Tag: crunchyroll

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: THE DETECTIVE IS ALREADY DEAD Rises From The Grave

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

Yeah, take a second to really take in that title up there. I feel like Todd in The Shadows talking about Mike Posner.

The Detective is Already Dead. La detective ésta muerta. This series, gratuitous Spanish subtitle and all, has, improbably, returned to us, from the great anime graveyard. Rescued from Limbo by…honestly I have no idea. I guess the light novels were selling well, that’s the only explanation I can think of.

How did we get here? I’m supposed to be on hiatus, you know. A combination of burnout a month or so back and the fact that I’m currently working on a project wholly unrelated to this blog means that I completely planned to take this season off. If I did any First Impressions articles at all, it would be for the handful of things I’m really looking forward to, surely, like Fools’ Night or something, right?

Well, I have a bit of a score to settle here, I guess.

The Detective is Already Dead, for those of you who have forgotten or just didn’t know in the first place, is a truly bonkers light novel adaptation originally from all the way back in 2021. It has a quite good first episode and a remainder of the series that varies wildly in quality. I wrote a review of that first season after it ended, very, very confident that it would simply never get a followup. It was a sometimes-good, sometimes-bad, but always-weird series that just seemed too odd to survive on television long-term. Let me quote myself, in fact, while also recommending you just read that article if you want the full rundown on the first season’s plot.

This is another of this year’s anime that will absolutely not survive the march of history, mentioned as it will be only as a curio or a “hey, do you remember that show with….?” answer. At best, perhaps some of the staff will go on to bigger and better things. In which case it will be an amusing trivial footnote. Call it a victim of the production bubble, call it just poorly-conceived. It is impossible to imagine Detective outside of this present time and place; mid-to-late 2021 specifically. It’s a born relic.

This is not the outright wrongest I’ve ever been on this site. (That’s probably still the article where I talked about how much I was looking forward to the future of idol anime, published right before that genre basically stopped existing.) But…well, it is a bit embarrassing, I suppose. It is important to admit that I was wrong, though, because I think what I failed to understand at the time is that Detective actually isn’t unique at all. To understand why, it’s helpful to quickly break down the whole “light novel anime” idea in general, as the implication of that term has changed greatly over time. At first, it meant dialogue-heavy, highly-conceptual pieces, stuff like Boogiepop Phantom. Then, at some point, the meaning shifted to refer to science-mystery-urban fantasy-battle every-genre-in-a-blender works, the most prominent example of which is probably the “Raildex” (A Certain Magical Index / A Certain Scientific Railgun et. al.) franchise. Nowadays, if you say that an anime is adapted from a light novel, most people will assume you’re talking about a narou-kei series, usually some isekai thing where a guy gets reincarnated into a fantasy world with some number of busted “cheat skill” superpowers.

These are all very different things, and I think the main mistake I made in classifying Detective back in the day is that it’s actually more akin the second definition than anything else. (Although its dialogue-heavy nature puts it in conversation with the first as well, in the same way that Monogatari‘s does even if this series is certainly not that one. It wasn’t the only one of these from around then, either. See In/Spectre from the year before.) In this way, Detective is—I know how this sounds—actually a bit ahead of its time in this regard, because this stuff is starting to make something of a minor comeback. (In fact, a new Raildex anime—the spinoff A Certain Dark Item—premieres in just two days.) So where Detective really sits in the greater context of 2020s TV anime is in the “throwback” sector, intentionally or not.

So, its due credit given, and it contextualized, I hope, at least a little better in the grand scheme of things, what does a return of this series five whole years after its first season really look like? Well, I admit I was curious to find out, so here we are.

We open on a brief, sorely-appreciated recap of the first season; Siesta [Miyashita Saki. I don’t normally do these little asides anymore, but it’s worth noting that this is actually probably Miyashita’s most prominent role. It’s either this or as the main girl from Harukana Receive. I say this with some surprise, as I always thought she was very good as Siesta.] and Kimihiko’s [Nagai Shin, who is similarly seemingly known almost entirely for this.] first meeting on a plane, mid-hijack, their battles with the secret organization SPES, their brief adoption of the little girl Alice [Naganawa Maria] who turned out to be a system, one of whom was the evil Hel [Hanamori Yumiri] who ultimately killed Siesta. In fact, Nagisa [Taketatsu Ayana] the girl who has essentially replaced the late Siesta as Kimihiko’s partner, is also part of this system, and I admit I don’t remember if we learned that in season one or if it’s new information to us here.

(Siesta was also somehow present in there. The series returns to its baffling heart transplant motif here and, ah, of course, I can’t believe I was ever confused about this! Nagisa developed the alter after receiving Siesta’s heart in a transplant, she literally stole her heart. It’s yuri! How silly of me for ever finding it odd. In any case, the Siesta alter seems to be gone now, so this isn’t really relevant. If you’re reading this and don’t understand system terminology, I am deeply sorry.)

Present for this recap are Kimihiko and Nagisa themselves, as well as Charlotte, nickname Char [Shirasu Saho], a blonde who was one of Siesta’s prodigies, and the be-eyepatched idol Yui [Takao Kanon. Yeah, Togawa Sakiko is in this show.] who I seem to vaguely remember threatened to shoot someone back in the first season. All of these characters—basically season one’s whole cast—were kidnapped by Siesta herself, and the recap is delivered by her, posthumously, via a recorded video. I must get in here the mention that the video recapping these events begins with, quite possibly, the best title drop of all time.

Absolute goddamn cinema.

Ah, but you may ask, how did she kidnap all of these people if she’s dead?

Well, obviously, Siesta, at some point, made a “bio-robot” maid modeled on her own likeness who could continue to carry out her plans after death.

Meet Noches [Miyashita Saki again. Obviously.]

Noches’ main role is to spoon out even more exposition, and this one is a doozy. It is revealed here, you see, that the “Great Detective” role that Siesta occupied in life is one of the twelve “Tuners”, key people of extraordinary powers throughout the world who combat the dangers to humanity that rise periodically throughout the ages. They’re basically the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as translated to a light novel concept. You get it. (Someone should tell Alan Moore about this series, I bet his reaction would be extremely positive.) She explains that the people in charge of choosing the Tuners—whoever they are—are likely to accept Nagisa as a candidate.

She isn’t actually sure if she wants that, though, and she and Kimihiko spend some time discussing the subject at school later on, after Noches has let them go. The conversational rhythm they get into here is honestly actually pretty good. I don’t recall particularly caring for Nagisa back when I watched the first season, but she makes a shockingly good showing in this episode (the strongest in general, I’d say). In addition to the more lighthearted banter, they discuss Nagisa’s trauma. Recall that Hel is her alter, so when she remembers Siesta’s death, it is from Hel’s (and thus her own) physical perspective. There’s a genuine sense of guilt conveyed pretty well here, which Kimihiko, who also failed to save Siesta, shares in. This particular bit of bonding is easily the best-written segment of the premiere, and it made me genuinely invested in what happened next.

You see, if Nagisa does want to be the next Great Detective, Noches challenges her to find a “mistake” hidden in the video that Siesta recorded. Kimihiko and Nagisa eventually come to the conclusion that there is no such mistake in the video itself, such that the “mistake” must instead be something Siesta actually did wrong herself during the events in question. They mentally run down a list of people they could ask about it; Siesta herself is out of the question obviously. Charlotte and Yui, they conclude, would not know anything they didn’t already share. And then it hits them, the one person who was there that they could ask that they haven’t already: Hel.

Full credit, this is a pretty cool twist. The way it’s executed is neat, too, as Noches (who comes up with a procedure to ‘safely’—I’m sure that’ll hold true—resurface Hel) frames it more like summoning a demon than anything else, with the compelling imagery of Nagisa standing in front of a full-length mirror while holding a smaller one. It works, too, and Hel’s red-tinted return is where the episode ends. Obviously the way Hel is played—she’s literally described as an “evil personality”—is quite far from sensitive, but it’s at least an interesting thing plot-wise, and I have to admit! The cliffhanger made me want to tune back in next week.

I did not expect to find myself popping for Hel, of all possible characters, making a return. But, here we are.

What to make of all this in the broad sense? Well, aside from the fact that I’ve just come to appreciate this genre a lot more over the years (I will take a second wave light novel anime over a third just about any day of the week), it does fall into a pattern that a lot of premieres have fallen into this season, in that it’s a good enough premiere to make me want to come back for episode two, but not one that’s so great that I’m fully confident the rest of the anime will be as well.

2026 has been an insane year for anime, but that claim seems to really stop at the end of the last season, as the Fall season so far has been very dry, one of the seasons with the fewest “must-watch” new anime in at least a couple years. (Sequels and spinoffs are a different conversation, of course, and I do acknowledge that several acclaimed shows are making a return—not including this one, necessarily—but it’s still pretty thin on the ground out there.) In this landscape, something like this is about as good as most premieres can hope to get, and I’d put it in the same quality tier as, I don’t know, fellow light novel anime Nia Liston (a third-wave LN anime with many elements of the second by my reckoning, if its premiere is any indication). Ultimately, I think my reaction does betray some nostalgia for these characters (which I was perhaps not even aware I held), but the boring truth is that this is the kind of show where I will keep tuning in for exactly as long as each episode is about this good and no longer. If it slips below that, the likelihood of me finishing the season goes way down. That’s just how it is! It’s not an interesting thing to say, but it’s the truth.

Still, as I said, there is just some serious novelty—at least to me—in seeing this, of all anime, finally back. I can only…thank? blame? the light novel readers who I am sure are the only reason this got greenlit at all. It is a very surreal feeling to be reunited with one of the first anime I wrote about on this site that I just had no idea what to make of. Even now, having a better understanding of it and its influences, it’s still pretty damn weird. (You may have noticed very little actually happens in this episode. Starting a season with an episode that’s this dialogue-driven is ballsy in its own way.) So if my feelings seem a bit shuffled around but, as they did in my original review, still a bit mixed, I must apologize for not being able to provide some better answer to the question of: why this show, and why now?

I can think of at least one person, though, who probably would be able to give you a better answer. Unfortunately, she’s…well, you know the rest.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Spring 2026 Roundup

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

It’s been a while since I did a good roundup post! You know how these go, so let’s get on with it.

Akane-banashi: The widely-acclaimed Shonen Jump rakugo manga gets its anime adaptation this season. Depsite the trailers looking rather dull, I was actually quite impressed with this episode itself. However, as much as Akane-banashi at large is the story of its title character Akane [Nagase Anna], this first episode mostly isn’t. Instead, it’s mostly about her father, Osaki Tohru [Fukuyama Jun], stage name Arakawa Shinta. This episode takes place in Akane’s childhood, and it is clear throughout the episode that she loves and admires her father immensely. (And, well, if my dad was voiced by Lelouch Lamperouge I’d probably feel the same way.) She gets into a fight at school over a classmate disrespecting Tohru by calling him a deadbeat with no real job, and, when the kid’s mother wants to know what happened, she responds by acting out the entire scenario herself, in a very rakugo-esque manner, overtly gesturing to the talent she’s already fostering at a young age.

She might, in fact, be a better rakugoka than her father someday. Watanabe Ayumu (a man who is set to have a very busy spring, between directing this and the Witch Hat Atelier anime) and his team take great pains to depict Tohru as someone who is talented but who has to try quite a lot to really tap into that talent. The predominant mood of the episode is not of a preternatural talent here to blow you out of your seat like you’d get in an anime about rock music or such (or indeed like we might get later in this very series), but of effort. The very animation itself has a weathered, almost sepia look to it. A look that also gently implies that money might be an issue for the family. Certainly, it would explain Tohru’s desperation to become a shin’uchi. Rakugo’s third and highest rank, a shin’uchi. That level of accreditation would presumably open some doors for him, certainly.

The sweaty and nervous atmosphere of this guy absolutely bombing his promotion test is perhaps the emotional crux of the episode. Uncomfortable and unenviable, hotter than the spotlight directly on him. Even when things turn around there’s an air of inevitable personal tragedy over the whole thing and, yeah, he fails and gets expelled from the profession. So set is the stage for our true heroine, who we will be meeting in earnest next week. Incidentally, like last year’s Cinderella Gray, you can watch Akane-banashi legally and for free on Youtube. So that’s nice!

Daemons of The Shadow Realm: Fullmetal Alchemist author Arakawa Hiromu‘s latest ongoing, now in anime form! This first episode was, well, it was a fuck of a lot honestly! We start out with a very traditional and straightforward-seeming setup, two siblings born as night turns to day leads to an adolescence where the brother, Yuru [Ono Kenshou], protects his sister Asa [Miyamoto Yume] who lives in some kind of sanctuary inside the mountaintop village they call home. This is a bit odd in its own right, but it’s absolutely blown to pieces when planes and helicopters carrying armed soldiers invade, dropping both conventional modern military fighters and a pair of individuals who command supernatural agents called Daemons into the village to kill Asa and capture Yuru for unspecified purposes. One of these individuals, a woman, succeeds in killing Asa, only for her to inform a shocked Yuru that she is Asa (which Yuru, obviously, does not believe).

We don’t get any answers as to how or even whether that might be true here, though. He flees along with his village’s medicine seller (seemingly someone who’s tapped in about the existence of the modern world outside the village) and the episode ends on an interesting note. The medicine seller gives Yuru a key to a socket in front of the twin statues guarding the village. These, promptly, are brought to life as Yuru’s own Daemons, simply named Left and Right but taking the form of a buff demon man and woman.

There’s a lot to unpack here. The atmosphere of sudden, intense violence when the soldiers invade is classic Arakawa. They are downright ruthless, and the Daemon-wielder they have with them, Gabby, is honestly even worse, commanding her inky Pac-Man monster to chomp most of the village to death. All together I was a little surprised by how much I liked this since I”ve never been a huge Arakawa stan (I liked Fullmetal Alchemist just fine as a teenager, but not so much that I felt the need to seek out her other work, and I liked other things a lot better around that same time).

This show is slated for two consecutive cours and the pacing and plotting here is snappy enough that I’m really interested to see if I can keep it up for 24 whole episodes.

GHOST CONCERT : missing songs: An impressively incoherent full-speed trainwreck from the brain of Symphogear creator Agematsu Noriyasu. Agematsu has a lot of post-Symphogear stuff that is vaguely like this, in that they, like Ghost Concert, are concerned with the intersection of music (and artistic expression more generally) and technology. Ghost Concert piles a near-future sci fi setting where non-AI music is illegal on top of that, and then further adds a Fate-esque twist where the main character is a medium who can see and be possessed by the spirits of famous historical figures.

There is, suffice to say, a lot going on here, and if any of it made any kind of sense it might be great. As it is, well, I did already call it a trainwreck but honestly that’s underselling it a little. I have almost no idea what the different parts of this show have to do with each other, which given that we’re only a single episode in leaves me a bit flabbergasted.

What I will give the series is that it has pretty impressive action animation and direction—the directing here handled by Jinbou Masato and animated by a team at the infamous Studio ENGI—but aside from the fact that I don’t really expect that to last, it’s hard to latch on to empty calorie goodies like cool explosions, aspect ratio-changing AMV sequences, and glowing VFX during the fight scenes when you have no real idea of what’s happening or why. The episode’s actual plot is bizarrely vague, something about our main girl Aiba Seria being possessed by the ghost of Cleopatra and turned into an….evil slut, I guess? (As a side note it drives me crazy when stuff characterizes Cleopatra this way, but that’s more of a pet peeve than anything.) Possessed by Cleopatra and summoning the phantoms of Caesar and Mark Antony for help, she fights a blue-haired girl and a priest for vague reasons. There is singing. After the fight she has a massive row with her friends who I guess did not know she was some kind of medium? It’s all so hurried and haphazard that it barely registers as a story at all.

If nothing else, this at least seems to make the argument that the Symphogear guy doesn’t like genAI. I guess that’s nice, but it’s agreeable in the same way a Macklemore song is. Sure, the general sentiment is nice and some of the technical aspects are impressive. It’s still not anything you’d really ever listen to of your own volition.

SNOWBALL EARTH: I think even just a couple of years ago, I would’ve talked myself into watching a few more episodes of this on the basis that it “has potential” or something, but to be honest, an interesting premise alone a show does not make. We spend this whole first episode getting to that premise in the first place, so even if it did, I have not exactly been rewarded for my 20 minutes here.

The real death knell for the show is just its tone. We want this to be a serious thing about a lonely boy and his obligation to save the world with the help of his giant robot friend and we want it to be sad when the giant robot sacrifices himself at the end of the episode on some Iron Giant shit. But we also want this to be a goofy parody with a lot of knee-slapping corny humor that’s basically just a string of jokes that people made about Shinji in the early 2000s. It commits to neither so the two halves work against each other and the result is a show that mostly just pissed me off. This thing has the audacity to reference the original Gundam in its opening episode which if you’re going to do that, you better have more to show for it than this.

Petals of Reincarnation: Well this was really stupid! I’d say I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way but, honestly, here I sort of do. It’s about half and half, I guess.

With the constant deluge of narou-kei bullshit I honestly welcome something that’s an edgelord revenge fantasy in a more direct and honestly more imaginative way. Granted, the bar is in the ground so “imaginative” means we’re doing the “powers borrowed from great figures of history” shtick. Fate is usually held to have invented this, but in terms of competence and general responsibility with its historical characters I am expecting something more along the lines of Nobuna-Gun. (This show is where the “Hitler as a little anime boy with a sharingan” image that’s been kicking around the internet lately is from, for reference, if you’ve seen that.)

I won’t go into the events of the narrative because they’re not important, or, honestly, even interesting. But the fights in this first episode were pretty cool, especially for a new studio (BENTEN Film, supposedly mostly ex-Gainax of Fukushima staff) and a team helmed by a not particularly acclaimed director (the Grendizer U guy is doing this). The show has what is for better or wores an extremely distinctive visual style, with some very, very, very bold color choices. Downright garish ones at times. Add in some SHAFT-y dialogue screens and such and you get a series that has the air of being distinctly the budget version of a couple other shows. There are way worse things to be, even if that’s hardly high praise. And the female lead, herself named Haito le Buffett [Maruoka Wakana], proves that if you make Miyamoto Musashi a girl she will always be the coolest character in the room. (Although this version doesn’t hold a candle to Fate‘s, obviously.)

The main thing holding me back here is that the main character is a vacuous edgelord and I kinda hate him in the wrong way. We’ll see how much juice he can get out of Mega Man’ing everyone else’s powers, but honestly how much more of this I watch is going to be down to how cool the action scenes are vs. how annoying I find him and the other characters. Other than Haito, none have left a particularly positive impression so far. Between this, Ghost Concert, and Killed Again, Mr. Detective (which I did not write about here, because I frankly had very little to say), it’s at least proving to be an interesting season for shows that are just very odd above all else. If you like those, you may get some enjoyment out of these. Otherwise, well, there’s always this option:

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: SENGOKU YOUKO is Good, Thank God

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

You who lament this barbarous age; rejoice! Sengoku Youko is pretty good, the work of cult mangaka Satoshi Mizukami will not all be turned into anime sludge in the vein of the previous project to bear his name, the absolutely tragic anime adaptation of The Lucifer & Biscuit Hammer.

To be realistic for a moment, after that debacle, the bar is basically on the floor. Sengoku Youko is playing with a stacked deck, with both the greatly hedged expectations coming off of the last Mizukami adaptation and the fact that Sengoku Youko the manga is probably the least-read of Mizukami’s major works. (It’s the only one that I haven’t read, in fact.) As with Biscuit Hammer, it’s also on the old side to be getting an anime adaptation now, having started back in 2007 and wrapped up almost a decade later, but historical fantasy is a timeless genre on this medium, so this is not really any kind of issue. Given all this, it has a much better chance at making a favorable first impression than its ill-fated sibling. Still, even that in mind, Sengoku Youko’s premiere is just a solid slice of historical fantasy, featuring a great dynamic between its three leads, a couple funky monster designs, and some really nice action animation.

As for what it’s actually about, our setup here is pretty simple. Set in the mid-1500s, during the massively unstable sengoku period (hence the name), Sengoku Youko follows a pair of spirits, the short fox girl Tama Youko [Yuuki Takada] and her ‘little brother’ Jinka Yamato [Souma Saitou], as they fight evil.

Tama is the one with the adorable fox ears.

No, literally, that’s their whole thing, per Tama’s instruction. (Jinka, who is bigoted against the humans they often end up saving, only seems to go along with it with great reluctance.) They’re also joined by a cowardly ronin, Shinsuke Hyoudou [Ryouhei Kimura], who is transfixed by the vast strength that Tama and Jinka display, and hopes to somehow get stronger by going along with them.

The first episode sees Tama break up a bandit ring that turns out to be led by….ah, this.

This leads to some of the episode’s best visuals, in particular a very striking sequence where Tama and Jinka combine their powers, turning Jinka into a white-haired fox warrior that trounces his opposition fairly easily.

A later confrontation with a strange monster menacing some Buddhist monks ends on a cliffhanger, providing a nice hook to get folks coming back next week. That said, I have a suspicion that all is not as it appears in Sengoku Youko. Even if it stays episodic like this, it will probably be a fun time. However, given Mizukami’s usual M.O.—a desire to take genres apart and then stitch them back together in a different shape, exhibited with battle shonen in the Biscuit Hammer manga, reincarnation fantasy in Spirit Circle, and mecha anime in Planet With—I really doubt that it’ll be content to stick to any kind of formula. Time will tell, but I’m interested in finding out, and I can give this first episode no better endorsement than that.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.