Anime Reviews

The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated – Episode 8 (ANN)

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Long story long? No, but let’s expand on this because… well, this is a review. So… episode 8 is premised around one thing and one thing only: Jahy getting to take a bath that’s not in her “pathetic little tub”, which is a direct quote from the cold open and the most relatable mood if you’ve ever lived in Japan and had to clamber into an ofuro while being over five foot tall. And like so many of Jahy’s foibles, this means a true test of endurance as Jahy encounters all manner of trial and tribulation just to splish splash take a bath, which… expected, hilariously brutal, and so utterly relatable.

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Remake Our Life! – Episode 12 / Season Finale (ANN)

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Episode 12 pulls all these fascinating plot threads together into a beautiful tapestry of a show that is quite frankly about the struggles of being an adult and desperately wanting to succeed, of wanting to be a good person and succeed. It was never about Kyoya getting married or getting new friends or even just, I don’t know, having a better life: it was about him becoming a better person. The Kyoya we’re leaving the show with is so different than the young man we met at the beginning, and that’s honestly for the better. I genuinely think Kyoya’s growth was quite organic, and while the magical realism of his time-traveling are fictional, they ultimately didn’t hamper what is a genuinely heartfelt story.

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Kageki Shojo!! – Episode 13 / Season Finale (ANN)

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Kageki Shojo!! episode 13 is beautiful way to say goodbye, though it definitely leaves room to say hello once again. It’s got all the elements that make a solid episode: drama, character growth, and female friendship, and it all SLAPS, right up to the credits. Hats off to all the people who worked on this: the localization is gold, and leaves me hungry for the dub, whenever that drops.

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The aquatope on white sand – Episode 12 (ANN)

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Episode 12 is very much so the end of a cour. It’s a finale episode, marking the end of Gama Gama Aquarium and the end of childhood, in a way. There’s no more halcyon days for Kukuru, at least not within Gama Gama’s four walls. Her time there will, like so many things, become memories, potentially to propel her to work for Aquarium Tingaara, or even elsewhere in Okinawa, if she allows her the opportunity. Things are similarly up in the air for the rest of the younger cast: true, they have their aspirations, but… nothing is concrete by the time this episode finishes. Nothing is sure, and sometimes… that’s just how life really, truly is.

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Review: Super Cub (Jotaku)

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super cub anime

The series is a celebration of mundane delights, and relishes in the everyday moments like not getting rained on, playing in the snow, eating a train station bento, and seeing the seasons change. It magnifies the ordinary, making it extraordinary by virtue of celebrating the small things that often feel grand.

Read the rest of my Super Cub anime review on the Jotaku Network

The aquatope on white sand – Episode 10 & 11 (ANN)

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Despite Gama Gama’s sad fate, this episode doesn’t forget to sprinkle in a bit of comedy. There’s a really good scene where Kukuru consults fortune-telling in order to divine Gama Gama’s future. There’s also an entirely unfunny scene of Kai’s sister saying that he should get with Fuuka (because she’s a classic beauty), but then again, comedy is always subjective.

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Kageki Shojo!! – Episode 11 & 12 (ANN)

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In the end, both of these episodes are strong reminders of why Kageki Shojo!! continues to be a fantastic series. It not only successfully portrays the intense, heightened drama that already latently exists in high school, but centers that between young women (by this, I mean anyone who is socialized female, and definitely mean maginalized genders), most of whom experience some level of queer, non-romantic sapphicism in their friendships. 

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The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated – Episode 6 & 7 (ANN)

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TL;DR: The Great Jahy is exactly that: great, and if you’re not watching, well… why not dive deep into the world of everyone’s favorite demoness today? If you need some levity in the year of our lord, 2021, you honestly can’t go wrong with this very fun and very funny reverse isekai about one demoness’ attempts to survive and maybe even thrive on this beautiful blue marble of ours.

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Remake Our Life! – Episode 10 & 11 (ANN)

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While I have mixed feelings about episode 10 versus episode 11, what I can easily say about these two episodes is that these are… brutally realistic, but in a satisfying, understandable way. Kyoya having to deal with backlash against his company’s smartphone game aches in an intensely relatable way, as does the fallout he and Eiko face.

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The aquatope on white sand – Episode 9 (ANN)

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Chiyu represents everything that Gama Gama is not: she’s from a stylish, slick new aquarium that sits in the city center, and turns her nose up at the thought of going to a “failing” aquarium. Chiyu and Kukuru’s tenuous work relationship is a showcase of this episode, but what I really want to focus on with this review is Chiyu herself, because so far, our viewpoint characters have mostly been kids—okay, teenagers, but kids nonetheless.

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