An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

And Now For Something Mostly Different – “Oshi no Ko” Spoiler Review (Season 1)

Part of why I run this blog is to address and highlight different shows. Shows that may have been forgotten. I don’t like jumping on the bandwagon of the latest and greatest thing. Even my seasonal write-ups, which might hit popular recent entries, I do more as reactions than as proper reviews, because I think for a fair review you usually need at least a reasonably complete bit of material and a chance to really process it.

Even when I go after big names and landmark classics, I try to make sure I have something at least a little original to say about them. I may not always succeed, but if there’s something that everyone has seen and everyone has written about, what’s the point of me throwing one more identical review on the pile? Well, completeness and the ability to refer to it at later dates can factor in, but that’s not the case this time.

When I decided to do a review of Oshi no Ko (I will dispense with the quotes), I didn’t have that point lined up… because I hadn’t yet watched Oshi no Ko. To be sure, I was aware of it as it was coming out, since that was only last year. With a sterling reputation and a second season that will start airing between me writing this and this going live, it would be weirder – positively unnatural – if I hadn’t heard of Oshi no Ko. But I hadn’t watched it, and I hadn’t really followed it or indulged spoilers either. I knew in a vague sense that it was a drama – not so much a comedy – based on a manga by the same author as Kaguya-sama: Love is War and that it “got” a lot of folks with some sort of twist deployed early, but not what that might have been. I was prepared to look at it sight unseen to attempt to answer the question: Was it really as good as the hype?

Typically when I’ve asked that question before, it’s been with shows that have been overhyped beyond madness, but oddly enough I didn’t feel that way about Oshi no Ko. It was an award winner, that much was certain, which carries with it a certain weight, but while it was broadly beloved it didn’t seem to have the cultish following certain other shows acquired. I don’t know if I just didn’t travel in the right circles for that, but the bar of public opinion, which I am set to either support or stand against, is still a mortal level of quality.

The task set, let us begin.

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Anime Expo 2024 Day 1 — Selected Previews

Sometimes an anime reviewer goes to an anime con.  At those times, it seems prudent to report on some of what was seen.  Today, I have impressions of Guilty Gear Strive: Dual Rulers, Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary, Witch Hat Atelier, and The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to be Archenemies, based on their panels.

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School Shooting – Upotte!! Spoiler Review

Years before Girls’ Frontline, there was another anime that presented cute girls who were also, somehow, famed military combat rifles. While Moe Anthropomorphizations are common enough, there’s always that little hurdle of getting used to them, especially when it’s not just in the background but rather direct about the concept.

Enter Upotte!! (the title is very excited), that aforementioned show about guns who are also cute girls doing cute things (while going to school and learning how to gun better). At a mere 10 episodes there is, for better or worse, not that much to get through, and it’s hard to imagine it being less effective than GFL was, so let’s go ahead and dig in.

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Immortal Genre – Kemono Jihen Spoiler Review

The world has been saturated with Isekai for so long that it’s hard to remember sometimes that there are other genres that are or were nearly as overused. Some are up and coming like the Modern Dungeon setting with Video Game powers, which has had one of its core pillars adapted fairly recently. Others are old, and kind of fallen out of favor. I have a weird affection for the Battle School sort of genre even if they had a lot of copy-paste, but the Masquerade Supernatural Battler is also up there for action setups that have been around the block a few times. I’ve reviewed no few of them over the life of this blog, and Kemono Jihen… is another?

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Turning Over the Right Leaf – Kemurikusa Spoiler Review

Rarely have I seen a story that just decides to throw the viewer into a such a bonkers scenario without building any real investment or reason to care as Kemurikusa does in its first episode. Does that proclamation sound sudden, like it’s missing the preamble I would usually include in one of these reviews? Good! Because that means it represents the show’s opening fairly well.

So, let’s get the first episode out. We open with two redhead girls who identify as sisters and seem to have supernatural powers getting excited over the discovery of a pool of water on “the island”. They need to report back so “the roots” can gather it, and in the mean time are worried about “red bugs”. Sure enough one of those appears, the very mechanical-seeming black-with-crimson-lights insect like giant monster that one of the girls has to fight while telling the other to run back to base. The girl told to run, though, evidently didn’t and instead went for the water site again, encountering another red bug along the way.

The fighter girl (having conversed with the other sister, who has catgirl ears and mannerisms and manipulates glowing green filaments that are presumably “roots”) finds the little sister dying, having performed some kind of mutual kill with the bug. She dissolves into pink wireframe leaves as the other girl we’ve known for maybe five minutes grieves and the audience wonders how much we should really care about this mess. 

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