A new anime season is a great time for a fresh start. I mentioned previously that I was planning to switch things up here at the blog, and this is the first step in that project. My goal will still be to write a little bit about all the anime premiere episodes, but the format is going to be a little bit different. I plan to group batches of episodes together and to provide more succinct impressions. Series that I find more interesting, or that seem like they might prompt some interesting discussion, will then get stand alone feature posts where I might watch a few more episodes for a broader and more nuanced picture.
With all that out of the way, let’s dig into some of the Autumn premieres!
Ahiru No Sora
He’s short, weak, and has just transferred to a new school. Kurumatani Sora is the main character in this story who loves basketball. He has been shooting hoops ever since he was little and has been trying to grow tall just like his mother, who “used” to be a basketball player. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: TBA (4-cours)
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Sora is small in stature, but his passionate commitment to his goals make up for any height-related deficiencies. Unfortunately he’s frequently a target of bullying, and since transferring schools that particular issue hasn’t gone away. However, Sora still has basketball, a beloved hobby he inherited from his mother.
Soon enough Sora discovers that the basketball team at his new school is sorely lacking, populated by the school’s worst group of delinquents. When Sora figuratively steps on their toes, the bullies start to make his life miserable once again. But Sora has a proposal – if he can manage to beat the team members in a 5-to-1 match, they’ll have to let him join their ranks.
Impressions: When you know that an anime series is slated for 50-something episodes, it can be easier to let certain things slide. This episode gets off to a slow start, giving few glimpses into the various characters and relationships. If the show were planned for fewer episodes this might be a bit frustrating – with little time to watch anime in the first place, it can be a struggle when it feels like a series is wasting my time! In this case, telling a longer story sometimes means spending some extra time laying the groundwork, and that’s just fine.
That said, much of this episode comes across as rote. It’s steeped in a sense of shounen sports drama tropes, including a very “boys will be boys” sensibility about bullying and bad behavior as motivation rather than a set of actions that should be dealt with in an authoritative way. The episode also expresses the sort of juvenile sense of humor that I find often brings down the overall quality; there’s a scene in which Sora discovers a peep hole in the wall of the boy’s locker room and catches an eye-full of the girls’ team changing clothes in the adjacent room. Yikes.
The episode is mostly unremarkable visually, though there is some nice animation at the end as Sora faces off against his potential teammates on the court. I also like that the through-line of the story seems to be Sora’s relationship to his mother, though I suspect that her role comes with the caveat that she’s either incapacitated or no longer in the picture since there’s a flashback scene of her in a hospital bed. I always enjoy seeing positive parental relationships portrayed in anime, and it’s too bad that they seem so darned rare!
This show may be worth a second look after it really gets going, but for the most part its opening moments feel more serviceable than spectacular.
Sora enjoys the freedom of the basketball court. 
Madoka from the girls’ team warns Sora about the boys’ team. 
Sora’s mother was once a star player.
Pros: Good animation during the actual basketball scenes. Sora’s relationship with his mother seems to play an important role.
Cons: Things start off slowly due to the length of the story. Relies on juvenile humor.
Content Warnings: Physical bullying, non-consensual peeping.
Grade: C
High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even in Another World
In Japan, there are seven superhuman highschoolers who are world-class geniuses in various fields ranging from governance to economics and beyond. On one fateful day, these seven wind up in a plane accident and wake up only to find themselves in another world. Finding themselves in a foreign place where magic and beast-people are real, they immediately proceed to panic-or at least that’s what would’ve happened if they were some run of the mill students. If anything, these seven are actually using their talents to do absolutely ludicrous things so they can go home. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Light Novel
Episode Summary: Seven students, seven superhuman talents – these very special high school kids have been lauded for their talent and genius in several different fields. One day the group is in a terrible plane accident, and when they awaken they find themselves in a world very different from modern Japan. This world is populated by various humanoid species and operates within the laws of magic.
The students want to learn more about their role in this strange situation, as well as find their way back home, but in the short term there are more pressing matters. When the lackeys of the local feudal lord start to harass the members of their adoptive village, the students choose to use their talents constructively to pay back the villagers’ kindness.
Impressions: I had half an inclination to lump all of this season’s isekai offerings into a post by themselves since it’s not a genre I’m a huge fan of and I thought maybe proximity to one-another may be what was needed to tease out some of the pros and cons between them. Obviously I ultimately opted to take a different route, but having seen a lot of unimpressive isekai premieres over many years I’m beginning to feel as though I might be getting more of a handle on the genre. Case in point: this episode is pretty light on set-up and the cast of characters embody a laundry list of tropes. Yet when it comes to the full package it’s honestly pretty entertaining.
I’ve often said that a healthy dose of self-awareness can elevate a story, and while some series take that to an extreme, used sparingly it can be a good tonal tactic. Modern isekai has primarily become a method of indulging in various power fantasies, and this story takes that to an extreme. Rather than one bumbling male hero whose mediocrity is somehow just what a particular fantasy world needs, the characters in this series (boys and girls!) are so cunning and over-powered that it becomes comical. It at once feels like a purposeful send-up and a reaction to a popular genre’s market saturation.
The episode does have a few issues. While I like the fact of the mixed-gender main cast, it’s pretty clear who the target audience is – there’s a scene in which a busty elf feeds one of the characters mouth-to-mouth and the sexuality of the scene is played-up quite a bit. Again, there’s a sense that this was purposeful as the trope of the isekai protagonist somehow attracting female attention in spite of himself is a well-worn one, but the scene feels out of place. One of the characters also suffers from some sort of anxiety since having been thrust into this unfamiliar world, yet when the situation calls for his talents that anxiety is conveniently under control in that moment. These are really just minor nit-picky criticisms, though.
It’s difficult to say whether I’ll watch more of this, but at the very least this episode was kind of a pleasant surprise.
Apparently being an illusionist puts one in the top-tier of talents. 
Really, she’s just feeding him lunch! 
Anxiety conveniently dissipates when the situation calls for competence.
Pros: The first episode takes a lot of tropes and rolls with them to good result. The mixed-gender cast is a nice attribute.
Cons: The target audience is very apparent. Anxiety is apparently optional.
Content Warnings: Plane crash imagery. Sexual assault threatened against a female character.
Grade: B-
After School Dice Club
Aya moves and starts to attend an all-girls high school in Kyoto. Her first friend is her reserved classmate Miki. After school one day, the committee chairwoman Midori takes them both to an analogue game specialty shop called “Saikoro Club” (Dice Club). There, they start playing a German board game without thinking. Thus begins Aya and Miki’s search for fun through the world of analogue games. – ANN
Streaming: Funimation
Episodes: TBA
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Miki has always been a bit of a loner. Not only is she shy, but she doesn’t find a lot of commonality in the activities her classmates enjoy. That all changes when Miki meets Aya, a transfer student with an outgoing and unorthodox outlook. They spend an afternoon together purposely getting “lost” and having fun. Their journey ends when they notice Midori, their class rep, going into an entertainment shop – seemingly breaking a school rule that she was very recently trying to enforce.
As it happens, Midori has a part-time job at a board game shop. Miki and Aya are roped into a game of Marrakech by the friendly shop manager, and it’s during this game that Miki finally gets a sense of what “having fun” feels like. While Midori can’t condone hanging out at the shop during the school week, she mentions that doing so on the weekend wouldn’t be against the school’s conduct rules. The newly-minted friends make plans for their next gaming session.
Impressions: Fanservice comes in many forms, and while most of us probably think of the word in terms of buxom beauties or bare-chested bishounen, sometimes it just points to the tendency of specialty entertainment to call out facts that its audience is already likely to know. This creates a (usually benign) in-group mentality and allows fans to bond over a shared piece of media. After School Dice Club is built around a shared enjoyment of what the show refers to as “analog games,” and what we in the English-speaking world (at least in the US) call board games.
Overall the episode is pretty typical and follows a lot of the standard “after school club” storytelling tropes. The characters don’t necessarily have much in common other than a latent desire to belong somewhere, and their formation into a fun-loving group happens mostly by chance. It’s not really the “plot” (which I use in its loosest sense) that’s the point here, though; the characters and story are really just a vehicle to have fun with something that the author is clearly passionate about. Whether or not that inclination should be criticized or not is more likely than not going to be based on how much any viewer shares an enjoyment of the central hobby. Personally, as someone who’s mostly adjacent to board game culture through various geek organizations, as well as through my husband’s influence, I still had some fun and recognized enough of the content to be able to enjoy the episode.
Aside from the gaming geekery, this episode is mostly unremarkable and inoffensive. There’s an eye-rolling scene in which Aya rides her bike into a river and then strips down naked underneath a bridge to change out of her wet clothes, which I gather is supposed to be uncomfortably funny. Unfortunately it just reads as out-of-place instead. It’s really the games themselves that are meant to take center stage, and in that sense the episode does its job (I’m definitely interested in playing Marrakech now since the explanation of the rules during the characters’ game session was really easy to understand!). I think this show might be a fun diversion for someone like me, and possibly even more entertaining for fans who are “all-in” when it comes to board games.
Aya wipes out. 
The world holds so much promise when you’re not hiding from it. 
The characters enjoy an intense game of “Marrakech.”
Pros: A lighthearted look at some fun, and possibly familiar, games.
Cons: This type of “fanservice” may not hold much interest for those outside of gaming fandom.
Content Warnings: Teenage girl stripping naked by a riverside for comedic effect (no complete nudity shown).
Grade: C+
Ascendance of a Bookworm
A certain college girl who’s loved books ever since she was a little girl dies in an accident and is reborn in another world she knows nothing about. She is now Myne, the sickly five-year-old daughter of a poor soldier. To make things worse, the world she’s been reborn in has a very low literacy rate and books mostly don’t exist. She’d have to pay an enormous amounts of money to buy one. Myne resolves herself: If there aren’t any books, she’ll just have to make them. Her goal is to become a librarian. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 14
Source: Light Novel
Episode Summary: In her distant past life, Myne was a young woman with a love for books and reading. After dying in a tragic accident, she was reincarnated into her current juvenile body. As cruel fate would have it, her new reality is nearly devoid of books, as the printing press hasn’t yet been invented and only the richest nobles have access to the hand-copied tomes that do exist. Myne is also young and frail, without many resources. What’s a bookworm to do?
Though she may lack the means, Myne has the passion. If she can’t find books to read, then she’ll find a way to make some of her own!
Impressions: I’m an anxious person, and one thing I like to do in order to counteract that tendency is to remind myself just how lucky I am to have been born into a time period where disease is minimal and I can enjoy conveniences that would have been luxuries or even downright magical in earlier eras. I have plenty of food to eat, lots of things to do, and enjoy a lot of personal freedoms that my ancestors (especially my fore mothers) would not have had. If I were reincarnated into some situation where I was aware of my lack of options, I can only imagine how horrifying that might be.
It’s honestly impressive that this episode doesn’t read like a horror story, because Myne’s situation is well beyond frustrating. This episode does a good job of capturing her passion for reading, and demonstrating just how that lack of a creative outlet might affect someone whose persona is all but built around its expression. Whereas many of us might be prone to despair in this predicament, though, Myne’s scrappiness and determination paints a very compelling picture of the type of character she is. One really believes that she might just be the person to overcome the overwhelming class differences and gender divide in her adoptive land to bring enlightenment to others.
Unlike many other isekai/rebirth/fantasy series of late, this episode at least seems less focused around sending its protagonist on some big adventure, and more intent on allowing her to analyze her situation and problem-solve her way into getting what she wants. To some I think this might make the show feel a little boring, since it eschews action in favor of scheming, but I find that angle to be pretty entertaining. I’ve said in the past that some of my favorite stories are those in which smart (and I mean genuinely smart, not just smart-ass) characters are allowed to utilize their mental talents for the good of the story, and I hope that this is what the series is aiming for. Kudos that the story features a young woman in a role that’s typically been reserved for teenage boys.
The medieval life doesn’t agree with Myne. 
Myne’s mind is drawn to any form of writing. 
Only nobles are allowed the luxury of expensive books.
Pros: The protagonist relies on her smarts and passion toward her hobby. The episode briefly touches on things like class division.
Cons: Starts off slowly with a plot that’s not particularly action-oriented.
Content Warnings: None.
Grade: B-
Kemono Michi: Rise Up
Masked wrestler Genzō Shibata likes all kinds of animals and creatures. One day he is summoned to another world, where a princess asks him to help kill magical beasts, but he gets mad and puts her in a German suplex. Instead, he begins life as a pet shop owner in the other world. – ANN
Streaming: Funimation
Episodes: TBA
Source: Manga
Episode Summary: Genzo Shibata, otherwise known as the pro wrestler “Animal Mask,” is nearly ready to retire with his winnings and live his real dream – to own a pet shop and share his love for animals. Unfortunately the fates have more in store for him, and he’s whisked away to an alternate world during his final wrestling match. The princess of this new land summoned Shibata to help exterminate the demon beasts threatening the populace, but harming animals isn’t his style, so he goes rogue.
As he’s making his way through the castle town, he comes upon a wolf-eared girl who appears to be in something of a pinch. He soon learns that that’s not quite the case, but in exchange for his help she offers to get him set up with some funding. The guild master she brings him to doesn’t quite know what to do with him, but as it turns out Shibata’s unorthodox ways might be a blessing in disguise. Rather than harm a group of cerberus running amok, he uses his knowledge of animal behavior to soothe them into submission.
Impressions: It seems like this season may very well actually be the season of oddball isekai entertainment, as all examples I’ve watched so far have been quirky and better-than-anticipated. This episode is no different, transporting its animal-loving sports star into a world where his animal-loving ways might be more than just an affectionate character trait. As an animal-fan myself, I feel like Shibata is a kindred spirit in an anime world that can sometimes be hostile toward people of my age, gender, and temperament.
That is, I might feel that way if there weren’t quite so many aspects of this episode that left me with reservations. Let’s be clear, Shibata really loves animals. For the most part this passionate affection is played really humorously, as if the character were an otaku of any other fandom. Unfortunately there are a few missteps here and there that feel decidedly uncomfortable rather than good-natured. Shibata’s animal affinity seems to know no bounds in terms of gender, species, or sentience, which is great and only adds to his character. However, in one case he tackles a wolf man to the ground and rubs his belly vigorously to quell him. The moment is framed both comedically and as an assault, leaving me feeling very ambivalent about it. It’s clear the wolf man doesn’t like Shibata’s touching, until he suddenly does… not a great message. Ditto when Shibata dominates the cerberus pack leader and starts sniffing his butt. These particular moments are more cringe-worthy than anything else.
The episode is at its best when it shows some self-awareness and goes against expectations. Shibata’s reaction toward the princess who summoned him exemplifies how funny the episode can be – he treats her to a German suplex at the very suggestion that he be forced to attack the demon beasts. He has heart-to-heart conversations with his dog. And he brings to his guild work a fresh perspective that’s entertaining to consider. I think that this could be a very fun outing if the series tones down the odd sexual tension of Shibata’s reactions and finds a point of more consistency with its humor.
The princess needs a hero, but Shibata isn’t quite what she expected. 
Dog’s are man’s best friend. 
Even Cerberus succumbs to a belly rub.
Pros: This episode can be very funny at times. The hero is definitely unique.
Cons: Frames some scenes as both comedy and sexual assault.
Content Warning: References to slavery. Framing assault as comedic.
Grade: C+