Summer ’24 Mid-Season Report, part 2

This part of the report is for series which are hitting their seventh (or, in one case, sixth) episode during the week of 8/18. Plus, I’m adding in one series that I skipped last week but am now caught up on. Since this group is a bit larger, let’s get right to business!

Bye Bye, Earth

Rating: B

I have way more that I want to say about this series and what it’s doing than I can even come close to fitting into the single-paragraph format that I use for this exercise, so I am reserving commentary on this series for a full review at the end of the season. For now, suffice to say that no other fantasy series this season – or even any recent season, for that matter – even faintly resembles this one on the world-building front, for better or worse. (Any by “worse,” I mean that it sometimes tries too hard to be completely different.)

Dungeon People

Rating So Far: B

Stories about building and/or maintaining dungeons are a veritable subgenre in manga, but this is, I believe, the first title of its ilk to make it to anime form. (That’s probably at least partly because the subgenre is heavy with titles that are extremely risqué if not outright hentai.) Because of that, setting a baseline for the series is difficult. This one definitely favors the cute and more light-hearted side, with at least a whiff of yuri baiting, but as the most recent episode shows, it is also capable of veering into intense violence on rare occasions. It isn’t a particularly exciting series, but the central duo is quite likable and the behind-the-scenes details about how the dungeon works range from amusing to intriguing. Would like to see more “why” to go with the “how” here, but it has been reliable low-key entertainment so far.

Failure Frame

Rating: C

During the Preview Guide I accused this title of being a blatant ARIFURETA knock-off, and little that has happened in the six episodes since (the series took a week off between episodes 6 and 7) has dissuaded me from that impression. The loli vampire mage has been replaced by sexy elf paladin, the bunny girl warrior is apparently being replaced by a leopard woman gladiator, and a slime has been tossed in, but the tone and edgelord attitude isn’t fundamentally much different. The series is also still using 3D CG more as a crutch than a feature and offering nothing in terms of fresh plotting or character development. Episode 7 is a marked improvement on all fronts, to the point that the series is now a little compelling, but a few more episodes like that are needed to elevate the series above being the season’s trashiest title. And yet I’m still willingly watching it.

Love is Indivisible by Twins

Rating So Far: C+

The basic premise and first episode strongly suggested that this would be one of the most soap opera-ish shows to come along in some time, and for better or worse, that’s mostly how the first seven episodes have played out. By this point, the boy caught in the middle between the twin sisters shown above (Jun) has now dated and been dumped by both of them, though both of them to some degree are still carrying a torch for him, and now the gyaru-type that Jun has been convinced to tutor is in the mix, too, and is absolutely not flirting with him. (Nope, it means nothing when you go out in front of your teen male house guest in your underwear after making him wait for you to take a shower.) The series is making an effort to broaden its appeal by throwing out a boatload of geeky references, but for all its messy gimmicks, it has yet to find any characters or plot threads that I care much about. I’ll probably finish the series, but of all the titles in the two parts of this exercise, this one is the closest to being dropped.

Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!

Rating So Far: A-

This is unquestionably one of the best-looking and best-animated series of the season (despite having essentially no action scenes), and that’s not all this series has going for it. Much of the first few episodes is a thoroughly meta accounting of common anime/light novel/manga romcom tropes, to the degree that those not well-versed in such fare may not fully appreciate how cleverly the writing is exploiting those tropes. The angle of focusing on the girls who wind up losing in love triangles is a fresh one, providing plenty of meaty character interactions as all of the cast members around Kazuhiko sort out their feelings while he observes, serves as a sounding board, and/or gets caught in the middle of the angsty teen drama. The well-defined cast finds plenty of opportunities for humor, and the regular installments of ridiculous novel names (which, in intentional irony, are hardly outrageous compared to fare that really exists) is a recurring treat. This is shaping up to be one of the best romantic dramedies in recent years.

Mission: Yozakura Family

Rating So Far: B-

The first half of this series mostly consisted of vignettes featuring Taiyo adjusting to his new life as the super-spy husband of Mutsumi, but the second half has progressed to a more plot-driven focus, and the series is better for it. The seven episodes so far this season have explored the secret organization targeting Mutsumi (and especially why they’re doing it) and what connections that organization has to the death of Taiyo’s family, a topic which has long been intimated but only recently been brought to the forefront. I’m a little concerned about the sense of power creep here as Taiyo gets involved in increasingly more hairy situations, but there have been enough interesting revelations to offset that and Kyoichiro’s antics have mercifully been less frequent. Still not a great series, but it remains decently entertaining.

Plus-Sized Elf

Rating So Far: C, or B if this is your thing

I wasn’t actually following this one, but I had some extra time and was morbidly curious to see how it would play out as more supernatural women got added into the cast, so I marathoned it to get caught up. Yep, what you see in the first episode of this one is exactly what you get with the rest of the series. Each half-length episode adds a new non-human, so by episode 8 we have a dark elf, a mermaid, a satyr, an ogre, a cyclops, a dragon, a kobold, and a werewolf in the mix, all of them on the chubby side to some degree and seeking help from Naoe to either lose weight in general or tone certain body parts. Each episode also features some kind of exercise, massage, or meditation technique designed to help lose weight, as well as regular doses of (often nudity-laced) fan service. It all can be a bit funny, but I still can’t recommend this except for those who prefer their women on the meaty side.

Shy

Rating So Far: B

This season of Shy has mostly continued to be what the first season was for me: not a title that I can get overly excited about but still solid entertainment. Through Teruko still well lives up to her code name, seeing her gradually grow in confidence and perseverance has its own appeal, and I’m increasingly starting to like her in action moments, too. She’ll never be the brawler that some of her fellow heroes are, but her strong empathy makes her much more flexible and capable of influencing those around her positively. She’s essentially the antithesis of Stigma and definitely the key to ultimately defeating him. The ninja angle this season has also been a bit interesting (if also very cliche) and the personalities of some of the Amarariku members have started to shine through, too. This is an easy series to underestimate.

The Magical Girl and Evil Lieutenant Used To Be Enemies

Rating So Far: B-

Normally, expanding a cast is an essential part of keeping a series – especially a comedy series – afloat for a whole season. However, the exact point where this series starts getting less funny coincides with the introduction of Byakuya’s former friend Hibana, the second magical girl. She’s an utter contrast to Byakuya: dark hair, wealthy background, and a demeanor that’s anything but reserved. Her shtick about half of her dialog being some variation on “fuck” and suddenly shifting from being cute to animalistic violence isn’t anywhere near as funny as it was meant to be, and it definitely gets in the way of the series’ main appeal: how helpless Mira is before Byakuya’s adorably pathetic state and how determined he is to hide that from his fellows. The expanded look at the nature of magical girl familiars is a little interesting, but it doesn’t help in reestablishing the fine balance the series achieved through the first five episodes. (I probably would have graded this series a B+ after episode 5.) Hopefully the series can regain its footing as it progresses.

The Ossan Newbie Adventurer

Rating: C

In just about every respect, this is the brother series to I Parry Everything, even down to the male lead having a petite teenage girl try to coax him into training her and a somewhat older, strong woman as an additional regular companion. Rick here isn’t quite as dense as Noor is in the other series, but as someone who’s long worked for an Adventurer’s Guild, he has less excuse for not having a sense of scale on his strength, too. The level of technical and artistic merits are about the same between the two series as well, though the balance of them is different. (Characters tend to be more consistently on-model here but the designs are less appealing, for instance.) The only real significant differences right now are that this version of the “30ish guy becomes an adventurer more powerful than he realizes” concept takes itself decidedly less seriously but leans quite a bit more into fan service. I find this one to be watchable but slightly less interesting than the other, hence the slightly lower grade.

VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral after Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream

Rating So Far: A-

I don’t follow the VTuber scene at all, and yet I still find this series to be one of the most raucously funny anime titles I’ve seen in years. It mostly doesn’t bother with a plot, instead just throwing the different VTubers together to bounce off central character Awayuki (and her drunken Shuwa persona) in totally whacked-out, sometimes very dirty exchanges, and it absolutely works. Somewhere in the midst of this it finds some room for genuine character and relationship development, too, and its many odd visual gimmicks (the VTubers always appear like their online avatars even while not online, while everyone else is a featureless, headless humanoid) help give it a very distinctive flare as well, but it’s the antics and copious text commentaries which keep me coming back. It’s also had a different OP each episode, each time featuring a different in-universe VTuber. I could see this one becoming a standard-setter for its emerging genre.

Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?

Rating So Far: C+

Somewhat surprisingly, this one is being carried more by its premise than its content. Kai hasn’t so much been transported to another world as his world has been overwritten, but who has done that, and why, is the guiding mystery for the series as Kai and the allies who assemble around him confront two of the Heroes of the other races. Sure, there’s also the mystery of what blonde girl Rinne is and why (she seems to be an amalgamation of all five races), but through the first seven episodes that’s a secondary matter. Everything else about the series – characters, design elements, animation, action scenes, story execution – is completely unremarkble, though in each case at least a minor step up from the other Kei Sazane-originating series this season (i.e., Our Last Crusade). It is a somewhat entertaining series, but more a time-killer than a priority view.

Wistoria: Wand and Sword

Rating So Far: B

While I’m not crazy about some aspects of its visual aesthetic (especially Will’s extra-lanky design), this series unquestionably stands with The Elusive Samurai and Makeine as one of the season’s best-animated titles, with some truly astounding action sequences being highlights. Its story – essentially a standard “outcast at magic school” affair – is far less special, hence the reason why I’m not scoring this one higher at this point. That doesn’t mean Will’s goals or the true motive of one of his chief antagonists aren’t compelling, or that there’s a lack of background intrigues, and I do appreciate how the story eschews typical comedy antics and takes itself almost entirely seriously, but I’ll need to see something a bit fresher in the characterizations and plotting to be fully won over. Still, it’s a solid view that I can recommend and its most recent episode was, arguably, its strongest.

That’s it for now. The next special will be a review for Terminator Zero, assuming it gets released as a batch on August 29th. (If it ends up being a weekly release instead then it will be reviewed at the end of its run.)