:

      Channel: SE NPAI

      And last but certainly not least:

      Monster Musume (2015):

      A harem series like High School DxD but appealing to even more fetishes while also putting the protagonist in a tricky situation like Shimoneta, though with a different context. The plot of this horny adjacent series is that monster girls of various mythical origins are enrolled in a program not dissimilar from foreign exchange student programs in real life and one of the people who is accidented/voluntold into the program is regular human person No. 4986 Kimihito Kurusu.

      One of the coordinators, Agent Smith, mistakenly sends a lamia (snake girl) Miia to his house to take care of her under the the circumstances that they refrain from conflict or copulation. Easy rules for Kurusu to follow considering the consequences, but as the series goes on and more and more monster girls share a roof with the man, his physical restraints are put to the test seeing as these women are physically capable of bending him like straw. More than once, he’s been grievously injured through accidents as none of the girls are even remotely aware of their gap in human endurance and their own strength.

      Basically, it’s the equivalent of swapping Kratos, a character of pure strength and raw anger with Lester the Unlikely from his titular game. Kurusu exists in a world where monster girls damage him even without the promise or threat of snu snu, and yet, he’s not that kind of guy to engage in his temptations. Using Okuma and Issei as a scale of unfortunate to pervy, Kurusu is definitely closer to Okuma, yet we can put in a different category for him specifically seeing as how he doesn’t exactly live to fulfill is silly desires. He’s a blank slate of sorts that the viewer may put themselves in the shoes of.

      Monster Musume has the makings of a horror show without the horror. It’s a harem romcom slice of life with horror elements featuring a protagonist who simply wants to live the most normal life allowed by this society, but is forced to share not only this world, but his dwelling with a harem of monster girls he’s forbidden from touching intimately because the agent that f[piano]ked him is functionally identical to Aqua from KonoSuba.

      Don’t let the Matrix reference fool you, she’s not as efficient as those clones. But she does look good in a suit.

      Another thing worth mentioning is that while the other two series in this post began as light novels, Monster Musume is a manga first, with a spin off light novel series that also got an anime adaptation: Monster Girl Doctor.

      Take these three as my recommendations for when you think there’s too much wholesomeness to go around and not enough lewdness. There’s the possibility of getting muscled by the thirstiest girl in the world whilst on a crusade to curtail censorship; a harem of lovely ladies whose tits shake even when still; and a harem of lovely mythical monster ladies who’d each be wife material all their own if it wasn’t for the rules.

      Whatever pirate site you watch your anime on (don’t worry, your secret is safe with me), give these all a watch if you haven’t done so already. And if you’ve seen them, see them again! Do it!!

      Genshiken: First Impressions of the Otaku Anime

      TiberiusLeave a comment

      Before…

      I’m still hard at work at doing the research necessary before I fully write about Genshiken as I’ve only watched two episodes so far. By the time I’m done (ballpark estimate: mid-October at the very least, god willing), I hope to have completed most of the first season. For now, allow me to supplement you with a general impression based on the first two episodes.

      The manga started publication in Monthly Afternoon magazine in 2002 in Japan before getting licensed by the Kodansha library for release in English. In online discussion, otaku has fallen out of favor in recent years mostly supplanted by the word weeb but for the time frame we’re observing, otaku would make sense for the series as anime was breaking ground in the U.S. and U.K., but not nearly enough to get the worldwide traction it has right now. It was an underground niche back then; otaku (country of origin notwithstanding) were to the general populace what JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure were to otaku.

      Genshiken gives a somewhat appropriate insight into this by way of multiple perspectives: the hardcore otaku who can boast to have the original Astro-Boy manga and the outsiders who believe everyone grows out of their hobbies eventually. Side note: if that were true, then we wouldn’t know people who’re still reading Harry Potter or watching Star Wars. Source: me, emulating the older Mortal Kombat, God of War, and Naruto games.

      The name in Japanese is a shortening of the full title: Gendai Shikaku Bunka Kenkyukai or “The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture.” If reddit was around when the manga debuted, these guys would be gods on the anime subreddits. Speaking of which, a clip of the second episode was how I found the series. Going over the English translation of the name, you get the impression almost that the runners of this animanga club think themselves high and mighty when they’re just another flavor of nerd. And as a nerd, they kinda stopped being special around the early-to-mid 2010s.

      It’s easy to say that now since anime has gotten pitifully easy to access, but going back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, your best bet was the VCR or somehow knowing the guy who makes regular excursions to Shinjuku’s and Akihabara’s electronics zone. So I can excuse the elitism in that regard. The central characters in this club mostly fit common stereotype of the era: Harunobu Madarame, the eccentric leader who will defend his tastes to the ends of the earth no matter what; Soichiro Tanaka, the less eccentric, but still enthusiastic one; Mitsunori Kugayama, the gentle giant who speaks with a stutter; joined by newcomers to the club, Kanji Sasahara, Makoto Kosaka, and begrudgingly Saki Kasukabe.

      You know, it’s a 2000s anime if a girl is on the cover, even if thematically she’s an improper fit, which was why I claimed that Saki reluctantly joined Genshiken. Slight spoiler: the first episode shows her having a smoke in a train station (something I believe Japan illegalized over time) and telling some dude to get bent before getting all giddy after seeing her childhood friend, now love interest Kosaka. Where things diverge is when Kosaka reveals that he has since become a weeb and encourages Saki to accompany him to the Genshiken club, learning about anime in general and some of Madarame’s tastes as a whole.

      Madarame is who I best describe as anime Twitter’s unacknowledged/ignored id. Western anime Twitter has a giant beef to roast about fanservice in anime, but to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth, there is nothing better than fanservice.

      Yes, I know the context behind both of these characters. This isn’t a criticism or anything, I just thought it was funny.

      It does illustrate what Saki takes issue with the most in the anime community, and it’s a bit of zombie problem that from the outside looking in you’d think had largely disappeared in the online discourse, but has been eternally mummified and immortalized in several online spaces. Fanservice around women also gets a bad rap because of this.

      So at the outset you know that Saki is not the target demographic for what these guys like but puts up with it because her love interest is heavily into it. Not to the extent that Madarame is, but he doesn’t feel out of place in Akihabara or the other popular anime hangout spots. With discourse surrounding the series itself being light (at least in the west, Japanese social media might give me more insight if the weblinks still work), the most I have to go on are the anime itself, its manga, and the accompanying Wikipedia page. It’s described as a Seinen series, which makes a lot of sense as none of what the characters like would be suited for a Shonen demographic.

      From what I can gather, 21 volumes released between 2002 and 2016, at least three seasons, a spinoff and an OVA all tell me that it was popular enough for all of that as well as foreign dubbing and licensing by Kodansha themselves even though it has a lot of the hallmarks present in something like Azumanga Daioh.

      A slice of life series about a group of friends and they’re daily lives in a school setting, it’s original Japanese name largely untranslated or unaltered, but what splits the two series apart is that as a slice of life series, Azudaioh is very easy to take out of context and make the most baked memes and jokes about as any YouTube compilation shows evidence of, whereas Genshiken takes itself more seriously. Far from the “cute girls doing cute things cutely” subgenre of slice of life, Genshiken is more about the subject of… itself if you think about it. You or someone you know belongs to a group of weebs who talk about this regularly–why not have a series that’s a mirror of your hobbies?

      As it stands, I don’t know enough yet to speak definitively on the design philosophy of the show, but the Wikipedia article explains that it’s about the characters moreso than what they do. An assertion I’ll hold it to once I’m done with the first season. For now, short of tracking down the physical media and the means to play it, 9animetv.to and Hianime are my new methods of watching the series and you’d be a fool to not use these reliable resources.

      Haibane Renmei and Mysterious Disappearances: Mystery Double Bill

      Tiberius5 Comments

      The long-awaited two-in-one special

      I put this off for a week so I could do some more research on both, by which I mean reading the Wikipedia page for one and advancing in the manga for the other. Haibane Renmei is but a short 1-cour anime series from 2002. I found out about it from the same article that introduced me to House of Five Leaves a few years ago (along with another one), and without delving into details, a friend of mine challenged me to recommend him some anime he’s never heard of. Well, he didn’t challenge me per se, but I took it as such and I figured I might as well put another brick in this anime wall I chose to build. No, it still ain’t finished.

      Japanese for Charcoal Feather Federation, Haibane Renmei starts with a young girl experiencing a very vivid dream about falling from the sky. This being the only memory she has, the theme of the series is that the Haibane–angel-like beings–are named after the dream they had. Shortly after that, their wings grow from their back and they’re given halos to wear above their heads.

      It was based on an unfinished manuscript by the same mind responsible for the surprisingly well-aged Serial Experiments Lain, which when it comes to trying to label it, makes it difficult, at least for me. There’s anime that are adapted from manga, which is the most common adaptation style; anime that are adapted from light novels, which is probably the second most common adaptation style; sometimes anime are home grown originals (a.k.a. anime originals), proof that the studios animating them can make something special from thin air; and sometimes anime are adapted from novels:

      It’s definitely irregular for a rough draft to get a green light for an adaptation, but it’s not like it’s unheard of. Stranger things have happened in media.

      Part of my research for Haibane Renmei involved looking over this blog post from 2017. The writer explains that the cult-classic series has been the topic of such fierce debate over the meaning of the series, not helped by Yoshitoshi Abe’s notoriously enigmatic writing style. As a mystery series, this can be viewed as a double entendre both due to the cryptic writing and because the only source available lies with the writer and short of booking a flight to Japan to ask him directly, I highly doubt he’s ready to share the raw words with a wider audience so the anime adaptation had to make do.

      That said, this isn’t the type of Scooby-Doo, CSI, Columbo type mystery series where you’re given a puzzle to solve. It leaves a lot open to interpretation and according to that post I linked above, a lot of it tends to be incorrect. From a writer’s perspective, there’s a fine line between treating the audience like they’re five years old and throwing them out of a plane and expecting them to catch the parachute on the way down.

      Is this me being too harsh? Perhaps, but the creative world is pretty cutthroat in a manner of speaking. We criticize ourselves in a much harsher tone than any other critic, yet both the critic and the artist are given a near equal amount of outside exposure so doesn’t that mean we’re both talented groups of people?

      Something, something pot calls the kettle black…

      I like to think of it as an art house project. I believe the late 90s to late 2000s was the era of moe and this series does something different from most shows of the era. It was the equivalent of taking an extended museum tour and filling out a survey at the end before being released to the gift shop. It’s for thinkers; the door is open enough for observers to take a peek but is neither too wide nor too narrow. If it were too wide, important stuff goes missing, but if it were too narrow then you wouldn’t be able to see the contents very well. It sits neatly in the middle and once you’re done with the series you can walk away with your own interpretations of what you think the series is about. Here’s a link to the playlist. Enjoy it while it lasts:

      Channel: Jesse M

      From a series you probably never heard of before now to a series you still probably haven’t heard of unless you eat anime memes like black beans: Mysterious Disappearances.

      Before I elaborate on this series, I want to get this out of the way right now: giant boobs.

      Alright, we’re done with that. Well, I’m done with that aspect. Explaining the fanservice in this series will honestly get redundant especially since both the anime and the manga do that in spades. The first chapter especially ends with an uncensored shower scene (spoiler alert).

      As for the rest of the series, Mysterious Disappearances is a blending together of urban legend and centuries-old Japanese folktales. The name doesn’t do the series enough justice. Looking to legends and myths for inspiration, Mysterious Disappearances has it all in droves. The first episode actually drops hints from an old urban legend about the fictional haunted Kisaragi Station. Akidearest explains it further in this video below:

      Channel: akidearest

      Basically, a few years ago, a Japanese vocaloid YouTuber’s videos spread by way of the recommendation system and the one thing that stood out was that their username and videos were mostly untitled, making use of zero width non-joiners or “invisible characters” read only by the computer. Anyway, the video referenced an old urban legend/creepypasta that only existed at the time on Japanese forums, namely 2chan in 2004. The urban legend in question was Kisaragi Station and was about a woman who noticed the train continued on for longer than usual. She gets off at the namesake station which was left unmapped and catalogs all of her interactions and findings at the phantom station, even wandering the tunnels until she was eventually picked up by a mysterious man who quickly dropped his helpful demeanor once she took the bait. Forums posters eagerly awaited for updates that never came after that.

      This was one of several references to Japanese urban legend in the anime. Many more follow as the series progresses. Unlike The Society of Gray Feathers, Dangerous and Disturbing Puzzles has more exposition baked into it. Both the manga and the anime explore the phenomena as they happen. Part of the appeal for me is the urban legend side of things. Fictional or not, these ghost stories tend to be somewhat credible even if they don’t match beat for beat. They’re the fun little stories about things that go bump in the night. The supernatural element keeps me engaged, much like when I was first introduced to The Adventures of Shigeo Kageyama: Boy ESPer.

      The protagonist is the big breasted woman we saw earlier, Sumireko Ogawa, a novelist working in a bookstore. Aided by her coworker Ren Adashino and his sister Oto, the trio investigate and confront the sources of the mysteries personally, unraveling their secrets along the way.

      One of the main plot devices is a droplifted book picked up by the bookstore owner himself and gifted to Ogawa on her birthday. The anonymous writer catalogued ancient poems from the real-life Manyoshu, a collection of anonymously written Japanese poems going all the way back to the Nara period (circa 750s C.E.). If read aloud, the poems act as a spell cast on the reader themselves provided certain conditions are met. The “spell” can be broken by way of reading the poem backwards, but as shown in the series, when Ogawa does so, she’s able to control the effects of the poems on herself at will.

      Other important plot devices are the siblings themselves and the signs that only they can see: yellow diamonds with exclamation points in the middle. They appear whenever a supernatural event has occurred. Once the event has been solved, the siblings are shown to use anything recovered from their findings as payment for tickets back to their own home through–you’ll never guess–Kisaragi station! It all comes together! There’s a lot more to this, though I haven’t gotten that far yet and the manga is still ongoing so it’ll be years before we see where the author, Nujima, is taking this series.

      What is certain though is that for those who like creepypasta fanservice and closeup shot style fanservice are going to be intrigued by the blend here. It seems quite ridiculous to highlight Ogawa’s body as the connecting element when Ogawa herself is the protagonist, but the series finds a way to make it work. Rather than fall into the age-old trap of “damsel in distress,” Ogawa being the adult amongst the children here gives her more of a leg up as the woman in charge here. You could argue that she’s technically the mother figure based on this description, but the counterargument to that is that while the three do work together, they’re not inseparable.

      Scenes exist with all of them together or just one of them alone or with other minor characters. All of them are well-written with their own goals and desires and none of them feels as though they’re held up by the other. That it’s mainly psychological horror is another plus for me. Honestly, I would’ve been turned off by anything horror as a kid, but now that I’m an adult and I’ve watched a few of the classic horror movies before they were ruined by their own franchising (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Scream, etc.), I realized that there’s still better ways to horror and thriller and Mysterious Disappearances is a better example of that.

      All 12 episodes are available on Crunchyroll, but if you don’t feel like watching 12 of the same old advertisements, then you already know what I’m gonna say.

      Because I’m behind schedule, I doubt I can guarantee a full review of Undead Unluck season 1 by the 30th, not to mention another topic lined up was pushed back due to the research I did for these two series in this post, so instead I’ll try to get back on track either the 29th (tomorrow) or sometime during the 4th of July weekend. The next topic I have concerns a manga that never got off the ground. Here’s a sneak-peek:

      Also, the recommendations should return too.

      Working in a Hidden Away Restaurant in Rome

      TiberiusLeave a comment

      Been a while since we did a double bill

      Part of the fortune of covering a series done by the same author is that I don’t have to thumb through another file to look for another series. Last time I did this was when I was covering the two GTAs that seemed to get ignored by modern Rockstar Games: Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories. These double bills are rare sadly, but this time around I’ve got another series by Natsume Ono: Ristorante Paradiso.

      Definitely not the first time a mangaka took their audience to Italy for a story, but instead of chasing an enigmatic mob boss with dissociative identity disorder, this Seinen series is largely crime free. Drama on the other hand goes hand in hand with the panna cotta and insalata mista. Similar to the other series, House of Five Leaves, Ristorante Paradiso also features a diverse cast of characters in background and thought. The story follows a young culinary school graduate, Nicoletta, who started her journey tracking down her estranged mother for the purpose of sabotaging her livelihood after discovering she operates a restaurant in a small corner in Rome. The reason for this vendetta stems from her mother, Olga, leaving Nicoletta with Nicoletta’s grandparents while she went off to get remarried. I can see a number of ways to handle this immaturely, but from what I’ve seen, Ono handles it better than some of the other works where a connecting element is a character’s issues with an absentee parent or abandonment, then again some of those other works portray it as a balding punchline. That, or they try to take it seriously but it falls flat on its face.

      Doesn’t exactly mean Nicoletta’s forgiven her mother for that, only that her priorities are elsewhere for the time being. As for the other characters, there’s one older man named Claudio who is legally separated from his wife, so he’s free to date whomever he pleases, but keeps the ring on to dissuade any women from pursuing him, though Nicoletta developed a crush on him after working with him.

      Speaking of men who just want to live their lives drama free, another one of the older characters is Luciano. He keeps to himself and also turns down most women’s advances to remain loyal to his departed wife. The anime presents him as cold and stonelike, but he secretly cares a lot about his daughter and grandson. Vito is a flirty type though his heart belongs to a college student he met while working out. And there’re several other characters working at the restaurant, all with different backgrounds and connections to one another.

      The series is more about the people working and dining at the restaurant than the meals so don’t expect anything of the likes of, say, Shokugeki no Soma or Dagashi Kashi where the focus is on the eats. Rather, it’s related to a joke within the Golden Kamuy community about the series being an Ainu cooking show that just so happens to feature gold treasure and a rogue unit of IJA soldiers. The restaurant ties everyone together in a way.

      What I have to praise about Natsume Ono is that she creates her characters from nearly every angle. Of all the aspects that aren’t given a lot of mind, she chisels out the finest details from those characters and puts them at the forefront of her writing. I also like how she includes minor details. In Ristorante Paradiso, what is addressed is that a lot of the male staff is wearing glasses and this is by design. Nicoletta’s mother, Olga, has a thing for men in thin frames and thus makes it a part of the dress code. And you don’t need a real prescription for glasses. I forget who, but one of the characters got around this by wearing glasses without any lenses in them.

      It’s a short series that has the skeleton of an anthology but isn’t as rigid as one. Ono seems to do quite a lot with very little, and as I’d found out for the research of this post, that’s not a hyperbolic statement considering Ristorante Paradiso lasts only one volume despite running for a year. House of Five Leaves, however, ran for eight volumes over the course of five years. It’s also worth noting that Ono writes BL manga under the pen name of basso, so this may have to do more with these stories being very short as opposed to a writing philosophy. Juggling multiple works at a time can get to be a hassle, but this is me thinking, so don’t quote me on anything.

      Funnily enough, there is a playlist of the Ristorante Paradiso episodes, but the one I found has a few missing episodes, so if you can stand to do so, a Crunchyroll subscription should do it or if for whatever reason (I won’t judge) you don’t want them to have access to your credit card information then put on a straw hat and challenge the world government from the seven seas.

      For May 25, 2024, I introduce you to Kaho Shibuya.

      Home
      https://www.kaho-shibuya.com

      This is a bit unorthodox for a recommendation. Google lied to me about her having a YouTube channel all her own; the closest she is to being on YouTube is multiple collaborations with the Trash Taste podcast, either individually with the hosts or on select episodes as a guest, or in interviews about her previous life, but fortunately Ms. Shibuya does have her own website as you can see linked above.

      Kaho Shibuya left the life of an adult video actress (read: Japanese porn star) behind her to pursue something closer to her heart. These days, Ms. Shibuya has begun streaming on Twitch, she cosplays as different characters from anime and video games, she’s dabbled a few times in voice acting, and she even has a book on what she’s witnessed of the Japanese porn industry. These days, people discover her from her cosplays or collabs than of her previous work. If all that sounds like it’s up your alley, click the link above and see what’s in store.

      A Lookback at House of Five Leaves

      TiberiusLeave a comment

      Filling in some time during the pandemic

      The accursed year of 2020 was a lot of things to people and only a few of those things were good. I recall searching for something to occupy my time while trapped in the dungeon and going back to that Looper article, I thought about looking for a review for a certain anime I’d definitely not heard of prior to reading it: House of Five Leaves, known in Japanese as Sarai-ya Goyou. Created by Natsume Ono.

      Set during the Edo period, it’s about a samurai warrior named Akitsu Masanosuke who very much has the skills of a seasoned warrior, but his timid demeanor loses him a client. The perfect samurai is meant to be intimidating, tough, and unflinching and this guy is shy, unassuming, and nervous. Sort of like Season 1 Mob.

      Masanosuke doesn’t really meet the expectations or idea of a warrior even for the time period, which is the point of the series. It takes all the tropes associated with most samurai media and flips them on their head while also grounding the Edo period into reality. One could reasonably put two and two together based on what they know about the Tokugawa period and the Sakoku policy that a class of people defined by war in a time where there aren’t any wars anymore makes for a band of money-hungry and utterly reckless scoundrels… for the most part.

      In reality, most samurai were just as diabolically malicious as the enemies they claimed to defeat in combat. Just like medieval knights, both of these warriors have a lot of stories real and mythical surrounding them.

      This doesn’t reflect either class as a whole as lots of knights and samurai did have human decency and protect the weak as servants of the people, but being of nobility in Europe and Japan respectively, it meant that there was a lot of power shared by a diverse group of people of different thoughts and intentions. Focusing on Japan, some samurai were excellent and deserving of their position, others were fine with just the bare minimum of simply being there and the rest were heinously dangerous criminals abusing their positions for personal gain. Yeah, there’s no shortage of all three of these the world over; it’s the same old song no matter where you go. And I like that. It reminds you that there’s a difference between being something and being able to do something on a moral level.

      So House of Five Leaves is generally about a nervous man who’s too gentle to throw the first punch, or in this case, swing the blade first. Plot wise, he finds himself in with the wrong crowd. Part of the downside of being gentle is not having the spine to put your foot down, which is how Masanosuke finds himself embedded with a group of criminals, functionally early inductees of what we now know as the Yakuza.

      It’s hard to say when and how the Yakuza started, but based on my description of the Edo period making for restless ronin eager for battle some theories suggest that this is the most likely case for how the Yakuza morphed over centuries to become recognized as an organized crime group in Japan. For Masanosuke, these criminals specialize in theft and call themselves the Five Leaves. Their enigmatic leader, Yaichi, offers him the position of bodyguard which he reluctantly agrees to.

      Again, he has the skills of a samurai, but doesn’t have the intimidation reflective of most other warriors in the Edo period. A worse person would jump at the offer and use whatever excuse there is to cut anyone in two. That said, there’s more to the series than just Masanosuke’s navigating this group of thieves and savages he just said yes to out of desperation.

      Yaichi is one of the more interesting characters in the story. He keeps his personal history very close to his chest, playing things off as though he’s simply living life to the fullest. Other members of his gang or known associates who have some kind of connection to him or the gang share their own stories. An ex-thief named Matsukichi works as a beauty ornament manufacturer by day and a spymaster by night, contributing to the beauty of the women while also listening in on the Five Leaves’ potential targets. A tavern owner named Umezo who walked in the same sandals as the others but requested retirement from that lifestyle for safety’s sake, which was granted surprisingly enough. If you know a thing or two about organized crime groups, cults, secret societies, etc., they rarely let you go without a type of debt to pay…

      …but in this case (slight spoiler), the loss of his skills weren’t gonna change how the gang operated. He also had a young family to put ahead of himself. Finally, there’s a geisha named Otake who was made to work off a large debt by way of entertainment (as was the standard practice/purpose of a geisha at the time) until Yaichi intervened financially.

      Only a 1-cour anime series, it takes you into their eyes and what they go up against. The struggles, the nuances, the desires expressed; this was the anime that inspired my first accursed blog back in 2021… before it cha-cha slid off a cliff. I don’t want to link to that blog anymore; I’m trying to put it behind me, but it keeps coming back and I don’t even think it was a good showcase of my writing. But at least it inspired me to start this one which I’m more proud of.

      Back to Five Leaf Clover Gang: my search for a review and recommendation on YouTube led to a playlist with all the episodes on it. People are really getting around YouTube’s copyright strike hammer to get some classics onto the platform like Azumanga Daioh and Lucky☆Star. There exists one spoiler free review on YouTube from over nine years ago following the trends that I’ve been going with so far with anime, awesome reception s[DIO wrryyyy]t sales.

      Channel: AnimeEveryday

      Keep in mind that this isn’t an action-heavy series, at least the anime isn’t. Don’t go in expecting Masanosuke to swing a sword all the time, because he’s not that kind of guy. He wasn’t written to be that kind of guy and I think it’s an advantage the series has over its contemporaries and progenitors. I like to think of it as the kind of anime that explores the issues people face daily, even if it’s set in the Edo period and if you choose to give it a watch as well, you think so too. The link is up above. Happy watching!

      You’re Under Arrest: The Buddy Cop Anime

      TiberiusLeave a comment

      Meme tourism brought me here

      I’m not making up that statement by the way, I did find this anime through a meme. This one specifically:

      Channel: Vinicius Costa

      I highly doubt that a single meme motivated everyone who saw it to dig deeper into what the anime was about, especially since on My Anime List it’s quite low in popularity for a ’90s anime, but reviews on both MAL, and even on Amazon for the novelization going as far back as 2000 give it high praise, so the conclusion to draw from this observation is that the series is yet another cult classic series.

      Created by Kosuke Fujishima and running from 1986 to 1992, You’re Under Arrest, also known as Taiho Shichauzo in Japanese, is essentially a buddy cop manga. Like Gunsmith Cats, the series has a pair of tomboy protagonists with a rotating cast, but unlike Gunsmith Cats, it has more than the manga and an OVA to its name. Actually, the Wikipedia page lists three TV seasons, multiple OVAs, a movie and even a video game. One essentially wins a popularity contest at the time of release and then some while the other sees renewed interest after decades of sitting on a shelf with a family of dust bunnies. Maybe this is an indictment on the cultures of the targeted audiences–the western audience championing the lampooning of a government agency (even though they’re not that bad in the series) whereas the Japanese audience loves and adores the portrayal of the police in the series because it rings somewhat true of Japanese police behavior IRL.

      It could be something else I haven’t looked at, but for all intents and purposes, You’re Under Arrest had a lot more going for it so if Fujishima had any doubts of success, those doubts must’ve been dashed when it came time for the anime release. Released in 1996, season 1 of the series starts off with an introduction to our two leads, Natsumi Tsujimoto and her partner against crime, Miyuki Kobayakawa. Other characters include but are not limited to Ken Nakajima, Yoriko Nikaido, and interestingly a trans character Aoi Futaba.

      As a buddy cop series, it sorta fits the bill of what could be seen in shows like Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It doesn’t take itself too seriously and shows the more relatable human elements between the cast members. Uniformed or not, there will never not be an organization of people being weird or spontaneous on an off day. Talk to veterans about the stupid things they’ve done in service during their time off and you’ll be cracking like an egg from all the jokes and off-color humor.

      Credit: 22 January 2016; Uriarte, Maximilian; Terminal Lance Comics

      For plot, most of the time the characters are either goofing off or just performing their duties as police officers. It’s framed as the sort of episodic anime series that you can kick your feet up to, though it’s not light on the action either. The policing part of the job in You’re Under Arrest is a mix of the standard issuing of tickets, tracking down minor law violations and whatnot to tracking down and arresting criminals, aiding the elderly and defenseless, and overall being a pillar of the community. And spending enough time on the internet may open you up to some snarky comments about policing in most western countries, but that’s getting off topic.

      Unless you are that type of person, it’s an unoffensive series that has a lot of heart, humor, and complexity to it. The characters are fun and energetic, and (slight spoiler) for those who have feelings for each other, there comes the question of whether this is a conflict of interest. Are the risks worth it to be with each other and whatnot.

      This video also says much of the same about the series:

      Channel: Anime Top Scholar

      While viewing the series, one thing I noticed was the meticulous attention to detail, especially for a hand-drawn ’90s anime. Little to no details are left out from objects or people reflected in windows, to water effects during rain or storms even to the response of the gauges in the vehicles. Fujishima and the people at Studio Deen did well on their research for the series. There are some minor errors as expected–no one is perfect–but it’s not too much of a distracting unless you’re a certain type of person.

      Users on MAL gave it an overall score of 7.6 out of 10. Normally, I stray away from a numbers system not so much out of principle or preference, but largely because to a certain degree I understand the argument that a numbers rating system trivializes or undermines the whole review. Spending all that time to write a long- if not well-thought out opinion piece on a certain piece of entertainment, brought to its knees by a scale. Not changing my rule, but for the most part, I’d bump it up to a solid 8 out of 10.

      The full series is available on YouTube, as someone was based enough to share it for the rest of us without concern for monetization. Trying my best not to jinx it, but if you search it up on YouTube one day and the playlist is absent, you already know what to do.

      I was never here.