Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
You know how this goes. This time I’m also doing some writeups on sequels for shows I’ve previously covered here on MPA. Other than that, business as usual for one of these roundup posts.
Gachiakuta: A new shonen series, and an alright one overall so far, I think. It’s very edgy, and the social commentary is so heavy handed you can physically feel it while watching. But, I think this is if some teenager’s first exposure to a story that explores class dynamics that’s cool. Personally I think I am maybe a bit too old for this (a feeling I do not have with better shonen anime despite that still being kinda objectively true with those as well) but I’ll give it another episode, it may win me over.
Hell Teacher: Jigoku Sensei Nube: The problem I always have with anime remakes, and I have them even—maybe especially—when I haven’t seen the original, is that I’d usually rather watch the original, because you can often tell that they’re trying very hard to translate the OG’s style into the current anime landscape. The end result here is an anime that has a bunch of faux-90s affectations despite everything about the show screaming 2025 in terms of direction and animation.
I didn’t think this was bad by any means, and I actually liked the action sequence toward the end of the first episode quite a bit, but I feel like it’s more likely that the rest of the show will look more like the first half of the episode; a parade of pretty lifeless classrooms and just general visual flatness. I’m not sure what to think of it overall beyond wondering if this really does much of anything for anyone. I enjoy shows with this sort of premise, but wouldn’t it have been better to come up with something new instead of just rehashing an IP from 30 years ago? Granted, I get the business reasons for doing this—teenagers who grew up watching the original are in their 40s now and are prime nostalgia market targets—but that doesn’t dampen that the entire endeavor feels rather cynical.
Hotel Inhumans: In a world with seemingly about a thousand replacement-level narou-kei per season (look a few spots below for one of them), it’s really reassuring that something can occasionally step up and show them that it’s possible to suck in interesting, standout ways. Marvel at the unambitious direction and storyboarding, stand in awe at the all-suggestions, incredibly broad writing. Wince at the frightfully generic character designs. Listen to the soothing sound of the hilariously bad music placement. They just do not make many anime that are this hilariously incompetent anymore. If Hotel Inhumans has a selling point, it’s as a throwback to the way bad anime used to be bad 20 years ago, which is only a shame because the core conceit is interesting enough that I imagine the manga this is based on might actually be good. Still, if that appeals to you, then by all means, load it up.
Milky☆Subway: The Galactic Limited Express: A friend1 put me onto this one, and I’m quite glad they did. In overall vibe Milky Subway has a lot more common with other web cartoons I’ve seen than most anime per se, but that’s fine. You’ve got a thing here that takes place in some kind of wacky far-future sci fi setting where there are physical highways and train lines linking different planets. Our two leads are a pair of I’m just gonna say girlfriends, respectively a robot and a demon, who in the short that serves as a setup for this series (“Milky Highway”) get arrested for speeding after they get too into a retro pop song that comes over their car radio.
The action is very fun and snappy and I enjoy the first short a good bit for that reason. The second sees them being press-ganged into community service, to clean a bunch of subway cars. Somehow, this ends up with the robot getting decapitated, although I can’t imagine she’s actually dead-dead given the largely upbeat and comedic nature of these shorts. The proper series (which is what Milky Subway is) will, I suspect, be a how-we-got-here leaning up to that sequence of events.
All told, it’s pretty fun. The setting is really unique and the art is quite fun. The voice acting is also excellent, it has a conversational, casual fuck-around vibe especially in the quieter scenes, and you get the sense that everyone here—including the officer overseeing the other characters’ community service—is in way over their heads. Also the look of the show is Interesting. I’d again compare the art, which is full-3D CGI, reminds me more of, I suppose, Amazing Digital Circus or something? Hardly the best comparison but it’s where my mind went. Overall, this is a very unique little thing. The only “complaint” I have is just that with only 4ish minutes per episode it’s a bit on the slight side, but that’s pretty minor overall. Even then, that’s a benefit, too, since their being so short means they’re very easy to recommend.
KAMITSUBAKI CITY UNDER CONSTRUCTION: I have been a fan, admittedly an off and on one, of v-idol group The Virtual Witch Phenomenon for a few years now, so I was pretty excited when they got their own anime announced. Having since watched the first episode (or technically “zeroeth” episode. Remember that convention? Not the only late-00s/early-10s thing about this show), and indeed the second, since I first wrote the version of this that’s going up on tumblr, I’m pretty baffled by the whole thing.
Despite what one might expect, given that this is being helmed by Ave Mujica director Kakimoto Koudai this isn’t really a music anime in the conventional sense. It’s more of a Madoka Magica / Yuki Yuna / etc. kind of thing. A grisly, dark magical girl series of a sort that was more popular about a decade ago. It stars the V.W.P. playing characters loosely based on themselves. KAF plays Kafu, the main character, which makes sense given that she’s the group’s center. She acquits herself decently as a voice actress, although I imagine most of her sung material (this is also a musical? Sort of?) being in her very high, whispery and peaky register might be a bit of a divisive element for some. (Personally, I’m fond of it, but I could imagine someone not being so.) Despite this, the music is the inarguable highlight here. Everything else is a lot more scattershot.
Visually the show is….okay? Not great. My main complaint is the rigging. This is a 3D series and in slower and more emotional moments the model work is pretty stiff, which is unfortunate. The other aspects of the visuals, especially the use of color and lighting, mostly mask it, but it’s occasionally noticeable. The action scenes are probably the visual highlight, and there are solid setpieces in both episodes to date, but that’s only one element of what the series is trying to do.
My main issue is just that both episodes are incredibly exposition-heavy but manage to be very low on context or stakes in spite of that. Of all things, a giant fish (originally from the “Eat The Past” music video, I think? Admittedly hardly the only music video it’s been in) is a main character, and can also turn into a cute anime boy, Laplace [Sakura Ayane]. He more or less serves as Kafu’s magical girl companion. That’s all well and good, but the premiere just stops dead after its first action sequence so he and a weird bird thing he summons can explain how the setting’s magic works in detail, which is pointless of course, because it’s all technobabble anyway and mostly boils down to “Kafu’s singing makes people feel things and therefore is magical.” In general there’s just a lot of talking, and it’s all a bit much. There are also two time skips by my count in the first episode alone, although the framing of these scenes makes whether they’re actually timeskips or not a little unclear at first, so the series just feels generally very bogged-down and disjointed, with an overall poor command of the basics of visual storytelling.
Initially, I was unwilling to write the show off, but having now seen the second episode, I think I’ll be steering people away from it, as the second episode is unfortunately more of the same. It’s cool that Kafu and the other girls are basically a magical girl Justice League now, I suppose, but the fact that all of the fighting is left to their companions makes this feel pretty hollow. (It’s not just Kafu, all of the VWP girls have a cute anime boy that doubles as an animal summon / stand / whatever. This not only doubles the size of the cast, it also makes the girls themselves, the ostensible focus of this whole series, feel pretty superfluous even if their magical singing is also nominally important.) In general, there’s just a deep incoherence here. A user on this site’s Discord server said Kamitsubaki City “radiates mixed media energy,” and I can only echo their sentiments. I’m not opposed to the format in general (two of my favorite anime this year, Ave Mujica and Cinderella Gray, are part of large multimedia franchises), but this is an example of the form being done pretty poorly. I like the big hat that Sekai [Isekai Joucho‘s character] has. Other than that, unless you’re truly starved for current magical girl-esque anime (and I’m weighing as I write this whether that describes me or not), you can give this one a pass. This entry probably could’ve been its own article. Oh well!
Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse: Sometimes I like to describe the premise of a series when starting one of these, but that’s difficult here because I barely have a handle on what that premise is. Very basically, it seems like our protagonist got Vision of Escaflowne’d at some point before the start of the series, but then he got sent back to his own world (implicitly our world), and then, not ten minutes into the first episode, he gets isekai’d yet again. He notes that this his 2000th time, so clearly the sheer amount of times he’s been through this is something we’re supposed to pick up on.
But he seems impossibly ignorant about the general mechanisms of this “ability” of his (if it’s indeed even something intrinsic to him at all), and doubly so about the world he ends up in, which is a blend of Heian-era Japanese aesthetics and mecha sci-fi. Twice in the same episode, he encounters “the mist,” black fog that summons monsters and freezes innocent townsfolk in their place. The second time, he turns into a black and blue tiger-oni-monster-thing and can fight it off for a while but he gets completely owned by the end of the episode and gets isekai’d again, except this time he ends up in the Heian-Sci-Fi world at the point he visited earlier in the episode.
It’s not that any of this is confusing per se, but it’s all delivered so rapid-fire and so nonchalantly that none of it has much impact, so it’s both a bit hard to follow and hard to care. Combine that with the generally unappealing design work, the extreme hoariness of some of the writing clichés at play here (there are two different “main guy falls into main girl’s boobs” gags), and you’re left with less the amount of unanswered questions you might expect of a first episode of an anime and more just a very weird and disorienting sensation of having been thrown into the middle of something in a not-entirely-intentional way. I have no idea what to make of this at all, and I might just watch an episode or two more just to get a better handle on it.
Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy: Impressively, this geologically-minded slice of life series from main Studio Bind director Fuji Shingo is quite possibly the best-looking thing to premiere this season. And if it isn’t, it’s at least in an easy top five. Given some of its competition, that’s quite the feat. Replacing mono as my once-a-season-if-I-can-find-one “sightseeing” anime, Ruri Rocks is a funny, laid-back slice of life comedy about minerals. There’s a real sense of inspiring awe at the natural world in this one, and the garnet pool sequence at the end of this episode is easily one of my favorite visual moments in anything that’s come out this year. The show is surprisingly educational, too, if you’re interested in the actual science of how rocks form. I can, in theory, imagine the fanservice maybe being too much for some, but other than that one caveat, you’ll probably want to at least give this one a shot.
There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless….: Socially awkward girl Amaori Renako [Nakamura Kanna] is rescued from a life of loneliness by her beautiful blonde classmate, a total alpha named Ouzuka Mai [Oonishi Saori], who then decides she loves her. Renako doesn’t want that, thus leading to a series premised on, basically, gay chicken. They spend odd days as a couple and even days as friends, Renako trying to make sure they stay just friends, Mai trying to ensure that Renako falls for her. An entertainingly weird premise, and it lends the show a madcap energy that I actually really like quite a lot.
I think the visuals really help sell it; the actual drawing quality is a little up and down, but the animation is extremely fluid and expressive, and in particular the way the show’s colors are done is a huge part of establishing the energy of the adaptation, placing it somewhere pretty far from reality, despite the surprising depth of the character writing. (Most obvious, this early on, on Renako’s end.) Everything is super bright, there are almost no shadows, and a lot of the backgrounds have minimal detail, leading to them looking sort of like, I don’t even know, city pop album covers or something. It’s a really interesting visual identity for something like this, and shines brightest in a scene in the second half of the first episode where Mai takes Renako to an expensive hotel’s pool. It feeds into the zany but slightly bittersweet vibe of the subject matter to make one of the stronger premieres of the season. I will definitely be keeping up with this, and if you’re on the lookout for a good yuri pickup, I recommend you do the same.
The Water Magician: It’s so fucking tired to complain about bad isekai, but this one had an okay looking trailer and a pretty key visual, and I checked it out, hopeful that it would be a rare standout, or at least better than the baseline of uninspired drivel in this format that continues to trickle out season after season. It was not. Protagonist Mihara Ryou [Murase Ayumu, an actor I normally like] is reincarnated into another world, learns he can use water magic, and spends most of the episode reading a D&D-ass monster manual about the Big Scary Animals that live in his new neighborhood. There are some mostly pretty bad fight scenes. There’s an icebox in his house. It’s all very passé. There’s a dullahan, which is so out of place that it’s the one interesting element to grasp onto here, but even mentioning that much is me doing the show a favor. Everything feels so perfunctory and workmanlike that, even if you are a huge fan of this genre, I can truly not imagine getting anything out of this at all. There’s some alright water animation, as you’d expect from the premise, but other than that there is not a single fucking thing worth talking about in this show. It’s just total ass. It looks bad, is written badly, and isn’t really about anything. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to write this and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to watch it. Easily the worst premiere I sat through this season
And now, the sequels!
Call of The Night, Season 2: An interesting return from the vampire quasi-romcom here. I’m undecided as to whether or not I’ll actually keep up with this one. Despite really liking the series when it originally premiered—I rated it pretty highly on my 2022 year-end article—that was three entire years ago. This episode is very quiet, essentially picks up right where the series previously left off, and honestly it’s not terribly visually ambitious. But I do concede it was nice to hear from Nazuna and Ko for the first time in a long time, even as they’re still figuring out what precisely their relationship to each other actually is, and the show’s nightscapes remain lovely, so maybe I will stick with it. We shall see.
DAN DA DAN, Season 2: My main thought here is that this is an unfortunate and pretty noticeable visual downgrade from season one, which does just kinda suck. This is most obvious in the area of the color choices, which were much duller and less vibrant in this episode than they would’ve been back then. Pretty unfortunate! I’m gonna keep watching to see if it improves but I admit the first episode being so visually lackluster took a bit of the wind out of my sails with this one. The fact that I’ve since gotten mostly-current on the Dandadan manga probably isn’t helping, given that I know what to expect from the series at this point and my honeymoon period with it is several months in the rear view. Still, it wasn’t a bad first episode by any means (although all the usual caveats about Dandadan apply), and this series has the special status of being something I’m watching with a group of friends, so I will be keeping up with it regardless.
My Dress-Up Darling, Season 2: Here’s something to chew on. For some reason, this episode is called “Wakana Gojo, 15 Years Old, Teenager.” No, I do not know why Gojo is being reintroduced to us by All-Star Batman. This quirk aside, I was very happy with this episode overall. My Dress-Up Darling holds a bit of a special place on this site as easily the most popular series I have ever written about (seriously, you guys should see my statistics. Individual episode writeups for MDUD consistently clear almost everything else I put out). I started covering it because of a community vote back in 2022 when it first premiered, and it makes me very happy that, in spite of the gap between seasons, MDUD returns like it never left.
This is in fact easily the strongest return showing of anything here, and makes for a pretty dizzying display of technique. An array of different visual styles and well-timed gags make this one of the most purely fun premieres of the season period. Shinohara Keisuke and his team on are on top of their game here and I really cannot stress just how much fucking fun this premiere is. The opening few minutes are an anime-within-an-anime once again, and they’re so convincing that I actually briefly thought I’d opened the wrong series somehow. (This time, the subject of the episode, TsuCom, is a pastiche of the sort of zany action-comedies that were popular in the late 90s to early 00s. You can easily imagine this kind of thing having originally been a limited-run OVA of some sort before eventually popping up on RetroCrush years later.)
The episode follows Gojo’s attempts to make a bunnygirl outfit for Marin, and as is the norm with this series, this simple premise leads to tons of total goofball shit that really must be seen to be believed. My particular favorite gag ensues when Gojo talks to a fabric vendor and accidentally puts him under the impression that the bunnysuit is for Gojo. This man then has a whole awakening, reasoning that in the modern day, men can absolutely wear bunnysuits and he shouldn’t be so surprised by all of this, only for Marin to appear and for the man to realize his mistake. Obviously, as with all gags centered on pacing and presentation, this is much funnier to watch than it is to have relayed secondhand. Still, my point is that this episode is supremely funny. It’s also quite sweet in places! The episode ends with Gojo attending a Halloween party with Marin and some of her other friends, and he feels rather out of place until Marin mentions his doll-painting to someone else. Initially, he tenses up, but because everyone is impressed and interested in his dolls as opposed to put off—these are a bunch of otaku with varying offbeat hobbies of their own, mind you—the episode ends on a high note, with him finally feeling like he’s found somewhere he belongs. Frankly, I think I actually appreciate Dress-Up Darling now more than I did when I watched the first season. With hindsight, I think I spent far too much of my coverage of the show hemming and hawing on if its fanservice was “okay” or not. Full disclosure, that returns in full force here, too, but if you’re two seasons into this show you know what you’re getting at this point. So let me just say it for the record and wholeheartedly; I am really glad to have this show back.
1: Hi Josh
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