An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Back to School, and Back Again – Sakurada Reset Spoiler Review

Time Travel anime. Much like Video Game Anime (aside from the Visual Novel set) have a bad habit of coming out mediocre at best, Time Travel shows have an odd habit of turning out really well. That isn’t to say there aren’t exceptions: RErideD was a notable flop, and not everything else is uniformly great, so despite the topic garnering at least a little interest on its own, the piece does still have to deliver.

This is especially true when you start to get into the genre soup category. Time travel show? Sounds fun, let’s see if that’s right. Schoolkids, mysteries, superpowers for everyone and time regression is involved? It sounds like Sakurada Reset.

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Yer a Ninja, Ittoki – Shinobi no Ittoki Spoiler Review

Ninjas are cool. School settings are cool. Therefore, school ninjas should be perfectly doable! Sure, Senran Kagura made a poor anime, but the game was fine. Surely this concept can be used elsewhere.

Enter Shinobi no Ittoki, the story of a normal overworked schoolboy who finds out he’s a ninja about as abruptly as Harry Potter learns he’s a wizard. And like Potter, he’s got to go to school to live up to that powerful proclamation.

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5 Girls, 1 Brain Cell; or, Who To Bill for Fourth Wall Repairs – Chronicles of the Going Home Club Spoiler (?) Review

Unlike many of my peers, I didn’t find High School to be a hellish experience. It certainly had its downs as well as its ups, but on the whole I’d consider those years to have left a positive mark on my life. Even with that perspective, though, Anime High School seems like an idealized dream. Even when the students aren’t learning to be super-powered fighters of some sort, they’ve got busy social calendars and, of course, the charm of club activities.

Not every character, however, fills out some after-school time meeting with like-minded friends, however. Some are members of the “Going Home Club”, and are thus cheerfully inclined to depart at the closing bell and return to their residence posthaste. This is what main character Natsuki Andou thought she was getting into when she said she intended to join the Going Home Club…

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