An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Month: July 2025

Tits, Ass, Set, and Match – Harukana Recieve Spoiler Review

If there ever was a topic that begged to be used for fanservice, it’s beach volleyball – a sport famously played in bikinis to the possibly prurient enjoyment of viewers everywhere. Given how Cute Girls Sports Anime is basically its own genre it seems utterly natural that someone, eventually, would decide to make a show about beach volleyball. At least that sport actually exists. The show that emerges in response to that inevitably is Harukana Receive, with which we might as well try to have some fun in the sun.

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Anime Film Club: Field Trip to the Digital Land of OZ – Summer Wars Spoiler Review

Well, the weather is hot, the days are long, and most folks just want to do one thing about now: stay inside and play video games! Well, watching movies also tends to come up, so I guess it’s fitting that I’d tackle Summer Wars, a movie about the digital world.

Historically, I’ve been pretty sparse about reviewing movies (rather than series) on the blog, but this summer I’m going to set that aside for a little “film club”, working through a few specific titles with more typical fare between, and there didn’t seem a better place to start than this. True, of director Mamoru Hosoda’s filmography, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time would probably be the first on many folks’ lists, but Summer Wars fits the season and is nearly as well regarded.

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Seasonal Selection – Kamitsubaki City Under Construction Episodes 0 & 1

I’ll be totally honest right here at the start – I’ve never watched a Vtuber yet. I don’t have any real antipathy towards the idea but to date that hasn’t really been part of my media sphere, following such personalities and their exploits. I’ve heard a little music and been introduced to some of their visual designs, and that’s about it.

I mention this because Kamitsubaki City Under Construction is supposed to be part of a bigger vtuber-driven or at least vtuber-centered multimedia project including original songs, a visual novel game, and of course this anime outing. But I’m coming into this show from the perspective of, essentially, a new viewer. Total sight unseen. And for the duration of this seasonal, I’ll avoid changing that even if I want to, so I can continue to assess each episode from the same anime-only perspective rather than suddenly jumping some week to “it’s no longer a blind run”

From the “first two” episodes (Episode 0 and the proper Episode 1, though I don’t know why they were cut that way), I can say at least it has my attention.

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