Brief Thoughts on: IKOKU NIKKI – Episode 3

“Brief” articles are copied directly from my tumblr, with only minor changes, and are shorter and more off-the-cuff than their full length counterparts.

One of my favorite things about this anime, which is used in a couple of different ways over the course of this episode, is Makio’s very authorial and writerly narration. She describes Asa’s empty apartment, which they visit in this episode, this way, and it really adds an ineffable something to the characterization as opposed to if we heard fewer of her thoughts. It gives the work a very “literary” quality, which makes sense both on an obvious level because Makio is an author, but also on a less obvious once, in that she seems to use this formal discursive register to separate herself a little bit from the events she and Asa are going through. It’s an interesting tension, and one I hope the series continues to explore as it goes on.

One way this forms a tension is in her statements to Asa, that Asa’s feelings about her parents’ passing are her own business alone. She’s said this a lot over the course of these three episodes, and while she clearly does believe it to some degree, she also doesn’t believe it so much that she doesn’t ask questions when Asa comes home from her first day back at school—the graduation ceremony, ironically—in tears, having even gotten lost on her way back. Asa presses her for asking about it, and—again, I think this is an interesting bit of tension—Makio says she shouldn’t put so much stock in what other people say

The entire episode of Asa going to school, only to learn that her friend Emiri has inadvertently let the entire class and faculty know about the tragedy she went through, and acting out at both Emiri and that faculty is an interesting one. We don’t really see Asa acting this emotive very often and she’s clearly very angry that everyone will only think of her as “that girl with the dead parents”, she says as much. (All the while the visuals transpose the characters into a surreal Maypole Dance setting.) Emiri and Asa were friends before this, but she spends most of the rest of the episode ignoring her and, on her way out the door, says she hates her.

We return to Makio attempting to figure out what exactly happened here, and when Asa throws the whole “no one’s business but your own” thing back in her face, that is when she tells Asa that she shouldn’t put so much stock in what other people say. Even more interestingly, this is immediately before talking about her own schoolday friend (Daigo Nana, who we met last week), and how Nana wrote her a letter on their last day of school together that meant the world to her. These pieces of subtle hypocrisy aren’t drawn a ton of attention to, other than Asa calling them out the one time, but they’re very interesting and paint Makio as a very complex character.

Again, I’m just really interested to know where else we’re going here. You could easily make the case that this is an outside candidate for the best thing airing right now, and given how stacked this season is, that’s really saying something.

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Posted on January 21, 2026 in anime, The Weekly Orbit

Brief Thoughts on: OSHI NO KO – Season 3, Episode 2

“Brief” articles are copied directly from my tumblr, with only minor changes, and are shorter and more off-the-cuff than their full length counterparts.

I’m glad we’re going all-in on the “conniving Ruby” plot here because I think at this point it’s surpassed the whole Aqua <–> Akane <–> Kana love triangle for me in terms of the various things this show can do that I’m personally interested in. She spends a lot of this episode trying to get close to Yoshizumi Shun [Takenaka Yuuto, in what appears to be his first role of any real note], an assistant director on the show she and Aqua both work on. Shun is the sort of industry everyman that Oshi no Ko really likes to spotlight so it can make you feel super, super bad for them. And the show does a great job of that here! Portraying Shun as someone really suffering under the thumb of his boss (a former bigshot who was hired here after some scandal or another) and having to constantly scramble to get the show airing on time.

The whole cosplayer interview bit he gets stuck with here seems truly humiliating for everyone involved, including the cosplayers themselves who include his own younger sister (who he has to pressure into participating). The reveal at the end of the episode that they don’t actually have permission to interview cosplayers who are identifiably dressed up as characters from super popular shonen-thing and frequent in-universe presence Tokyo Blade is very funny. Just have everyone change their costumes at the last minute! It’ll definitely be fine! This isn’t going to have hilarious knock-on consequences that will be surprisingly important down the line, I’m sure.

Maybe more important than the actual plot beats is the direction for Ruby’s character that Oshi no Ko really commits to here. She’s infamously been a bit of a secondary presence in a show where she’s nominally one of the protagonists, and at least so far, the third season seems to be really trying to change that. Admittedly, this involves making her more like Aqua in several ways—cunning, always trying to get her name out there, searching for the truth of her mother’s death—but honestly, while that may be true, “Aqua but a girl” is plenty interesting as a character concept on its own. (And it’s not like they’re strict clones of each other even now.) She’s also surprisingly funny, securing a role as the idiot of the cast in that variety show she’s on. As the show’s gotten darker these little sprinklings of humor have gotten a bit rarer, so it was nice to see some here.

I’m not entirely sure how much of the manga the series has left to cover. My impression is that most people dislike the ending, which has led to Akasaka Aka having something of a reputation as a guy who can start interesting stories but not finish them. (Although, honestly, I’ve always thought the Kaguya-sama ending was pretty good.) I am interested to find out whether that’s more warranted here or not, but in either case, I am at least still quite enjoying the ride.

I should also give a shout out to the absolutely devastating OP sequence that debuts with this episode. Not only is the song fantastic, maybe the best Oshi no Ko has ever had, but the visuals really just have to be seen to be believed.

^{Me when I have to get a broken heart painted on my back for the music video to symbolize the weight of the heartbreak I’m carrying because I’m a dramatic bitch and don’t do things normally.}

I’m particularly fond of B*Komachi’s whole dance routine, the sequence that turns the late Ai into a very literal icon, and of course, all the shots of the huge black stars in Ruby’s eyes. Scary stuff!

Posted on January 12, 2026 in anime, The Weekly Orbit

Brief Thoughts on: IKOKU NIKKI – Episode 2

“Brief” articles are copied directly from my tumblr, with only minor changes, and are shorter and more off-the-cuff than their full length counterparts.

There’s a lot of stuff crammed in here. Overall, this is a great second episode for what is quietly shaping up to be one of the best anime in a very strong season.

I love Makio’s blonde friend Daigo Nana [Matsui Eriko], who we meet for the first time here. Asa seeing her and Makio interact gets us a lot of interesting thoughts from Asa herself, who finds the two’s interaction decidedly un-adult-like. There’s a particularly funny moment where, via smash cut, Asa compares Nana’s cackling laugh to the trumpeting of an elephant, just one of a number of really good scenes from Asa’s imagination throughout the episode. Nana’s whole bit of sharing a gyoza recipe with Asa is great too, and in general I hope to see a lot more of the character. Asa’s reaction to the meal itself is interesting as well, and points to the continued major role of food as an element of the series. She tries to remember her mom’s home cooking, but while she recalls liking it at the time, she can’t remember what she was actually served in them anymore. Pointing at, perhaps, more distance between Asa and her late mother than might have previously been safe to assume.

Then there’s Makio’s meetup with her ex, a man named Kasamachi Shingo [Suwabe Junichi doing his “hi, I’m Suwabe Junichi” voice]. I am trying quite hard to fight off my ambient misandry and not just assume the worst of Kasamachi right off the bat, but his conversation with Makio here doesn’t especially endear me to him. He feels the need to tell Makio that he was “hurt” by her decision to adopt Asa, which sure seems like making it about himself. (Him being a dedicated reader of Makio’s books also feels a little…I don’t know, off somehow. Not that I have a right to criticize as a 30-some woman who still watches shonen anime.)

Still, there’s a difference between a bad person and someone who’s just a bit thoughtless, and he strikes me more as the latter. He offers advice for getting Asa set up with insurance and such. I admit I was still a touch on-edge throughout that entire scene, though. Probably more to do with my own biases than anything else.

The best bit in the episode, however, comes in between these two major segments, and is actually probably this, a conversation between Asa and Makio where they try to be a bit more open with each other, right until the subject of Asa’s mom comes up. It’s a very impressive trick to get your audience this mad at a woman who’s literally dead with only a couple of lines, but Ikoku Nikki pulled it off.

When I was young, the stock line I always got hit with when I failed to do something my mother just assumed I’d be able to do easily was “I know you’re smart” said in a vaguely disapproving tone. I guess for Asa and, hell, Makio as well, it was that instead. Maybe that’s oversharing, but I find fiction like this to be good for helping to process complicated emotions that are difficult to speak about directly. For that, it’s one of my favorites so far of the young year.

Programming Note: I think posting episode writeups individually is the way I’ll be handling this going forward, even for shows like this one where I don’t actively plan to write about every single episode. These will be filed under the same archive as the “Let’s Watch” columns even though they’re a slightly different thing. I can’t imagine the subtle distinction matters to anyone but myself 😛

Posted on September 29, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [9/29/25]

The Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume at least some familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!

Hello folks! Welcome to the last Weekly Orbit of the season. Most of what we have here today is, accordingly, finales, so I hope you’ll enjoy one last ride with these anime before they leave this blog forever (until the end of the year list).

CITY THE ANIMATION – Episode 13 (Finale)

It’s a bit cliché for a comedy series to end on a sad episode. CITY is allergic to cliché, so while we do get a teary send off between Eri and Matsuri here, most of the episode is the same pure joy that the entire rest of the series has spent building up.

CITY, all things considered, is a best case scenario for a manga adaptation, doing things that only an anime can do rather than just trying to replicate the manga as best it can. Eri and Matsuri’s departure is bittersweet, and probably CITY‘s best play at poignance, but the real treat of the finale, for my money, is the massive, rollicking musical number that closes the series out. It’s a truly insane thing, featuring by my count every character introduced to the series’ massive ensemble cast over the previous twelve episodes, a good seven or eight different tunes, and a hilariously dumb plot about the Makabe’s Western restaurant getting what they think is a Michelin star.

If I have a gripe, it’s that this musical number isn’t dubbed (the English voice track just fully switches over to the JP about halfway through the episode. Something I only noticed because this is the rare anime I’ve watched some of dubbed), but given the sheer amount of voice talent involved it’s understandable, if a bit annoying. That quibble aside, this is a fantastic capstone on one of the year’s best anime, something people will point to in ten, twenty years to show others what truly great anime in the 2020s could look like. It’s a warm, joyful thing, something that understands that our daily lives themselves, no matter how mundane or absurd, are, in their way, a series of miracles.

Dusk Beyond The End of The World – Episode 1

Mixed in with all of these endings is a new beginning. It was actually this, not Last Boss, that was the first anime I watched a premiere of this season. Unfortunately, it kinda sucked, and while my opinions on Last Boss are mixed, too, my view of Dusk is dim enough that I didn’t want it to be the article leading the season.

Aside from the fact that a solid 80% of this episode is about if AI Is Good Or Not, an uninteresting subject unless you really handle it well—which this does not seem poised to do—there just isn’t a lot to grab on to here. The main character is in love with his sister who is a super tech genius. Cool, I guess? But I don’t really like or care about either character, so any transgressive charge here doesn’t really matter. The end of the episode sees her getting shot at a tech conference and him (or I think more likely, an android with his memories that looks like him), waking up in the post apocalypse, which is the actual main hook of the show. So the entire first episode feels kind of superfluous and I still don’t really know what we’re going for here, but if this is indicative of the show’s overall priorities and quality I’m not optimistic.

Also, the copy I watched had this bizarre thing going on where most of the episode had two lens-shaped divots cut out of the top and bottom of the screen, making a sort of pseudo curved-monitor effect. I have no idea what the purpose of this is, it’s distracting and ugly.

Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 13 (Finale)

Back when Ruri Rocks first started, I saw a bluesky mutual describe it as being primarily about the poetry of deep time. That’s an existing phrase, but I was a little annoyed with myself for not having thought to affix it to Ruri Rocks myself. The series has been, from its beginning, about the incredible, eons-long processes that create and deposit minerals. In this final episode, Ruri once again learns about minerals, here from the springs of the lovely hotel she’s staying at, and from microscopic meteors from deep space. Both within and above the Earth, these massive, mindboggling systems engage in their geological dance across stretches of time so vast that they’re difficult to understand in human terms. This dance is what Ruri has fallen in love with over the course of the series, and here, her character arc hits a soft, gentle peak when she realizes that it is not just collecting rocks that entrances her, but the knowledge of how they came to be and to be where they are in the first place.

We also get to learn just enough about Nagi here to make her character make perfect sense, too. Someone who dreams of being a professor is going to relish the opportunity to take young people under her wing, and it was nice to see the character’s emotional state dovetail with Ruri’s own.

The momentary flash-forward at the very end of the episode makes the point that these were always similar people, just at very different points in their emotional development.

All told, this was a lovely series. A deep and warm ballad about the forces that shape our world and the necessity of appreciating and understanding them. Quietly, it’s become one of the year’s best anime, but that’s almost secondary to its other strengths. I would not at all be surprised to see Ruri Rocks become a cult classic in the years ahead, as perhaps the peak of mid-2020s iyashikei anime, and if that happens, it will have well deserved it.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. / Watanare – Episode 12 (Season Finale)

I have seen a decent number of romcom anime over the past seven or eight years. From this body of experience I say that the ending of the first (hopefully of many?) season of Watanare is up there in terms of throwing me for a loop. I think if there’s a central thesis to this show, it’s that people are extremely complicated. So what is often boiled down to a fairly legible series of simple character dynamics in something like this—even in very good shows like this—is instead here allowed to go full spaghetti.

^{Also, this screenshot is actually from the}^second^{to last episode, but it feels worth noting that this happens.}

So allowed, Renako’s own somewhat dysfunctional relationship with the idea of romance is the foundational block, but every other character we meet has so much of their own shit going on that the series is basically just this sprawling yarn ball of complicated teenage feelings. It’s brilliant in its way. I think I was maybe really underrating this for most of the season, but it honestly just slaps. I cannot wait to see what the “movie” (it seems like it’s more along the lines of a theatrical release of more episodes, a growing and I must admit somewhat annoying to me personally trend) has in store, and I hope they make more of this after that, too.

As for the finale, itself. Well, hey, spoilers, but haha, what if you pushed your best friend to tell her crush that she loved her, but her crush is also the girl that you’re trying to get to fall for you, but you think it’s fine because there’s no way that girl would ever pick your friend over you. Except the last scene of the show seems to indicate that, actually, she does!

What’s most exciting to me about Watanare is that we’re apparently nowhere near current with the light novels. If they want to make a new season of this every year until we’re caught up, it’d be fine by me. The drama here is just addictive, I really do need more.

Turkey! Time To Strike – Episode 12 (Series Finale)

A friend and I have this pet concept of anime that are perfect 7/10s. They’re not necessarily the most lavish of productions and they are usually constrained to the fairly cramped realm of single-cour seasonal anime writing, but they have a ton of heart, and they tend to do one or two things very well. Turkey! is one of those. It’s honestly one of the better ones in a long time.

About its length, though, I don’t want to make it seem like that’s some kind of straightjacket for Turkey! For many other anime, twelve episodes can be restrictive and you can feel the show scratching at the edges of the format. This is true of even some very good anime. Turkey!, though, knew exactly what it wanted to do. It got in, told the story it wanted to tell, no more and no less, and it got out. Pure professionalism.

Which maybe undersells the fact that this thing made me cry more than once. Turkey is, in the broadest sense, about what we, as people, mean to the other people in our lives. Our family, our friends, even those who we meet only by circumstance. And it explores this through a, frankly, boldly silly mixture of signifiers—do recall this is still the show that’s about bowling and also the Sengoku period. That it takes itself seriously in spite of that is, as in similar cases like Birdie Wing, and—on a much vaster scale—something like Umamusume or even Saki from back in the day, is to be commended. Because it shows that you truly can build a story like this out of just about anything and have it still work.

The finale itself, is the best case scenario for this sort of show. There are moments that are so deathly dramatic that they’re funny—the final throw coming down to, of fucking course, a turkey split? Hilarious. Mai’s “I don’t care about your gods, I care about bowling.” line? Incredible stuff—and then there are moments that are much the same but hit you right in the heart instead. The series’ final twist is one I cannot bring myself to spoil, but I was so delighted that this show still had one last trick up its sleeve, only for the specific way Turkey! played it to make me cry like an idiot. What else can you even say? This was a game well played.

Manga

NakiNagi – Chapters 1-24

I found out the other day that Maki Keigo, the mangaka of the recently-concluded Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie, had a new series and endeavored to check it out. I haven’t read that manga, but I’ve seen the anime adaptation and, I’ve been happy to discuss with others, was not really a fan, for reasons that I think boil down to the fundamental premise of the work. Fair enough, not everything is for everyone. So, I was curious as to how I would feel about the mangaka working in very different territory.

Which….NakiNagi is that, but it also isn’t. Shikimori was a simple girl-with-a-gimmick romcom. It was originally a twitter comic-a-day strip, so it’s hard to fault the use of a simple formula there. NakiNagi is a lot weirder, but there is here, also, the bones of a romcom setup in that our main character, Nagisa, is in love with a boy in her class, Mozaki. Now, in most stories of this type, the narrative would spend a lot of time and effort to convince you, dear reader, that Mozaki and Nagisa would be a great couple. Those stories would give them chemistry, and they’d make at least a token attempt to flesh out both Nagisa and also Mozaki himself, since we need to understand what she sees in him. Think of something like Dress-Up Darling. Whatever you think of that series or its mian characters, the story goes through a lot of effort to map out why they’re into each other.

NakiNagi doesn’t really do that, though. Because the main couple aren’t actually the main characters. Nagisa is definitely one of the protagonists, but the other is Nakika. Nagisa’s broody best friend and, unbeknownst to her, an immortal sea-witch who’s haunted by her past mistakes. (Mozaki, by comparison, is firmly a side character. He’s enough of a non-presence in some chapters that I had to go look his name up while writing this.) These are two very different tones and genres, and while this is hardly the first manga to try to split the difference between two very different sorts of story—or even the first to do so with specifically romance and supernatural tragedy—what is notable is that so far it really does seem to just swing back and forth between the two. As a romcom, I’d say NakiNagi is competent enough, but when it gets into the creaking, ancient oceanic society that Nakika left behind to live on land (something we learn in a recent chapter she didn’t even do intentionally), it’s about a million times more interesting. This lends the manga an odd see-sawing pace, where several chapters will be dark, dramatic things full of pain and lost love, and several after that will be about, say, a school festival.

Increasingly though, it does seem to be trying to tie these two tones together. Some other sea people have been added to the cast, including a suicidal mermaid and a lovestruck fellow sea witch, which does imply to me that Keigo has big plans for the long-term of this series. The yuri fan in me is extremely frustrated that Mozaki is there at all, but attempting to take the story on its own terms runs into the fact that I don’t really know what those terms are yet. There are many, many beautifully-drawn pages dedicated to how Nakika watches over Nagisa lovingly, almost obsessively, because she reminds her of the mermaid princess that Nakika once loved. Intercut with that are the much more mundane, arguably more realistic, episodes about Nagisa’s clumsy crush on Mozaki, who only gets his first substantial bit of dialogue eighteen chapters into the manga.

I’m suspending any greater judgment for when I have a clearer picture of what NakiNagi is doing. As is, I find it a bit frustrating, but it’s definitely an interesting and weird manga, and I value those qualities a lot. It’s also visibly the work of an artist who is happy to no longer be drawing something that strictly has to be set in a normal high school. (I’ve made the romcom portion of NakiNagi sound more mundane than it actually is, honestly. While it does take place at a high school, it’s a palatial boarding school as opposed to something more humdrum.) It’s definitely not run of the mill, and in its best moments it’s genuinely great. Time will tell if it’s defined more by those or by the lack of them.

That’ll be the last Weekly Orbit for, honestly, a while probably. I don’t think I’m going to be watching enough this Fall season to really warrant doing one of these every week, and while I do like doing them they take an oddly large amount out of me given that I’m mostly just editing down my own thoughts from elsewhere on the internet. All of the formatting, rewriting to fit the more formal tone I use here, etc. can be surprisingly taxing! At least when you’ve got fatigue problems like I do. I’ve also been rethinking whether this format is really particularly great for discoverability. (It’s definitely bad for archiving, as anyone who’s looked at the woefully incomplete archive for the column will no doubt see.) So I am thinking of exploring other presentation formats when I do eventually find myself in a season again when there’s enough going on to warrant all this.

In any case, let’s send things off with one last Bonus Image. We gave CITY the header, so it’s only right to give the bonus to one of the other shows. Please have this shot of Ruri and Shouko wondering if Nagi has had a little too much to drink.

Posted on September 22, 2025September 22, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [9/22/25]

Hi folks, I missed last week, and as I alluded to the week before that, I’m experiencing a bit of end-of-season burnout. Still, I wanted to try to get an at least mostly complete Weekly Orbit to you today. We have some season finales and a few less permanent things. I hope you enjoy.

Anime – Seasonal

Call of The Night – Season 2, Episode 12 (Finale)

A really sweet sendoff for Call of The Night, here.

I really like that we’re not just abandoning Anko as a character now that her arc is “over,” and I will be honest, while it’s not for nearly as grandiose reasons, her comments about feeling like you’ve gotten older but not really grown up, and about wasting the last decade of her life, really hit home very hard for me. Not to be dramatic, but as I’ve sometimes discussed elsewhere on this site I sometimes feel the same way due to my disabilities. Accordingly, I think this is maybe the most I’ve ever liked the character.

As for Nazuna and Ko, I am happy to see their relationship developing as it has. Ending the season by cutting to black on the chomp (because bites are their private thing, now, you see) followed by the “Call of The Night” needle drop was just brilliantly classy. Good episode, good season, good show.

Dandadan – Season 2, Episode 12 (Season Finale)

Another example of that with Dandadan here. A great finale from what’s just been a pretty consistently great season of a great show. A robot vs. kaiju showdown just makes sense as a way to end an arc for something as rambunctious as Dandadan. I particularly like how the robot goes from very toku-esque (and a bit goofy looking) to a very Daicon-y thing with a flaming head by the end of the battle. And of course we end on the introduction of another new character to the anime, who I am excited to get more spotlight next time around.

Admittedly! The upcoming arc is maybe my least favorite of the manga? It’s….an odd one, to say the least. But it has its high points, too, so I’m sure Dandadan will be reliable with delivering bangers for many seasons to come.

My Dress-Up Darling – Season 2, Episode 12 (Season Finale)

And bringing up the third spot on the tic tac toe board, Dress-Up Darling also delivers a lovely end to a lovely season. I don’t have a ton to say about the finale, I’m happy that the two character arcs here resolved the way they did though. I think Akira actually just being a huge lesbian is a pretty unsurprising plot twist, but I was still really delighted with how they handled it. The Coffin cosplay scenes were also really great, I think this is easily the most blood I’ve ever seen in a gentle romcom!

Overall just a fantastic season of television. I’m hoping the third season, should they make more, isn’t too far off. We’ll see!

Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 12 (Series Finale)

This was the first full-length TV anime of the season to end, at least as far as stuff I was watching. My verdict? This was fine! Not great, not awful. It was fine.

When the show started I said something to the effect of, if you can’t pull off “good,” “weird” is a solid second thing to aim for. I think maybe more than I expected, Necronomico is a great example of that. This is a show that has much less to say than it thinks it does, has generally messy and unfocused characterization, and its core conceits are all just generally kind of stupid. But it was largely entertaining week to week just off of novelty and audacity, and I think that’s worth something. This is a truly textbook Seasonal Anime, capital S, capital A. I cannot imagine anyone remembering this aired by this time next year, except maybe because of the ChatGPT subs controversy when the first episode dropped.

About the final episode, I can’t say I have a ton to comment on. I will say that I think any finale in which the main character gets to pilot her girlfriend, grown to kaiju size for the sake of a fighting game match, is an at least solid finale. I also like that, perhaps intentionally but perhaps not, the game Nyarlathotep—sorry, Tick Tock Man—comes up with seems kind of shitty. Everyone loves fighting games where you have to button mash so hard your fingers bleed, right? I also really appreciated the gag where Miko somehow magics up a proper fight stick after being frustrated with the gamepad. Also the symbol sealing thing felt like a missed opportunity to incorporate the Yellow Sign into the show. That would’ve been a fun gag.

The epilogue was honestly a little much. I appreciated seeing Miko reunited with her girlfriend, and the hints that Cthulu might still be in there (and a similar hint with Gua’s host streamer) are fun and tantalizing if they ever decide they want to follow this show up. (Frankly, it seems very unlikely that this show did well enough to warrant that, but I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong. I think the actual IP is owned by Cygames, so maybe they don’t care about that.) But I really had no desire to see most of the other characters again; the mangaka, the actress, etc. are just not memorable and I think if we really felt the need to establish that they were still alive, a simple montage of a couple seconds, tops, would’ve sufficed just fine. I’m also a little mad they never killed Eita, he really seemed like he was asking for it and if they do make more of this, I simply refuse to buy into any attempted redemption arc. Try harder, man.

In any case, yeah, that’s Necronomico. A solidly decent show that I will probably think about only very occasionally for the remainder of my life. Hardly the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but definitely in the bottom third or so of anime I’ve seen this year. I really liked Cthulu, and that’s probably the most credit I can give it.

Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 12

I know I’m overusing the word here, but this is another lovely episode from Ruri. Here, Ruri comes across an old crystal radio owned by her grandfather while snooping around her attic. This is a bit of a shift for the show in that this episode is as much about radio as it is about mineralogy, but I think it ties the two fields together very nicely. In addition to exploring the overlap between these fields, this is also the first time Aoi (Ruri’s gyaru-looking friend from school) gets to be much of a character, which is also nice.

I also think that the scene at the end, where Ruri finally gets the radio working again out near a shrine, is a very nice summation of the “point” of Ruri Rocks as an overall work.

What we do today can connect us, however fleetingly, to the endless yesterdays before us, whether that time scale is across human lifetimes or across aeons.

On a more grounded level, it is also nice to see Ruri working through her insecurities: after saying in last week’s episode that what she doesn’t isn’t research because that’s something only “smart people” do, she here opts to take geology as an elective at school. I should also commend the use of the ending theme as diagetic music. That was brilliant.

Turkey! Time to Strike – Episode 11

Have you ever played bowling with your life on the line?

This is truly just a delightful show. I think something that’s largely gone unsaid about it is that despite the very different literal events than most other anime in this broad girls’ drama genre, it is fundamentally wired the same way. The characters have similar arcs and the bonds between them are not unlike what we would have in a much more traditional show in this genre. The main difference is in the stakes, which are outright fatal here as opposed to the much lower ones present in what would otherwise be Turkey‘s peers.

A decade ago—to the month, in fact—SCHOOL-LIVE!, Gakkou Gurashi as it’s also known, pulled off a similar trick. That anime similarly borrows language from outright horror material to obfuscate the fact that it is, fundamentally, still a story about friendship and caring for the people close to you. The difference, of course, is that in most anime where girls compete in sports tournaments, their lives are not literally at stake if they lose.

The latter is what leads to Turkey’s second biggest tonal pivot, coming in behind only the initial switchup in the first episode. Just when things seem like they might be resolved a bit too conveniently by all of our heroes getting strikes in this tournament that the enemy feudal lord has agreed to, he changes the rules and puts them at a marked disadvantage, betraying their trust and any notion that he’s someone that could be seen as respectable.

I am pretty damn sure this is all a fakeout, of course. The finale will end with our heroines battered but not beaten, and they will tearfully depart to their own time. (There is always a second throw, recall.) But if I’m wrong, that’s actually even more interesting, so barring some generational last-episode fumble, I am still deeply interested in what Turkey will do in its last moments.

I mentioned Gakkou Gurashi. That anime is a classic, and I don’t think Turkey! is quite that good, but it’s definitely one of the more interesting things to air this year. I don’t think it’s out of the question to say it’s one of the better ones, too.

Posted on September 8, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [9/08/25]

Hello there, anime fans. I’m struggling with a bit of the ol’ burnout on my end, but I think I’ve managed to put together a pretty nice column for you this week regardless. Hopefully you agree. 🙂

Anime – Seasonal

Call of The Night – Season 2, Episode 10

I don’t know when, exactly, during this episode it became clear to me that Anko might be trying to commit suicide-by-vampire, but it hit me like a brick when that turned out to actually, genuinely be the case.

I really think this show’s second season has proven to be just incredible in a way I don’t think I would’ve predicted at the end of the first, even accounting for the fact that I liked the first season a lot. The intense emotion on display all throughout this episode, Nazuna and Anko’s horribly painful divorced yuri, Ko getting caught in the right place and saving Anko’s life, and then in the wrong place at the end of the episode when her gun goes off as she’s trying to kill herself….man, I don’t really know what to say here beyond this is a really exceptional series. I think my favorite of the many little touches across this episode was Nazuna ripping up playground equipment when she starts really trying to stop Anko. Playground equipment, you see, as a symbol of innocence, destroyed because neither of them can ever go back to it. Honestly, just brutal, what an episode.

Dandadan – Season 2, Episode 10

Last week we had a fight, and then comedy. This week, we have comedy, and then a fight. Simple!

This is the episode where we’re first introduced to Sakata Kinta [Fujiwara Daichi], although I don’t think we get his name here. His introduction as a weird nerd—an even weirder nerd than Okarun, in fact, by a mile—who makes inappropriate dirty jokes because he thinks it helps him seem cool is a bit of a slow start in terms of actual characterization, but I have to admit it is genuinely pretty funny. The first half of the episode also has a Tom & Jerry sort of quality to it where Momo and Okarun are looking for each other at school and keep missing each other, eventually literally running into each other and prompting Kinta’s surprise that Okarun is “popular with the ladies.” (Presented as Kinta getting the wrong idea in-fiction, but he’s not really wrong, given that both Momo and Aira are interested in him.)

Naturally Kinta gets dragged into a battle with the supernatural when the “gold ball ghost” that was mentioned last week turns out to actually be an invisible monster using high technology to shield itself from sight. Our heroes seem to defeat it (even Kinta makes a small contribution), but it rises again, growing gigantic and promising a full-on kaiju battle next week. I have to give it up not just to all of this show’s usual strengths here but also the music, the kaiju theme sounds like a drum n bass remix of the Godzilla motif. Lovely stuff.

My Dress-Up Darling- Season 2, Episodes 9 & 10

For all my complaining about the slight hit Dress-Up Darling took with that diet episode a couple weeks back, it returns here with two of its best episodes maybe ever. This is what I get for complaining and, hey, full credit, I couldn’t be happier. Two main things happen over the course of this arc. Let’s talk about the less consequential and funnier one first.

First of all, this arc involves Marin’s friend group prepping to do a group cosplay of some characters from a horror visual novel called Coffin. Unlike the series’ usual formula, the dramatic push and pull here doesn’t come from Gojo having to make an outfit. Marin’s buying a simple off-the-shelf number this time, but Gojo is still going to be involved in setting up the cosplay, so he wants to learn more about this visual novel regardless. He visits Marin plays the game at her place, and of all of the various style emulations that Dress-Up Darling has engaged with over the course of its run, this is some of the most impressive. We get scenes from the VN rendered in tastefully faux-retro, dithered pixel art. As Gojo plays, it goes from being a fairly straightforward slice of life thing to being an absolutely brutal psychological horror story about killer nuns and familial abuse. (And from what we see of it, Coffin really is a pull-no-punches kind of game. It’s easily the sort of thing you could imagine grabbing off of itch.io. And, perhaps, end up regretting that you didn’t read the trigger warnings, depending on how squeamish you are.)

Gojo being Gojo, he doesn’t see this coming at all, and to paraphrase his own words, gets a bit hyperempathetic about it. Worse, he doesn’t actually have Marin with him for the majority of his playthrough to bounce off of. He’s also hopped up on energy drinks, because, surprise, the trains back home are out of service and his whole hanging out with Marin has turned into an impromptu sleepover.

Why is Marin asleep? Well, when she sees our boy buying the energy drinks, they happen to be right next to an aisle of what I’ll politely call supplements and gets the wrong idea. So she spends most of the night anxious that Gojo is trying to make a move on her, even as she also kind of looks forward to it, her head spinning with ideas about how they’re going to do all of the “important stuff”—handholding, kissing, and yes, sex—in one night. It’s a little rare for an anime to have noticeably good body language animation, but the way the show focuses on her eyes, dialed into tight, beady little pupils, and toes, twiddling and scrunching up into little balls of anxiety, is really something. It also noticeably never feels even a little bit salacious, since in this context, Dress-Up Darling—never afraid to be horny when it wants to be, and I must stress that that’s fine in its own right—wants you to appreciate Marin as a person with her own thoughts and feelings, not as something to ogle.

After eating some instant ramen, Marin calms down, sharing an adorable story about how her and her dad used to share the very same kind of ramen while watching movies together late at night. In fact, she gets so comfortable while talking about this that she actually falls asleep, and Gojo puts her to bed, leading to his own odyssey with the visual novel above. (It feels like a pointed contrast that Marin, a well-adjusted and happy girl over all, shares a warm and positive anecdote about her father. The protagonist of Coffin, by contrast, is horribly abused by hers.)

With the clarity of morning, Marin beats herself up a little bit about getting so anxious—and so excited—over a simple misunderstanding. She wonders if Gojo actually likes her in that way at all, and in doing so she imagines him rejecting her, which shakes her so badly that she actually starts crying. Her anxieties are dispelled though upon visiting Gojo at his house a day or two later. Gojo, ever-considerate, sometimes overly so, actually tries to turn her away at first. Not because he doesn’t actually want her there, but because he made fried fish for dinner, and isn’t sure if she should be having that, given her stated dieting goals. Marin is moved enough that she just decides today is a cheat day, and she enjoys dinner with her crush.

Still, she can’t actually work up the nerve to outright ask him out. She tries to, but eventually scales the request back to just asking to come back tomorrow. (He says yes, of course.) On a late-night train, the warmth from their time spent together crystallizes into determination, and she promises herself that after the Coffin group photoshoot, she’s going to ask him out, come what may.

I admit I’ve never been super concerned about the overarching “plot” of Dress-Up Darling. It’s always pretty clear in this kind of thing that the leads are going to get together eventually, it’s just a question of if it’ll take the whole series or only part of it. Still, it’s really exciting to see actual progress being made on that front. Even if it’s a feint in the immediate short-term, the character development here speaks volumes. Marin herself, pondering her and Gojo’s relationship, points out that teasing him used to be easy, but now that she’s actually worried he might reject her, she can’t bring herself to do it anymore.

There are complicating factors; one of the other people involved in the group cosplay—Akira, who were introduced to just a few episodes ago, a mysterious and somewhat reserved girl who primarily cosplays her own characters (awesome, it must be said)—doesn’t like Marin for some unstated reason. This, along with Sajuna’s return to the series and her own reluctant involvement with the Coffin shoot, promises to throw at least one, maybe several, wrenches into this whole business. Still, I’m really looking forward to how this arc resolves, there are a lot of parts in motion here, and I am so fascinated to see how they intersect.

Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 10

You can say a lot about Necronomico, much of which is not exactly flattering, but damn if it isn’t memorable.

There are two main plot threads in this episode; Kanna contending with Ghatanothoa’s game for her—a supernatural raising sim based on her own life—and Kei being played like a fiddle by Cthugua.

In the case of the latter, I don’t think it’s even explained to us what Gua’s “game” actually is, but she spends her entire half of the episode alternately insulting Kei and calling her a pretty doll, while at the same time making her drink sake until she’s so drunk she can’t see straight. Eventually, this culminates in the two of them kissing and burning to death together in Gua’s palace. I’ll be honest, I have no idea where exactly this came from, but as far as tragic (and commendably strange) yuri goes, it’s pretty good.

Kanna’s half of the episode is a bit more thematically meaty, in that Ghatanothoa’s game is directly based on her own, very sad life, and to discover its true ending (and thus win it) she eventually figures out that she has to make no decisions at all.

“You can’t really change the past” is, as Kanna herself angrily points out, exactly the kind of obnoxious and overdone theme that someone like Ghatanothoa would gravitate towards putting in a game like this, with its presentation of that theme equally so. Despite his bloviating about how all of human art and culture is meaningless, Ghatanothoa is essentially portrayed as a parasocial fanboy, in fact, complete with calling Kanna his “oshi”, and his amateurish-at-best command of visual novel writing reflects this. I commend the show for not taking the easy way out of saying that Kanna’s suffering is what gives her life meaning, but it is a little hard to swallow that this leads to another mutual kill. I get why it has to be set up that way; so Miko and Cthulu can hinge the fate of the world on their final confrontation, but it doesn’t really square with what we’re shown here.

And, well, all of this has to put up with the fact that this episode has some of the worst boarding in a show that, even at its best, has not exactly looked fantastic. Still, the end is in sight by now, so I am interested to see if they stick the landing. My personal theory is that this show doesn’t actually have the stones to commit to a bittersweet ending and we’re going to get everyone revived at the last minute somehow. The still-hanging plot thread of Kanna being “favored by Azatoth” would provide the perfect off ramp.

Oh, and no Eita this episode is notable, if only because it means he will inevitably be back next week.

Turkey! Time to Strike – Episode 9

Fundamentally, right, the whole “bowling” motif in this show, it’s a gimmick, right? Or it at least seems like it should be one. You could write a very similar story to this without that aspect of it at all, and people have. But, more than just a way to stand out from the pack, the way the series uses the sport to actually emphasize the communal nature of play as an idea is like….forgive me for not finding a better way to say this, it’s just not something you really expect from a random seasonal anime. Which is absurd, right? Because every anime was a random seasonal anime at some point. There’s not actually a distinction. But it nonetheless manages to surprise me every time one of these shows actually turns out to be this good.

So, you have this episode. A thwarted—thank god—double suicide and winding, beautiful conversation about what it means to mean something to someone, how people put themselves on the line for those they truly care about.

And of course, there’s how the episode ends, with a thundercloud rolling in, the promise of home on the horizon. Will our heroines actually leave? After this episode, I think it’s very up in the air. It’s clear that the two halves of our cast care for each other a lot, but there are still three episodes to go, so there’s plenty of time for interesting developments.

Oh, and can I say? Starting the episode by immediately catching the viewer off-foot with the altered OP sequence? Brilliant.

Other

Ano Hi no Kanojotachi: day09 Miu Takigawa

It has been five years since early lockdown-era idol anime 22/7 tried, and failed, to reinvent its genre.

22/7 the idol group, though, have ticked on. They still exist, and have persisted through a variety of lineup changes, a notably rocky history that has resulted in multiple changes in direction for their sound and, admittedly, given them more of a fanbase than you might assume if you don’t follow idol stuff very closely. Takigawa Miu, the group’s center, was one of two remaining original members. As you can glean from the existence of this short, she has now left. “Graduated,” as it is somewhat-euphemistically referred to among idol fans.

This short is ostensibly a sendoff. It’s not actually even narratively related to the 22/7 TV series (it has more in common with, and is presented as, an episode of the 2018 slice of life shorts that were created early in the lifespan of the project), but it marks the end of something, so it’s still significant, as both a point to reflect on what 22/7 was and is and what its existence can tell us in general about the circles of art and media it is a part of.

Miu’s vocal performances—both voice acting and singing—were provided by Saijou Nagomi. (She technically reprises the role here, but doesn’t speak, contributing only a few soft sobs at one point. These could easily have been provided by a fill-in or pulled from archive audio, but I’m choosing to assume some amount of professionalism here.) Five years is a long time in the entertainment industry, and watching this short, and its quiet melancholy, I cannot help but wonder how she must’ve felt to have it playing behind her during her farewell concert, as that is the context for which it was originally produced.

It is worth noting that Miu is Ms. Saijou’s only voice acting credit of any note, and if she’s ever released any other music, I was not able to find it by doing a cursory search. Still, a glance at her Twitter page indicates she was keeping it professional up until her very last day in the group. There is lots of talk over there of cherishing every moment she spent with her fans and so on. As of the time of this writing, the most recent post is a handful of images from the farewell concert. Some digging reveals she intends to largely make the transition to behind-the-camera work as a photographer.

The short itself largely portrays Miu in transit; first coming home on a bus, and then, after quietly crying to herself in bed, going somewhere that looks an awful lot like a college or new school of some other sort, in what is either a dream sequence or a flash-forward. It’s definitely playing into these sorts of thoughts; where is she going from here? Is she happy? Does she have regrets? On some level, all of that is as much an emotional manipulation as any of the more obvious work done by any number of more traditional idol anime—before or since—that 22/7 sought to join the ranks of and perhaps surpass. (And we have to give credit to Wonder Egg Priority director Wakabayashi Shin that this is imbued with such emotion in the first place. The short has no dialogue, as mentioned.) Still, it’s overall a surprisingly moving piece of work, and one that feels ever so slightly out of step with where the medium’s sensibilities currently are, with its vibrant and shiny lighting that feels so tied to the visual aesthetics of the last decade as opposed to this one. I said it’s a long time in the entertainment industry, but honestly, five years is a long time for anyone. The short is a potent, if brief, reminder of this.

The last scene of the short shows us Miu, on a bus, looking back at the camera. We don’t know where she’s going, but she is going. It’s hard not to feel happy for her. And as strange as it may be to say, that shot, as it fades out for the final time, is probably the most 22/7 has ever affected me. Perhaps tellingly, it did it without “subverting”, “reinventing”, or “deconstructing” anything.

And that’ll be all for this particular week. As always, I ask that if you enjoyed what you’ve read here (or just enjoy my site in general), you consider a donation to my Ko-Fi page, it helps immensely, and helps keep the site up and running.

For this week’s Bonus Image, please enjoy the title screen of Coffin, perfectly evocative of the evolving title screens of RPGMaker games and indie visual novels of both the past and present.

Posted on September 1, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [9/01/25]

Hey there, friends! Another pretty light week this week, but one in which I’ve got some interesting stuff outside of the usual Seasonal Anime bracket to share as well. Enjoy.

Anime – Seasonal

Call of the Night – Episode 9

Bear with me here. I’ve always found the co-opting of the “arcs” system that shonen anime fans tend to use a little frustrating. Admittedly, I don’t know if this is actually true, but my impression at least has always been that things are sliced up into arcs as a fan-led convention. So when an anime’s English marketing actually refers to something as an “arc,” I roll my eyes a little. All storylines are arcs when you get down to it, so what are we saying here, right?

Well, Call of the Night makes the argument that this part of its story should be called The Halloween Arc because it takes place entirely on Halloween. You know what? Fair enough. I’ll let them have this one.

This is all tangential of course to the fact that this is probably the best Call of the Night has been since its return. (If it’s not, its main competition is episode four. Throughout its second season, Call of The Night has proven to be surprisingly adept at tragic yuri. I would love Kotoyama to attempt a full series in the genre at some point.) Anko springs her plan into motion on the night of a Halloween festival, but we’re still in the dark about what that plan actually is. Thus, most of Anko’s actions throughout this episode—and we see enough of them that she’s basically the second protagonist here—seem engineered to make you, the viewer, wonder what in the utter fuck she’s trying to accomplish. This is more entertaining than it may sound on paper.

It’s been established that a vampire’s main weakness is memorabilia from their human days. With most of the vampiric side of the cast having gone out of their way to dispose of those, Anko begins enacting a strange plan where she actually shoots two of the vampires—Niko and Seri—in full public view. (The public in question, being about as smart as any fictional audience, assume a movie is being filmed Or Something.) They recover, of course. You can’t kill a vampire with something as simple as a revolver. But the provocation has had its intended effect, and by episode’s end Anko is running from Seri’s boyfriend (Takkun, also a vampire) and the rest of the vampires. We end on a confrontation in her and Nazuna’s old classroom, where the two reunite and stare each other down.

It’s a hell of a cliffhanger, and it promises even better things ahead, but what I really need to emphasize here is just how wildly entertaining Anko is during all this? I was a bit slower to warm to the character than a lot of people in my age bracket, but she’s an utter riot here. Sure, she’s the antagonist, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be silly with it. Particular highlights include threatening to shoot some random guy after he hits on a girl half is age only to reveal that that gun is actually just a gun-shaped cigarette lighter, and a sequence near the end of the episode where she just runs like hell after tossing Takkun into a trashcan.

CITY THE ANIMATION – Episode 8

I think I should mention that I’ve been watching the dub of CITY. That’s very relevant in this episode because it ends with a musical number! And to my (pleasant) surprise they actually dubbed it! That’s not always a given in anime dubs.

Now, the number itself was some kind of bizarre Hamilton-meets-Japanese folk tales-meets The Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” kind of thing, but it’s the thought that counts.

Oh yeah and the rest of the episode was pretty funny, too. The “Bon Jovi” joke in the band names segment got me so hard that I had to pause the video to collect myself. Episode nine is pretty great, too, for the record! I’m hitting my limit for how much writing I can do about anime in a given week here, I think (this is the last bit of writing I’m doing other than the closer before this article goes up), but episode nine is a giant, wacky race. In the vein of something like….well, Wacky Races. The episode sprinkles in some backstory for the characters we’ve gotten to know over CITY’s run and is pretty sweet in addition to the usual humor as a result. This is especially true of our goofball schoolgirl lesbians Matsuri and Eri, who, soon to be parted, enter the race to make some final memories together and end up winning the whole thing. It’s cute!

Dandadan – Episode 9

Despite an absolutely fireworks fight scene at the start of it, episode nine is mostly a slower and more comedic break between the previous and upcoming arcs of Dandadan. This makes sense, and a decision to slow down a little and focus on the series’ character strengths is a good one on the heels of so much fighting.

That’s not to say this episode is devoid of important developments, though. Having finally become strong enough to take him on, Okarun manages to convince Evil Eye to not constantly attempt to slaughter all humans in his vicinity. Instead, the two of them will fight once a week. Like gentlemen. (More or less.) This paves the way for Jiji to return to school, which sets up the often hilarious second half of the episode, wherein Evil Eye emerges at school and Jiji’s classmates have to wonder why he’s suddenly talking about butchering all who stand before him, and why he suddenly looks so goth. It’s basically just one joke iterated upon for several minutes, but it’s a pretty good joke.

in between these things, Mantisian and some of his friends—including the Minecraft Steve-esque Mr. Ludris—rebuild the Ayase household’s home, with the help of an alien wonder-material called nanoskin. While this seems like just a cute way to wave away the whole “no longer having a house” situation that Momo and her grandmother would otherwise be in, it’s actually about to be rather important as a plot device. In the interest of not spoiling the rest of this season, I’ll say no more on that, but overall, yeah, this was a very fun episode. I’m excited to see where we head next.

Necronomico and The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 9

As I assumed would be the case last week, Episode eight of Necronomico sets us up with what seems to be the structure we’ll be working with for the remainder of the series.

Our four remaining heroes have to tackle the four Old Ones, and they end up splitting up and doing each trial alone. This means that the first half of this episode is actually a focus story about Hastur on the villains’ side, and, on the heroes’ side, Sano Seishirou. Given that the latter’s characterization so far has amounted to a pedophile joke about 5 episodes ago, which even the show itself seems to have forgotten about, this is a good chance to give him some actual characterization.

And you know what? He acquits himself pretty nicely here. Hastur’s game is in of itself not terribly interesting, being essentially the card game War with a smaller deck and some extra steps, but it’s nice to see Seishirou actually fit into the “heroic teacher that goes down fighting” archetype, even as Hastur taunts him all the while. (The drawling, low growl that Okitsu Kazuyuki delivers for how Hastur mockingly calls Seishirou “senseeiii” is one of the best pieces of voice acting in this whole show so far.)

The card game does manage to have some legitimate emotional stakes, especially when Hastur conjures up mental recreations of Seishirou’s family for the final hand. Pretty impressive considering that it just boils down to a coin flip, essentially, but Seishirou ekes out a win by psychoanalyzing his opponent and is free to be reunited with his family.

Except he isn’t, because SURPRISE! HE DOESN’T ACTUALLY HAVE A FAMILY!

In the sort of beautifully brick-stupid twist you only get in this kind of show, it is revealed that Seishirou’s family, who we only met a few minutes prior, are in fact completely imaginary! Surprise! It’s the most hilariously awful system rep of all time!

Suffice to say, I think this is so dumb that it kind of comes back out the other side and becomes funny. How can you hate dialogue like this?

Others will feel differently I’m sure, and Seishirou’s victory over Hastur is pyrrhic anyway: he collapses and dies shortly after Hastur’s disposed of, leaving the remining three Old Ones (and possibly also Tick Tock Man? I wouldn’t put that past this show) for the anime’s final few episodes.

Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 9

Another complete delight from the slice-of-substrate anime this week. This marks a return to what we might call Ruri Rocks’ usual formula, but the expressiveness of the animation is at an all-time high here, and there are a lot of gorgeous moments throughout the episode. I’m particularly fond of Ruri’s dream of infinite fields of opal and how it eventually reflects itself in reality toward the end of the episode. This is also another episode that deals with a manmade object—this time a massive dam—and its impact on mineralogy, which is a theme the show seems to want to return to again and again. I admit I find it pretty compelling stuff, so I can’t complain. Also, Nagi tries on a bunch of different outfits in this episode and looks gorgeous in all of them, god bless.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episode 8

I really enjoy that Satsuki’s evil plan to break Mai’s spirit consists of….telling an embarrassingly sweet story, so she’ll be distracted, so she can headshot her in a video game. Truly, a woman after my own heart (and of course the evil chiptune music makes a return to compliment it).

I find myself short on actual commentary for Watanare, which is a little frustrating because it’s honestly an absolutely fascinating show. In this episode we have a series of amusingly janky Red vs. Blue-ass 3DCGI segments, of our characters playing this video game they’ve agreed to compete at, juxtaposed against sincere emotional stakes, which are themselves complicated by the series’ overall messiness. (A term I normally hate and try to avoid, but I really can’t think of a better adjective to describe the relationships on display here.) If someone handed you just the script for this episode, you might think it was some kind of very bizarre sports anime, given how well the game and the emotional development are woven together.

Turkey! – Episode 8

Turkey has juggled an impressive amount of moods and tones over the course of its run thus far. Episode eight largely sits on the “quiet melancholy” end of the spectrum, before a sudden swerve—a fakeout, I am guessing—into horror at the episode’s end.

This isn’t my favorite episode of the series, and what we learn here is not anything we couldn’t have guessed from context. Still, the reveal of Mai’s backstory is well done, and I like the way everyone is connecting with their feudal counterparts. Also, I’m not sure what it was, but Nanase’s line about liking (or at least acclimating to) living in the past because she “feels useful” there really hit me. There is something immensely sad about that.

Anime – Non-Seasonal

Key The Metal Idol – Episodes 3 & 4

The main thing that has interested me about this show so far is its sheer, overwhelming atmosphere. That’s still true; there’s a real hypnagogic feeling to much of the plot. Key—who may not really be a robot after all? It’s still unclear—suddenly develops psychic powers, which she seems to unintentionally use to kill an idol singer (herself a remote-controlled PPOR android) mid-concert. The sleazy gravure idol manager from episode one hangs on to the lip of a rooftop for dear life. A tech CEO protests that robots don’t need self-awareness, damn it! All the while picking apart the gears of his own robotic “son.” These strange and haunting images, combined with the forceful sheets of pulsing, heavy synthesizer, give the entire thing the energy of a jumbled-up nightmare. I know people compare these two all the time, but it really does feel quite similar to Serial Experiments Lain. The emotional beats are arranged very differently, though, and in general Key the Metal Idol, at least so far, feels in some sense more raw and primitive. Time will tell if that impression holds.

22/7 – Ano Hi no Kanojotachi: day09: Miu Takigawa – Short

It has been five years since early lockdown-era idol anime 22/7 tried, and failed, to reinvent its genre.

22/7 the idol group, though, have ticked on. They still exist, and have persisted through a variety of lineup changes, a notably rocky history that has resulted in a lot of changes in direction for their sound and, admittedly, given them more of a fanbase than you might assume if you don’t follow idol stuff very closely. Takigawa Miu, the group’s center, was one of two remaining original members. She has now left. “Graduated,” as it is somewhat-euphemistically referred to among idol fans.

This short is ostensibly a sendoff. It’s not even narratively related to the 22/7 TV series (it has more in common with, and is presented as, an episode of the 2018 slice of life shorts that were created in the early lifespan of the projects), but it marks the end of something, so it’s still significant, as both a point to reflect on what 22/7 was and is and what its existence can tell us in general about the circles of art and media it is a part of.

The short itself, portrays Miu in transit; first coming home on a bus, and then, after quietly crying to herself in bed, going somewhere that looks an awful lot like a college or new school of some other sort, in what is either a dream sequence or a flash-forward. It’s definitely playing into these sorts of thoughts; where is she going from here? Is she happy? Does she have regrets? On some level, all of that is as much an emotional manipulation as any of the more obvious work done by any number of more traditional idol anime—before or since—that 22/7 sought to surpass. (And we have to give credit to Wonder Egg Priority director Wakabayashi Shin that this is imbued with such emotion in the first place. The short has no dialogue, as mentioned.) Still, it’s overall a surprisingly moving piece of work, and one that feels ever so slightly out of step with where the medium’s sensibilities currently are, with its vibrant and shiny lighting that feels so tied to the visual aesthetics of the last decade as opposed to this one. I said it’s a long time in the entertainment industry, but honestly, five years is a long time for anyone. The short is a potent, if brief, reminder of this.

The last scene of the short shows us Miu, on a bus, looking back at the camera. We don’t know where she’s going, but she is going. It’s hard not to feel happy for her. And as strange as it may be to say, that shot, as it fades out for the final time, is probably the most 22/7 has ever affected me. Perhaps tellingly, it did it without subverting, reinventing, or deconstructing anything.

Manga

Dear Flowers That Bloom in Days of Yore – Chapters 1-10

I think, in a world where there are already a lot of yuri manga doing this, there is a danger that the whole “subversively playing with Class S tropes” setup would start to feel hoary and cliched in its own right. This has not happened broadly, and it certainly hasn’t happened with Dear Flowers That Bloom in Days of Yore. Protagonist Kasumi begins a letter writing relationship with an anonymous “onee-sama” after discovering a note from her in a copy of foundational Class S text Hana Monogatari. In doing so Kasumi and her “onee-sama”, who she eventually meets in person, discovering her to actually be an older middle-schooler named Haruyo. The two wrap themselves in these roles, roles that are heavier, bigger, and older than either of them. Heavier, bigger, and older, but not necessarily more real. And that tension is threatening to tear Kasumi apart.

Were the manga merely playing with Class S tropes, I would think it was clever but not terribly ambitious. Where it clearly excels is in its ability to use this framework to subtly but definitively expose Kasumi’s own internalized homophobia. Something happened to her. We don’t yet know what, but we know it involved a now deceased friend. In the most recent chapters, Kasumi has met another girl who also met her own “special one” through a letter slipped into the copy of Hana Monogatari. I won’t spoil the specifics, but the most recent chapter seems to certainly imply that the girls who meet via this method are doomed to tragedy. The book, in other words, is cursed. Literally or metaphorically? Who knows? The distinction isn’t relevant except for fiddly questions of what genres this manga technically belongs to.

I have gone this whole writeup without mentioning that mangaka Igarashi Jun is….honestly a very rare talent in terms of presentation. Aside from being an absolute master of chiaroscuro—simple but striking contrasts of solid lights and darks recur throughout the manga. You would think this would be very common in a medium that’s solidly black and white, but it really isn’t.—they also employ, admittedly sparsely, a number of paneling techniques I just really don’t see in manga very often. They’re also an expert at conveying mood through visual metaphor; before meeting Haruyo, Kasumi imagines her as a thorned rose bush in the shape of a woman. When the two sink their most firmly into their roles, the scene is wintry and amberlike; beautiful but remote. I think one could recommend this manga alone on the strength of the fact that it’s clearly written by a master of their form, but the subtle and resonant details of the storytelling shouldn’t go unappreciated either.

That’ll be all for today’s column. Have a pleasant week, friends.

Posted on August 25, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [8/25/25]

Hi folks, bit of a light week here, and also one with not very many pictures. Hopefully that’s fine, I’ve been going through it a little bit.

Anime – Seasonal

Call of The Night – Season 2, Episode 8

Call of The Night does not go full horror anime very often, but when it does….brr.

So, yeah, Kyouko Mejiro is Anko. We could probably have seen this coming, but this episode confirms it in a tragic, delirious fever dream of blood and violence. I honestly have very little to say here, other than to remark that this episode absolutely excelled at imparting just how tragic Kyouko and Nazuna’s falling out was. I also suspect that there’s more to Kyouko’s father suddenly becoming a blood-starved vampire than we were shown here. After all, how exactly he was turned is a bit up in the air.

Dandadan – Season 2, Episode 8

I don’t think I remember the fight featured throughout the bulk of episode eight here being as memorable as this in the manga.

Which is strange, because when considered on its own terms, it’s pretty unique even for Dandadan. What we have here is a strength-building throwdown against a cadre of ghosts, taking the form of classical musicians. Primarily, this fight serves to do two things; give Aira something to do in this storyline, since she’s been absent for much of season two so far, and, more importantly, build and her and Okarun’s sense of “rhythm” to make them better fighters.

The show accomplishes this in a delightfully literal way with the ghost musicians, and I have to say that the chalk-white look really works well for the surreality of this episode. At about the halfway mark, the ghost of Beethoven summons a quartet of singing giants, who break into “Ode to Joy”, one of the ancestral bangers of western music, and it was around then that I realized I was watching another casual triumph in an anime absolutely stuffed with them.

If you want pure hype, though, next week is looking to top even this, as Okarun finishes this episode by promising to use his newfound strength to throw down with Evil Eye. Predictably—though not in an unwelcome way—we end things on a cliffhanger.

Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 8

If we want to say that Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show has a main flaw, and I think we probably do, I would say it’s that it has a poor command of its own strengths.

What the show is good at: putting its characters into wacky (and life-threatening) situations, basic and broad character writing, effectively tying the death games’ stakes to the lives of its characters.

What Necronomico is not good at: social commentary, more complex character writing, anything with immediate (that is to say, visible to us) stakes outside the lives of its own characters.

This is a problem, because episode eight is mostly about the latter group of things. We zoom out here, taking a broad view of the world as seen in Necronomico. Our main heroines go on a TV show and the series attempts to recontextualize its own past writing, shaming its audience by having a sleazeball TV exec character refer to Kanna as a marketable tragic heroine. The problem there is that “marketable tragic heroine” is pretty much exactly what Kanna is. Her more complex traits—relatively speaking—mostly consist of being a bit rude sometimes. She’s not a perfect angel, but that’s hardly an actual character flaw. Puzzlingly, Necronomico seems to think it is.

Similarly, the attempt to drag and drop Eita into the role of a cult leader is just baffling. I’m not going to say it’s unrealistic—the rise of Elon Musk has proven that people will bleed and die even for the dorkiest and least charismatic leaders possible as long as they give them suitable permission to enact violence—but it’s not necessarily super compelling. He remains a dead spot in the series’ cast.

And there’s not really a lot that happens in this episode other than these two things? Sure, getting a proper introduction to our Vatican witch hunter type character, Joe, is nice, but beyond that it’s all setup. Thankfully, the final game seems suitably deranged, as our cast have been dropped in a freezing wasteland—Kadath, in fact—and have to somehow take down the four main Old God antagonists on their own. So I am hoping this episode is more of a speedbump than a sign that the show’s final third is going to suck. At bare minimum, I hope we at least get to see Cthulu show off at some point during this game, as she was mostly absent from this episode.

Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 8

We continue the theme of artificial minerals in this week’s Ruri Rocks. To be honest, most of this episode didn’t capture my imagination terribly much despite being perfectly fine, but I liked the scenes in the factory at the end. Ruri’s concern over whether she’s “allowed” to like Zincite reminds me, funnily enough, of some similar thoughts I’ve had about, say, Detroit agate.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episode 7

I’m not entirely sure what to think of this plot development, but the scene with Mai and Satsuki fighting over Renako is pretty great. I have to give a special nod to the, I’m not even sure what to call it, evil Super Nintendo music? It plays when Satsuki shows Mai the photo of her and Renako kissing. A great scene in an episode I thought was merely pretty good, which when the last several have been great is a slight step down.

Anime – Non-Seasonal

Dominion Tank Police (OVA)

Well, this was just a bit puzzling. An interesting thing about these old OVAs is that they’re often baffling in ways that, on the surface, seem completely different from how a contemporary anime would be baffling, but taken in a broader view you end up with a lot of the same root causes.

For Dominion Tank Police, that’s basic incoherence. I can only guess here, but I think the two story arcs adapted for this four part OVA must be from quite far apart in the original manga, since that’s the only way I can think to account for this thing’s bizarre tone. We start with an extremely politically-charged argument between a mayor and a police chief about the role of police in society, wherein the chief advocates using nukes on criminals(!!), and from there it seems like the series is attempting to sort of hamfistedly parody buddy cop narratives. But this reading doesn’t really survive contact with episode two, which seems to take the cops’ side.

We ditch all this entirely for the second part of the series, consisting of episodes three and four, which exchange the over-the-top comedy action of the first half for something slower and more philosophical. I wouldn’t say the change in tone works to the show’s favor exactly, but it makes a kind of half-sense in the moment, even if it does leave almost the entire cast feeling like they’ve been replaced with different characters halfway through. I particularly like the weird explorations into conceptual sci fi toward the end; artificial humans, a winged environmental fairy named Greenpeace, blunt and unsubtle musings on the nature of man. Will any of this be elaborated upon to feel “satisfying” in the conventional sense? No, and given the, to put it lightly, troubling political sympathies of the series, I can’t cleanly recommend Dominion Tank Police. But I admit it’s entertaining on a moment to moment basis in a stoner-flick kind of way, and I appreciate that about it. Again, not something I’d show to just anyone, but it has its charms. Charms helped along, admittedly, by the across-the-board strong visual presentation. A sakuga-head watching this would find enough to enthuse over to keep their attention, and even if that’s not your specific focus, the show is sharply directed throughout and has a great use of strong color; lots of dark navy blues and purples, burnt oranges, and fluorescent blues and reds. (Like a police siren, you see.)

Even aside from everything else I’ve outlined here, the catgirl criminals are an excellent pair of characters (and so fashionable!) and the show’s music is unimpeachable.

Manga

Big Love From Ultra Deep Space – Chapters 1-5

This….is okay!

Only five chapters in, it’s hard to make many claims about Big Love From Ultra Deep Space. The manga is about an alien princesses being betrothed to an ordinary (if gloomy) high school girl. So far, my main takeaways are that the character designs are all lovely, and tonally it’s pretty cute, with a lot of nice domestic scenes between our leads as the princess settles into her life on Earth.

It does however try to tackle some more serious subject matter, too, with the pair’s classmates initially harboring some suspicion of the princess, the lead girl having a troubled past, and so on. Unfortunately the handling of these aspects has so far been a bit contrived. There’s definitely still time for the manga to improve in this regard, and the fifth and most recent chapter is definitely a bit better than the previous four, so it may be a case of the mangaka—Ashidaka Woz, no relation to Scott The, presumably—finding their narrative legs.

If the manga has a central theme, it’s this:

There’s something really beautiful in the sentiment expressed here, the idea that just inherently, we often need others to see the best parts of ourselves. That people mean different things to different other people. I think if it pursues this core theme, Deep Space could really put together something special.

As is, it’s mostly cute and not a lot else, but we’ll see how it develops as time goes on. If nothing else, the art is beautiful, so it’s not hard to recommend off the back of that alone.

Posted on August 18, 2025August 18, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [8/18/25]

Hello, folks! I don’t have much of a message here, this week, other than to note that I’m happy to be caught up on my seasonals. (With the exception of a few things I’m watching with other people, more on one of those below.) If I’m to direct you to any of the subheadings below in particular, I really do recommend reading about Turkey! which went supernova this week in what I’m hoping is a permanent level up from “good” to “great.”

Other than that, I’m relishing in the feeling of caught-up-ness for the couple hours until another episode of Watanare airs and plunges me right back into the mines. But hey, that’s just how it goes.

Anime – Seasonal

Bad Girl – Episodes 1-5

I’ve been watching this show over the past week or so with my girlfriend. I like it! The central premise of a goody two-shoes trying to pretend to be a delinquent to get her class rep’s attention is a little staid, but the execution is solid. It’s very cute, just funny enough to keep things moving, and it’s snappily paced. The production could use a shot in the arm, but that’s a reality of almost any seasonal anime in this day and age outside the absolute A-Tier, so it is what it is.

Episode five is probably my favorite yet, as new character Sumiki Kiyoraka [Lynn] feels slightly out-of-step with the world of the show in a delightful way. With her loose snake motif and ara-ara-ing, she really seems like she’d rather be in a toxic yuri series of some kind, the sort that’s boiling over with sex and intrigue, as opposed to a sometimes somewhat horny schoolgirl comedy where most of the other characters are dumb as a box of rocks. Still, she gets farther along in her little plot to seduce protagonist Yutani Yuu [Tachibana Azusa] than I’d have expected, and I’m excited to see how she integrates into the rest of the cast going forward.

Call of the Night – Season 2, Episode 7

I don’t know what direction I expected Call of the Night to take after its last arc, but it certainly wasn’t this.

The bulk of this episode concerns Nazuna’s relative youth at a night school, and is a flashback to that time, where she met and interacted with—and maybe fell for, the idea is at least floated—an upperclassman named Mejiro Kyoko. Kyoko is a reserved and bookish sort, but she comes from a home presently undergoing some difficulties. Since those difficulties include her father possibly having an affair, she doesn’t really like guys very much. She does like Nazuna, though, whose puzzling combination of cynicism and wide-eyed naivete at the world she finds charming.

The episode essentially ends just as it’s raising its most heightened questions. We learn that a vampire killed Kyoko’s parents, with the very real possibility being that “the vampire” was Nazuna, somehow and for some reason. Likewise, Kyoko’s hair color, love of detective novels, and clear motive practically scream that there is some connection between her and Uguisu Anko, the murderous vampire hunter / “detective” who’s been a looming presence throughout this entire season. Either or both of these connections could be red herrings, but the episode’s end point—with Kyoko and Nazuna caught by an unexpected guest as they’re snooping around, trying to find evidence of Kyoko’s father’s affair. The series is clearly setting up something of a miniature mystery here, and I’m definitely going to be turning it over in my head over the next few days while we wait for resolution.

Dandadan – Season 2, Episodes 4-6

With this, I am officially caught up with the Dandadan anime!

This in mind, despite liking basically all of these episodes, I have remarkably little to say. This week’s episode, the seventh of season two, is a much quieter and moodier episode than usual from the series, and I did appreciate that; lots of piano pieces in the soundtrack and nightscapes on the drawing board here. I also like that for the fight against the musician ghosts next episode we’re teaming up Okarun and Aira, a somewhat unorthodox pairing for the show. It looks to be fun!

On another visual note, I must also say that I really enjoy the return of the show’s trademark electric greens and purples, they really tie the anime together and I was kind of missing them during the Serpent Lord Arc (or whatever we’re calling it). Even so, the frozen-out grayscale-with-some-color episode seven cut to as it closed here was also great, so I’m excited for next week, regardless of what direction we’re getting.

Gachiakuta – Episode 6

A theme Gachiakuta frequently returns to is worth. The worth of objects, of people. Self-worth, the value we place in each others’ lives, the value of the roles we give to ourselves, and so on. The show has, thus far, batted this around but not really engaged with it directly all that much. Here, it does so via a major plot development for the first time.

Zanka’s assailant from last week is formally introduced to us here as Jabber Wong [Shin Yuuki]—what a name—and we learn that his vital instrument is a set of Edwardy scissor hands. Cool stuff, moreso when they’re revealed to be laced with a neurotoxin that incapacitates his victims. I’m not huge on his design beyond the knife hands themselves—anime, and honestly media in general, could probably stand to do the “big dreadlocks = scary crazy guy” thing less often—but the core concept more or less works. He makes a villainous little speech about how much he values (there’s our watch word) strength, and how much he doesn’t value people like Gris, the non-powered support Cleaner we’ve been following for a couple episodes now. This serves to establish Jabber as the kind of sadomasochistic combat freak so common in these sorts of stories. Then, to establish him as a genuine threat, he makes a lunge for Gris, who he seemingly kills.

Gris’ death initially lacks much impact. (And he might not actually be dead at all, when we last see him in this episode he’s still bleeding out. You know how shonen anime can be with that kind of thing.) Sure, we got to know him a little bit recently, but he’s ultimately a minor character of a sort that is essentially written to be disposable. But, after the OP ends we cut to a slow-motion look at the scene that blends it with the traumatic memory of the death of Rudo’s mentor. The series briefly adopts a wonderfully stark, pure ink sketch-on-paper black and white look for this, and it’s probably the best creative decision Gachiakuta has yet made.

This is then followed by a flashback where we learn that Rudo’s affinity for discarded objects comes from identifying himself with them; his violent instincts restrained, he feels worthless, and there’s a pretty gnarly scene of self-harm here as the flashback opens, with Rudo bashing his head into a cobblework wall.

The fight scene that follows all of this is not quite as good a payoff as you might hope, but it’s still solid. Gachiakuta is mangaka Urana Kei‘s first serial. So to me, this sequence, where Rudo transforms Gris’ protective talisman into a floating, golem-like ward that protects him from hostile intent, reads as someone figuring out the general paces and expected beats of their genre in real time. As, too, does Jabber’s eventual solution to this; to poison himself with his own neurotoxin, not enough to die, but enough to put him at the threshold of consciousness so he can thrash around mindlessly. These kind of battles, that are much wars of magic-like semantics as they are actual fights, can be very entertaining when done well. Gachiakuta‘s display of the form here won’t rank as an all-time great, but for a relative beginner, it’s good.

We end on Jabber making that play, so any resolution of this fight is going to have to wait until next week. Still, despite my qualms, if Gachiakuta can keep up this level of entertaining visual storytelling, it’ll be a worthwhile watch overall.

My Dress-Up Darling – Episode 7

Lots of thoughts with Dress-Up Darling this week. Not all of them positive, but I like this show, and I think people (including me, in the past) are often unfair to it, so I’m going to start with what I like here.

The last third or so of episode seven sees Marin and Gojo on a very cute park date where Marin surprises her still-not-technically-bf by revealing that she’s bought a fancy camera. For several minutes, the show is done entirely from Gojo’s perspective as he clicks the shutter. He’s in love with the new camera, sure, but he’s mostly in love with Marin, and it’s a sweet reminder of the genuine, gentle love the two clearly have for each other. It’s a culmination of what we’ve seen so far, and an indication of where we’re heading next. All told, it is absolutely lovely.

That being said, I really did not like the rest of this episode, so it’s good that the part I just discussed was at the end.

This is a weight loss episode. I know. Sigh with me. I don’t like them either.

I am marginally less down on this particular instance than I would be in many similar shows for two reasons. One; Marin is a model, so very specific weight goals do actually, genuinely matter for her, as opposed to just being an insecurity. Even if that doesn’t neatly box away the “are we really doing this?” vibe across this plot, it at least provides a coherent reason for it being here in the first place as opposed to coming out of nowhere. (And we’ve seen her eating with Gojo and his grandfather a lot recently, so again, there’s an actual logical through-line here at least.) Two; this is a series with a lot of empathy for its characters. Usually that means Gojo, but it does mean Marin, too, and the show has been pretty careful with, for everything that could potentially be criticized about it—the horny framing, etc.—making sure that you the viewer understand that cosplay really does mean a lot to her. (In fact, as much as her modeling job giving her grief is a cause for concern, it’s Gojo’s cosplay outfits getting tight on her that really gets to her.) Where I’m going with that is that I think the show is trying to do a bit of an inspirational message, or perhaps mining this material for relatability, as opposed to just ridiculing Marin.

That said, it’s still pretty unpleasant. I’ll admit some amount of my yuck reaction to this particular stock plot is insecurity about my own weight (I am a fairly hefty trans woman. It comes with the territory), so maybe I’m not being totally fair. Still, this did feel like one of the show’s relatively meaner episodes. Compared to a lot of stuff in this vein, the jokes at Marin’s expense are relatively light. (This is not Sailor Moon’s weight loss episode, for example.) But still, things like illustrating her recent eating patterns with “chomp chomp” sound effects just come off bad no matter how lightly you intend them. I’m sure at least some part of this is lived experience, but if I, twice Marin’s age, felt a little hit, can you imagine someone watching this and getting hit with these vibes if they’re actually sixteen?

I feel the need to temper my criticism, because this plot doesn’t actually get resolved by episode’s end. So it’s possible I’ll feel differently about it next week depending on where this goes, even setting aside the fact that I’m aware I’m sensitive to this kind of stuff. Still, for a show that’s normally so sweet, even slight sourness can seem very bitter. I’m hoping that either the series is going somewhere meaningful with this or, failing that, that we just tie this up quickly and get back to the actually fun parts of this anime.

Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 7

^{I think I’m finally deep enough into my anime fandom that I have started getting just a little annoyed at Akira bike slide homages.}

After 4 1/2 episodes of Eita doing his I Am An Alpha Gamer shtick, it was immensely gratifying in this week’s episode of Necronomico to see him a) be run over with a motorcycle and b) have his eye(s?) gouged out. That’s the kind of karma you love to see. (I’m sure they’re going to try to make us feel bad for him later. I will not be falling for it.)

That particular development aside, episode seven was a good but also relatively standard one for Necronomico. The tower defense game setup was pretty fun, I enjoyed the various little twists and turns like Gua getting shot with a high-powered sniper rifle and Kanna being secretly from Kyoto. The latter dovetails nicely into the episode’s last and meanest twist, that the damage done to VR Kyoto also carries over to real Kyoto. I admit it’s not hard to see coming, but it’s cruelly effective nonetheless.

Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 7

Like Gachiakuta, Ruri Rocks is another anime that centers value as a theme. (This is about the only thing they have in common, but it is a similarity nonetheless.) In previous episodes, this has consisted of Ruri learning to find value in minerals beyond the strictly monetary or aesthetic, and she’s come to appreciate everything from pyrite to fluorite in the process. This week, the show introduces a new character and, in doing so, also shifts to focusing on a different sort of rock. As opposed to being about earth minerals, this week’s episode is about a man-made phenomenon; sea glass.

The new character in question, Seto Shouko [Hayashi Saki, in what seems to be her debut role], is introduced with a broadly Tomori-esque flashback sequence where, as a child, she wants to play with some pretty rocks she’s collected at preschool, but she’s pulled away from them by her teacher. Her parents don’t approve either, and she overhears them talking about how they hope she doesn’t become a mineralogist something like that for a career, given that there’s “no money” in it.

^{Only the most normal of parental conversations here.}

This is all a tad silly—it certainly doesn’t reach the world-through-her-eyes pathos of the aforementioned Bang Dream episode—but as a tone setter and a quick backstory, it works just fine. Shouko is introduced, in the story’s present, as a classmate of Ruri’s but not anyone she’s ever really engaged with. When Shouko happens to spot her holding a piece of sea glass at the beach, she remarks on it. Ruri rather stubbornly insists it’s agate. And later, she takes it to Nagi and learns, nope, it really just is sea glass. Nonetheless, this prompts Imari to propose looking for further specimens of sea glass, and this becomes the trio’s latest adventure. As you might expect, Ruri Rocks applies the same level of care and detail to sea glass as it does to natural minerals, and the episode has all of the usual charm one would expect from the series, especially when Shouko eventually joins our usual crew.

Throughout, an implicit comparison is made between sea glass and Shouko. Shouko doesn’t seem to think of her rock-collecting hobby (which she’s kept up in the present day) as meaning very much, but when she meets Imari, she learns that it can be both a passion and a career, thus highlighting that in both of these cases, the personal worth of the subject is what gives it meaning. In more literal terms, Shouko’s delight that she is not just allowed, but encouraged to value minerals and her collection of them, to the point of considering it as a career, is also a classic “passion ignited” sequence—wherein a character, often but not always the protagonist, is awakened to the joy and wonder inherent in whatever field a given hobby anime happens to be about—and it can stand with the best of them.

The ending of the episode, coming after some truly gorgeous character animation during a scene where our heroines rake the beach looking for more glass, makes this comparison more explicit. Both Shouko and Ruri, Nagi points out, have names explicitly connected to glass; Shouko’s contains the kanji for the word, whereas “ruri” is an old term for blue glass. It’s another small, jewel-like detail in a series full of them.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episodes 5 & 6

If I could compare the experience of watching Watanare to anything, it would be a tennis match.

Renako, our main character, keeps getting batted back and forth between the mind games of the various scheming girls in her friend group. She is a ball flying through the air between them. All of these girls also seem to have their own emotional baggage between each other that Renako is not necessarily privy to, which is an important complicating factor.

Thus, this storyline, which follows up Renako having dated Mai in a strange, convoluted way, with her doing the same to Satsuki, the conniving, underhanded one of the group, who wants Renako on her arm to hurt Mai’s feelings. Satsuki acquits herself amazingly across these two episodes and she genuinely comes off like a real bitch at certain points. (I mean that in a loving way, something like this isn’t entertaining unless the characters can be believably nasty at least some of the time.)

As you might suspect, Satsuki begins dating Renako by strong-arming her and playing on her guilt. But what beigns as an obligation (one Mai claims to be fine with, in fact, even as she’s obviously not) turns particularly spicy in episode six where Renako happens to catch Satsuki working at a donut shop late at night. This ends with Satsuki taking Renako home (where the pair briefly meet Satsuki’s notably young single mother) and, of course, shenanigans ensue.

Aside from Satsuki herself being great, Renako and her gallery of Bocchian wild takes are absolutely essential here. In providing a sugary comedic overtone, they serve to make the actual emotional development more subtle. Satsuki consequently gets much closer to Renako than she even intended to. The house visit becomes a sleepover, and by the time of the cold, dreamy sensuality of a shared bath and Renako unintentionally stealing Satsuki’s first kiss, the goalposts have already moved pretty damn far. The show’s real strength is in the moments where the comedic mask drops away; Satsuki unintentionally hurting Renako’s feelings by telling her that her attempts to come off as an extrovert are only half working, Renako’s simple and clear explanation of why she wanted to be an “extrovert” in the first place, the aforementioned bath scene and swiped first kiss, Satsuki’s clear and genuine affection for her airheaded but kindly and diligent mother, and so on. That it’s maybe the first anime in a decade to actually get a laugh out of me with a “protagonist falls on a girl and accidentally feels up her boobs” joke is more a nice bonus than the main reason this thing is so good.

Turkey! Time to Strike – Episodes 5 & 6

At the start of the season, Turkey surprised me—and many—with its genre switch. Here, at its halfway point, it surprises again, this time with one of the year’s single best episodes.

A common concern of the time travel narrative is that of the dissonant value systems of those in the past compared to those who live today. This episode deals with this dichotomy, in its many forms, from its beginning to its end, starting with relatively simple examples—Sumomo being betrothed to someone she’s never met, for instance—and slowly snowballing up until the episode’s final, harsh climax. The relevant early example is that Sayuri has her period here, and initially panics because she’s not really sure what to do about that in a time before pads were invented. Suguri is there to help, thankfully, and is revealed to be a woman—ordered by her father to play a man’s role as a protector and warrior of the estate—in the process.

Were that all this episode did, we’d already be approaching rare territory for an anime (think of how many anime bring that particular subject up at all. It’s not zero, but it’s not exactly a thriving club). But episode six’s masterstroke is instead in drawing a connection between that blood and blood of a very different kind. After Suguri and Sayuri’s initial connection and bonding over their shared womanhood, a group of bandits threatens the estate, forcing Suguri and her men to take defensive action. This, of course, entails killing them.

Perhaps understandably for someone growing up in the relatively privileged position of being a high school girl in modern Japan, this sort of breaks Sayuri’s brain. She lashes out at Suguri, simply not understanding how such a kind and caring person can be so willing to take a human life. (And, for perhaps the first time, she processes the death of the bandits in the second episode as something other than horror-movie shock.)

She initially finds Sugiri’s counterargument, that protecting someone necessarily entails that you may have to harm or even kill someone else, unconvincing, and runs away in tears. It is thus left to not a single character but the show itself to explain how these traits coexist in a person.

Turkey‘s answer to this dichotomy is that because the bloody period the girls are trapped in will one day become the gentle times they grew up in, any one person—Suguri, Sayuri, anybody—is exempt from blame. It articulates this, quite deftly I would argue, with its final scene. One of the bandits who survived Sugiri’s forces’ initial attack threatens her again, and in order to save Sugiri, Sayuri heaves a massive rock at the bandit, allowing Sugiri to finish him off. (The sound work deserves a check in particular, here, the bandit’s death gurgle is absolutely grisly.) The fight scene is equal parts stylish and over the top and positively ghoulish, a reminder that the relatively pampered lives we now live are the exception, rather than the norm, of human history. (And, it must of course be said, it’s not like those are a universal human experience in of themselves.) By putting blood on Sayuri’s hands, symbolized by it dripping down and staining the petals of a pure white flower, Turkey has involved her directly in the period’s violence. In doing so, it asks, even if our girls ever do return home, will they ever be the same? But the stained flower is the show’s answer; unchanged, no, but the same at their core, yes.

It is a thesis Turkey will need to spend the remainder of its runtime proving or, perhaps, disproving, but this episode proves it can pull off this kind of subject matter. So I await what is to come with anticipation and bated breath. Godspeed, girls.

And that’s it for this week! As always, I ask that if you enjoyed the column, please consider a donation, as this site is my only consistent source of income. Beyond that, I hope your week is lovely. Hang in there, friends! 🙂

This week’s Bonus Screencap comes from Dandadan. I mentioned really loving the show’s use of greens and purples in the writeup, but didn’t get to fit any screenshots showcasing that into the writeup itself. So here’s one now!

Posted on August 11, 2025 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [8/11/25]

The Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!

A much lighter lineup this week, but there’s a real doozy down in that “Non-Seasonal” section to make up for the comparatively slower seasonal episodes here. I hope you enjoy reading, and have a lovely week.

Anime – Seasonal

Call of the Night – Season 2, Episode 6

Call of the Night presents a much goofier episode this week than most of what it’s been laying down recently. That’s just fine, a breather after the fairly intense arc that just ended is welcome. Love Green [Sugita Tomokazu], the otaku vampire introduced here, is a fun if slightly one-note character, and he and Midori, who returns here for the first time in a while, do indeed make a cute pair. On top of this, there are some fun visual gags. I particularly like Nazuna’s desire to impersonate an extremely dated otaku stereotype (that L.G. happens to fit, in part).

It’s interesting to note that even here, in a much less serious episode than the show’s recent norm, we do get a few bits that seem designed to spur on some real thinking. Kabura tells Nazuna that her parents are no longer alive at the start of the episode. Later, in a much sillier scene, we are reminded through L.G.’s antics that a vampire’s memory is highly fallible. This seems important, I’d say.

CITY THE ANIMATION – Episode 6

Episode six marks a return to the standard for CITY. For the most part, this sees the show operating in its usual mode of discrete, gag-focused “chapters” as composing the bulk of the episode. There are some real highlights here, especially in the soccer team sketch, but also a few less-great gags that are more light chuckles than hearty guffaws. Not a serious problem, but something to keep tabs on.

The end of the episode is the real standout, though. In it, the series gains a true plot development, in that the schoolgirl Eri is moving away to England, taking her from her synchronized dumbass lesbian bestie Matsuri. Most of that sketch is silly too, but the simple reveal that Matsuri’s shenanigans during it are just her masking that she’s sad about her friend leaving is good stuff. An endpoint high note to an otherwise fairly median episode.

My Dress-Up Darling – Season 2, Episode 6

Gojo locking in to do Marin’s makeup—with an audience!—is a really nice scene to end this arc on. Marin’s great as “Rei-sama” too, she absolutely serves in the outfit Gojo made for her, winning the pageant and bringing this particular part of the story to a close.

I also really enjoy the end scene where Marin really wants to take some pictures in a photobooth with Gojo but gets sabotaged by the many, many friends she and Gojo have made since the start of the series crowding along too. It’s extremely cute! I love these two.

Gachiakuta – Episode 5

I have very little to say here, this week. There’s a cool fight scene between Zanka and a pair of bandits here that takes up the back third or so of this episode, so that’s quite nice. The bandits have solid designs, and I like the senior bandit’s ability to create and control mud automata. Other than that, this was an oddly slow episode by Gachiakuta‘s standards and I don’t think I really like that about it. This series is simply not good enough at emotional moments to get me super onboard for them.

I’m also not sure I like what we seem to be doing with the other villain here, but I’m going to keep mum about that until they actually properly reveal him next week.

Kamitsubaki City Under Construction – Episodes 4 & 5

The past two weeks have seen future hard Anime Music Quiz round Kamitsubaki City Under Construction continue to be wildly disappointing, albeit in distinct ways.

In the middle of episode four (actually the fifth episode, because this show’s episode count began at episode zero), one scene stands out in the midst of everything else going on. Koko gets a nice, quiet scene with her familiar—“familier” per the show’s spelling—Kugel as the two of them get some udon while talking about the events that have transpired over the course of the series so far. (Or what passes for “events” in a show this scrambled, anyway.) It’s downbeat, moody, and effective. The second it ends, the show goes back to being a chaotic nightmare whorl of proper nouns, leaden exposition, and aura farming (dig the familiers just hanging out on a crane). Kugel’s betrayal and subsequent death in episode five undercuts most of this, despite being largely more coherent overall. For once, the show slows down enough to actually make narrative sense for a majority of the episode. Which is impressive, given that we’ve gotten time travel (or parallel worlds? One or the other) involved. When the plot doesn’t make literal sense, it can cobble together a kind of sleepwalking nightmare logic, made of images of hapless citizens exploding into blood and literal witch hunts. This episode is impressively gory all around, actually, which hey, that’s something.

Let’s keep the praise tempered, though, because having traded away “incoherent” for “maudlin”, the ending of episode five sees Kugel kill himself in one of the most shamelessly cliché scenes I’ve seen in recent memory. We end on a song again, as Koko cries over his dead body. The show having lost what little emotional charge it had, this feels more hollow than ever. I’m not sure what’s keeping me motivated to watch this show at this point, and I would be unsurprised if it doesn’t return here next week.

Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 6

If I can reveal something that was probably already obvious to most of the people who read these, I mainly watch this show for Cthulu. Cthulu is a great villain, but this is actually the first episode where we’ve gotten to see her do much, and I appreciate that about episode six a lot.

The conceit of this episode is that the Great Old Ones take a day off in temporary semi-human bodies to kick around Japan and see what Earth is like. Most of these diversions aren’t too interesting. Gua’s in fact actively annoyed me. Several times while she’s taking Kei on a foodie tour she whips out the old “we are to humans as humans are to ants” chestnut, which is a lot less convincing coming from the eldritch terror in the first place. Even more so when the Old God in question is chowing down on udon or whatever. Cthulu’s though is great, because she chooses to spend her day off hanging out with and also tormenting Miko. Why?

Because she has a crush on her.

Yeah, really!

Now Cthulu’s not stupid, so she openly wonders whether these are her own yearnings or those of the body she’s possessing—Miko’s relationship with Mayu is referred to in textually romantic terms here, stripping any remaining ambiguity that may have remained about that—but she doesn’t really seem to care! In fact, because Cthulu is, you know, evil, she seems to take a lot of delight in the fact that Miko is attracted to her despite hating her guts. This reaches its apex when she forces a kiss on Miko. Miko is obviously very distraught by this, which just winds Cthulu up more! She’s the fucking worst! I love her!

This season was hardly lacking in yuri, but more of it from a place as relatively unexpected as a death game anime is always nice. Doubly so when it’s this toxic.

Some other stuff happens in this episode too—Eita defects to the Old Gods’ side for whatever good that’ll do him, as if anyone could care—but none of it matters nearly as much to me as Cthulu’s gleeful tormenting of her new pet.

Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 6

A lovely episode from Ruri Rocks this week concludes what I’m going to loosely term the sapphire arc. (Is two episodes an arc? I’ll say so.) In addition to all of the show’s usual strengths in showcasing the effectiveness of hard work and the scientific method, this episode also incorporates some really interesting stuff about the mythology of sapphires. Particularly, how—per the episode anyway, I haven’t double checked this but I have no reason to assume it’s not true—in some parts of Japan, sapphires were once taken to be the bones of dragons.

It’s interesting stuff. It’s also nicely tied in with the actual location of the episode, which is near a dragon shrine. I’d be remiss to mention that on top of all of that, it’s also nicely serendipitous with some of the other things I’ve been watching and reading this week. Scroll down to the “Non-Seasonal” section for more on that.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episode 4

I’m a bit behind on Watanare here (I’m waiting on fansubs. With bated breath, because I am to understand episode five is a doozy), but I like where its head is at right now. Renako and Mai make up in characteristically messy fashion, and the pool scene toward the end of this episode is one of the best bits of vibrant emotional work to come from any anime this year.

Anime – Non-Seasonal

Land of the Lustrous

It feels strange to call anime that’s not even yet a decade old a classic, but Houseki no Kuni has very much stood an already-impressive test of time¹, and as I found out after finally crossing it off my plan-to-watch list this week, that’s for very good reason.

A lot could be said about Houseki no Kuni‘s story—I’m particularly fond of the way main protagonist Phos, by the end of the anime, has started to become an amalgam of everyone they looked up to—but I’m actually more interested in the look of the series here. The anime opts to translate the shadow-heavy and stark visual style of the manga into something hypnagogic and hazy, defined by the bone-white architecture of the compound the Lustrous call their home, the pearlescent mirror-shards that they shatter into when harmed, and the frightful fractals their Lunarian adversaries spring from. Zoom in anywhere across this anime’s twelve episodes and you’ll see something like this; the warm but curiously lifeless sea of its first half, the Caspar Friedrich ice floes of the winter arc, the yawning night that hangs above the beaches Cinnabar patrols alone. These are the qualities that have seen it persist over the past eight years, the same that will ensure it persists for many more.

Yet, that very same misty atmosphere also means that Houseki no Kuni is unique among its ostensible peers and descendants. There are other aspects to its presentation as well, of course; the series has a curiously loose, sometimes loping directorial style. It locks in for the dizzying, David vs. Goliath action sequences and knows when to freeze a good shot in place for an emotional conversation, make no mistake, but many of its more incidental shots have a candidness to them that, at least to my knowledge, has yet to really be replicated. A candidness that carries all the way to the anime’s end. The final episode, after a climactic emotional confrontation between Phos and Cinnabar, ends the morning after, mid-sentence and mid-thought, leaving a million disquieting images and unanswered questions in the air. It disappears like a dream under the morning Sun. An elegant and triumphant form all its own, its incompleteness nonetheless casts a shadow. Like it was bigger than our own imaginations could sustain. Like it was never there at all.

It was, of course. The manga ran for another seven years after the anime concluded, and the TV series adapts only 30-some of its 108 chapters. Houseki no Kuni must truly win some kind of award for “anime that the most people want a longshot second season of,” but there’s no indication Studio Orange, or really anyone else, are in any particular hurry to make one. Having since read the rest of the manga, I can say only that capturing its atmosphere, its emotional highs and lows, and especially the most abstract parts of its final chapters, would be an incredible challenge. Still, these are hypotheticals, and it’s all too easy to let what-ifs distract from the artistry that’s actually there. Any comment about the anime’s incompleteness ignores one key fact, one that any collector natural gemstones would know: sometimes the flawed specimen is the most beautiful one.

That’s all for this week. As I always say, if you can afford it, a donation to my Ko-Fi page is always immensely welcome.

As for the all-important Bonus Image, I don’t usually do this, but we’re going to make this week’s picture something from the Non-Seasonal section. Please look at Phos, dignified and proud under the acidic moon. And do look closely, because barring a miracle, we won’t see them in this column again.

^{If you know….you know.}

^{1: That’s not to say it was the only heavy hitter to air in Fall of 2017, of course. Girls’ Last Tour, another anime people have been begging for a second season of since it finished, aired that same season. Also of note to me, personally, from that same season, is the ever-underrated Anime-Gataris.}

The Magic Planet

Category: The Weekly Orbit

Brief Thoughts on: IKOKU NIKKI – Episode 3

Brief Thoughts on: OSHI NO KO – Season 3, Episode 2

Brief Thoughts on: IKOKU NIKKI – Episode 2

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