SPRING 2023: Vinland Saga Season 2, Dr. Stone: New World, My Home Hero, Tengoku Daimakyou, Oshi no Ko, Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen, Jigokuraku, Skip and Loafer, Ousama Ranking: Yuuki no Takarabako

It's been a long, LONG time since I watched so much seasonal stuff. To be fair, around half of this list I wouldn't have watched had it not been for my husband and his sometimes disappointing taste in anime (sorry husband) but I felt like I should give those anime a short review anyway. Since the season isn't over just yet, not all reviews will be present. I'll mark any spoilers with spoiler text. Let's begin...

Vinland Saga Season 2 Now then. This is technically a winter 2023 anime but its second cour is a part of the spring season so it makes sense to include it here, I think. It's been four years since the first season, which is crazy to think about. I remember really enjoying the first season, especially the characters, especially especially Askeladd. He was an interesting guy and he really carried the first season imo. My knowledge of Viking history was pretty fresh at the time (because I used to study scandinavian history! until I dropped out of that degree lol) so it was actually kind of cool to see real world references, and to know what Vinland even is. From what I remember, the first season ended on a strong note. All in all it was a very solid anime.

The moment the first season ended I remember people being split on the next arc in the story, nicknamed Farmland Saga by everyone. Apparently the story does a 180 and drastically slows down, but it's not just the pace that changes, main characters go through massive changes as well. To top it off, we get a whole new MC at the beginning. I honestly am not the type that minds slow moving stories, or stories where nothing happens at all really so I didn't find this to be a problem. However........ I think the pacing in the anime was way too slow. I feel like this season could have been at least 1/3rd faster. A lot of the times scenes seemed to drag on and on which made me feel like an adhd monkey that just wants to see cool anime fights... which I know I'm not. While the first season was more of a revenge story, this season is all about peace and love and hardwork and pacifism and so on. Realizing killing isn't the answer, slavery is bad actually etc. I don't mind that really, Thorfinn's transformation is alright, albeit a bit preachy. I was surprised to see so many people (by people I mean teenage boys) be ABSOLUTELY mindblown by this season. I got flamed by a horde of angry boys when I said I found this season a bit boring because the pacing was horrid, because how could I not find BASED CHRISTIAN MENTALITY BROTHERHOOD RETVRN MANLY TEARS lifechanging and amazing. Like why did I not emphatize heavily with the whole cast? Which got me thinking, why didn't I? For some reason, I just wasn't that involved. I'm usually a crybaby and tugging on my heartstrings is an easy task, yet..!! I found this season kind of dull. Alright, but dull. Not sure what went wrong. Maybe it was the production, maybe 4 years since first season is too long for me and I forgot how I felt about xyz... But remember kids, killing is bad.

Dr.Stone: New World I'll keep this one short. I'm sure if you've read my opinion on Boichi you'd know I'm not a huge fan of Dr.Stone. In fact I dropped the second season yet somehow, we picked this one up. It was actually not bad and I didn't even nap during any of the episodes. It was... okay! Dr.Stone is a very childish show, and for what it is, it's alright. I like all the little sciency explanations but the problem I felt would appear eventually has finally appeared. As the technology in the story progresses, my suspension of disbelief has to keep getting higher in order to buy it. All of a sudden things that would usually take days (paving roads, for example!) are done super quickly for the sake of the story. Not to mention all the machinery etc. Since it's literally an anime for kids though, I'm not going to question the logic behind everything too badly.

The weird sexism is still there, and I found it hilarious how Kohaku, a girl wearing heels and a skimpy dress at all times, is considered an unfeminine tomboy that can't act like a proper woman because... she's a warrior? I guess? To top it off, one of the rare non-sexualized female characters, Francois (or Francoise, apparently Ryusui doesn't mind either), is a being of AMBIGUOUS GENDER and OOOOoooOOOoooO she's actually nonbiney you guys. Sends a lovely message innit, you're only allowed to dress in a suit if you're not a female and if you do wear a suit, well, your gender is suddenly ambiguous and something to be questioned. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN. It's also just soul crushing to see people hype up Inagaki for including nonbinary rep when female characters are portrayed and drawn the way they are. Doesn't that just make it a million (or should I say ten billion haha...) times more obvious how misogyny and gender woowoo go hand in hand? Sorry I cannot keep myself from sperging about this...

My Home Hero The official hidden gem of the season. A suspense/thriller anime with HORRID animation (it didn't deserve that treatment) but it was so fun I didn't care at all. The story follows Tosu Tetsuo, a guy who killed his daughters abusive boyfriend and then proceeds to get in trouble with the yakuza. Here's the kicker though - Tetsuo is actually pretty ingenious and so is his wife. And together they do their best to trick the yakuza and save Tetsuos ass!!!

Finally a show where the main character involves their spouse, and they persevere together. I'm SO sick of all that "I need to protect muh family without telling them anything and always keep them in the dark" bullshit that happens in every possible show, book, film, whatever. Granted it seemed as if it would take that route a few times, but it was done in reasonable amounts and wasn't too annoying. Honestly this anime really goes full out, because you have a regular salesman killing and setting other people up for the sake of his family... Pretty brutal and it makes for a fun story. Nothing too deep or poetic, but FUN. Which is much appreciated!!

Tengoku Daimakyou I have to be honest... I really enjoyed this anime, for the most part. I went in knowing only a couple of things. First - the author Ishiguro Masakazu. SoreMachi was the first work of his I was introduced to and I really loved it. Thing is, I watched it well over a decade ago and I don't really remember it all that well. In my head it was very unassuming and wholesome which is why I was surprised by the second work of his I read, Getenrou, which was a lot more... hmmm.. dark? Off? I really enjoyed it nonetheless. The second thing I knew before going in was how coom fueled this manga was, even before the adaptation was announced. I think I saw a thread on /a/, multiple times actually (and I don't even visit that shithole regularly anymore!), cooming over hints of pubes, nipples, women peeing, stuff like that. I don't mind nudity when it's a seinen manga (and this is published in a seinen magazine) but it does put me off when child characters are involved, or when it seems like the author just wants his fetishes to be included (consider this foreshadowing for later). Anyway, these are the only 2 things I was aware of, I managed to avoid all spoilers and plot points completely.

When I saw this was getting an anime adaptation, high budget at that, and I read the premise I thought it's worth giving a watch and honestly! It was. First I'll go over the nice things. I am a sucker for mystery, post apocalyptic and on top of that CONVERGING storylines from DIFFERENT TIMELINES?!?. So this really hit the spot. I think the worldbuilding is really great, all the characters have personality, there's some uniqueness there so the anime feels pretty fresh even though the storyline A is about a 20 year old girl (Kiruko) protecting a 15 year old boy (Maru) with a special power while killing monsters and travelling, and storyline B about test tube children being raised in a dome. The anime was also really beautiful. Just a delight to watch.

Next, problem number one. This next paragraph will spoil a major character plot point that gets revealed pretty early on but is still pretty important for the story and character dynamics so I'll hide it. Most people are aware of it though.

SPOILER IF YOU CLICK

So the main character, the aforementioned 20 year girl, is actually not a girl (mentally) but instead she is her own brother! Her younger brothers brain got implanted into her body because the brother died a tragic death (and so did the sister apparently so they combined the working parts). As such many consider this to be a "trans" (LOOOOOOOOOOOOOL considering the next part) allegory especially because the problem of being attracted to a man in a womans body gets brought up eventually. Anyway, it just so happens that the younger brother had a major sister fetish because of fucking course he did, a japanese man without a sister complex is like an angel without its wings, like an abrahamic religion without massive womb envy, even!! So as fate would have it, he got to masturbate in his sisters body, and the weird scene in the first or second episode where the girl tries to kiss herself in the mirror gets explained!! Good foreshadowing, at least.. haha.. To add on top of all of this, the boy she's taking care of - the 15 year old kid, refers to her as his sister, I guess because she protects him. But still, because he was written by a horny japanese man, he also has to crush on the 20 year old girl that he sees as his sister, of course. I mean the second part makes sense but the sister part had to be inserted for good measure, I guess.

As for this being a trans allegory, fuhgeddaboudit. A physically female body and a brain (more like consciousness) belonging to a male person being combined into a person that also retains memories from the body is just not the same as a person struggling with gender dysphoria lmao. This is some pure sci-fi existential horror (well so is being trans I guess), when you remove the quirky coom part. One is a sci-fi cyborg, the other is a mentally ill person willingly giving themselves a hormonal imbalance. Both suck for the person involved. There is no such thing as a male or female brain. I swear every god damn review either talks about how this anime was insensitive towards trans people or good for introducing a trans story but like, it's not even the same thing, it's just a case of a classic brain + body switcharoo. Kiruko still sees herself as a man since she is a man originally and she was forcibly put into her sisters body while Maru sees her as a woman since that's the state he met her in. How you perceive yourself and how others perceive you after great change IS an interesting topic, but dear god, all the people trying to connect a siscon horny teenager that was put into his sisters body without his consent to the experience of being trans is kind of weird (don't say telling, don't say telling) to me. People will see a seemingly similar concept and go nuts about it just because it's currently trendy...

The next problem I had was in the ending, or the last two episodes. I don't consider this to be a major deal though since this is only the first season and the story is unfinished, so I can't really judge it properly. This is why I hate reviewing unfinished things lmao.

SPOILER IF YOU CLICK

So the second to last episode features rape, but then the last episode almost completely shrugs it off and it comes across as if it only featured rape as an excuse for Maru to protect Kiruko. Kiruko almost laughs it off, which is reasonable considering the circumstances and what trauma does to a person, but I feel like if I look at the first season as a whole instead of a continuation, it's just a bad way of ending things. A bit more resolution regarding Robin would've came a long way imo. Or just a slight bit of rumination from Kiruko, like what the fuck was Robin doing there saying that weird shit during the rape. Like after Maru beating him up and Kiruko not wanting him to die, why not question him a bit, or try to get some information? Instead they just leave and let Robin get away with it. It just falls back into that "don't kill him, we're better than that". Yeah I know Maru struggles with feeling like a killing machine, but the whole sequence just feels incomplete to me honestly.

I'm getting lost in all these spoilers here.. Lastly I'll talk a bit about storyline B because I found it pretty interesting. During the duration of the anime I've seen people say that it's weird these children started falling in love with each other and getting sexual when they haven't been introduced to the concept of procreation and biological sex at all, but I don't see how that's weird. Animals know what to do and with what parts naturally, you don't need to explain it to anyone. Puberty will do its thing lol this is one of the things the anime does right. Does it have creepy vibes though? I don't know, nothing being shown was explicit and besides the initial confusion factor I think it got explained pretty well without getting too creepy.

So, final thoughts. I really enjoyed this anime but I fear I'll end up feeling about it the same way I felt about Made In Abyss and what ultimately stopped me from watching. Although Tengoku Daimakyou is definitely not pedos heaven like MiA is, I fear that my enjoyment of the world, the story and the characters will get overshadowed by the authors need to insert his fetishes where they're not necessary. Like I said though, I'm not opposed to nudity in adult manga in fact it's pretty whatever to me, but like I getttttt it man you have a thing for incest I geeeeeeet it can we MOVE ON, HWY DOES EVERY SLIGTHLY EDGY PIECE OF JAPANESE MEDIA NEED TO HAVE INCEST STOP. It's just not novel, interesting or weird anymore. Go spread your inbreeding propaganda somewhere else. It sucks because I'm really enjoying the way in which the story is being told, like it's done really well and I feel like a lot of modern media I end up watching lack that.

Oh yeah and how could I have forgotten, the weird feminist utopia where women keep men as breeding "seed pigs" (based?) but then of course they also view women with big breasts as enemies... crinj... Who would care about breast size in a world where there's no need to compete for mens attention and thus useles gender roles and behaviours get thrown away? Male author moment.

Oshi no Ko Time to bravely shit on the most overhyped anime of the year. I actually was really opposed to watching it at first, and so was my husband lmao. Neither of us is into idol anime at all, and the premise sounded so stupid I couldn't understand why people are talking about it so much. Around when episode 6 or 7 came out though, I caved in. My curiosity got the best of me and I decided to give it a watch. Do I regret it? Not really, it was watchable, I'll give it that. However, it was absolutely overhyped. When anime like this blows up to the degree this did, it sure does remind me most anime is watched by children.

First things first, the author. Aka Akasaka, the guy that made Kaguya-sama: Love is War (which I never watched/read and know absolutely nothing about lmao) is the creator of Oshi no Ko. From what I've read somewhere is that he was allowed to go wild because of Kaguya-sama's success, and he could make any type of story he wanted. And a wild story he certainly did make. It seems like Oshi no Ko cannot decide what type of story it's going for. It's got supernatural elements that got COMPLETELY sidelined after the first episode, it's apparently a mystery but also kind of an idol anime. Basically there's a lot of shit going on. In my humble opinion, the weird supernatural part could have been written off and nothing about this story would change, it's completely and utterly pointless. Next, you can see that the japanese entertainment industry is interesting to this dude. I'm not sure how accurate his knowledge is but it does come across as something he's really into and that he wants to throw as much of this knowledge as possible into this anime. I almost feel like he created the supernatural part of the story because he didn't know how else to introduce massive exposition dumps to the viewer.

Next, the criticism of the entertainment industry. There's a fair bit of criticism thrown in, which is what led to this anime being compared to Perfect Blue on multiple ocassions but... while Perfect Blue actually focuses on the idol going through shit and suffering, Oshi no Ko just pussyfoots around the subject matter. All the otakus are somehow portrayed as kind and totally wholesome men (because how else will you get the audience for this anime lol) and even the main villain doesn't really come across as just an obsessed otaku, instead there's a bigger conspiracy there. This is like Perfect Blue, but for brainlets and hypocrites. While the message seems to be heading in one direction (all of this is fake and shallow and you have to lie to make people simp for you, idols go through hard times yadda yadda) all the characters just merrily carry on and still dream of being idols in a very typical sunshine and rainbows manner, so all the criticism just falls flat. There's just something hypocritical and really shallow about it, saying all that stuff while still making the anime about an idol group starting from the ground up and making their dreams come true or whatever, without any of the aforementioned hardship. This whole thing comes across as very juvenile to me as a result, even though it could be an interesting topic. Plus I feel like the idol stuff takes too much away from the original premise which is more of a murder mystery... If this anime was more about the behind the scenes stuff without the idol storyline and the boring relationship drama I think it would be a lot more interesting. Instead the idea of the show that you're given at the end of episode 1 just kind of dissapates. This anime wants to do too many things.

Lastly, the weird star/galaxy stuff in the two main characters' eyes is so cheesy (and each of them has ONE starry eye because their mom had two! uwu so cute). Lord, it's SO SO cheesy I can't get over it. And then when the characters get sad or angry, the stars disappear and go blank, but when they're being evil or scheming the star flashes in a dark and sinister way.... Just typing it down makes me shudder. I guess it's a spinoff of "hair obscuring my eyes when I'm angry"...

Kimetsu no Yaiba: Katanakaji no Sato-hen Well uh... It was really boring is all I have to say. KnY is just such a bland franchise. I kind of liked the first season but everything after that has been pretty boring and flavorless. Most of the characters annoy me, it's just run of the mill shonen. I'm glad the author actually ended it in a timely manner though and I won't be exposed to it for years to come. I wouldn't have watched this if it weren't for my husband tbh. I honestly felt like I was in a daze for this whole season, because the fights dragged on and on and on and it seems the two fights (that edgy amnesiac long haired guy vs the vase demon dude and tanjiro and co. vs the emotion demon dude) took up the majority of the screentime when they could've been condensed. It kind of felt like being stuck in a 3 month loop, every time I tuned into a new episode it was the same shit as the last time until the big guys showed up and finally ended the damn thing.

Jigokuraku I didn't want to watch this at all at first. In fact, I kind of napped through the first episode because I thought it would be completely generic and bland like KnY. And you know what, it's actually not super special in its setting and structure but the characters are miles more likeable and interesting and it slowly grew on me. The animation was low budget-y at times. I liked the fact that it seems more adult oriented so it's a bit more gorey. It's still pretty run of the mill but it was alright. I'm actually surprised to see all of the top reviews on MAL are so negative about it, but then I went to compare it to KnY and wow, the popular reviews for that are even more negative. I guess hating on battle shonen is finally seen as totally mainstream now? Well whatever, it was "okay", that's my verdict lmao.