Winter 2021 New Anime – Premieres for 1/11-1/13 2021

As I suspected, there are only a few premieres left (aside from a few shorts, but I like to give those a couple of weeks so I’m not attempting to write about just 3 minutes worth of material), so I’m going to try to finish them off in this post. Hey, look at that! I think I may have achieved my goal – finishing first impressions before the series’ second episodes have aired. I’m going to chalk that up as a win.

After this, I’m going to pin a digest at the top of the blog for the near future with links to the first impressions by series name, since having multiple anime per each post makes it slightly more difficult to search. If My current methodology has frustrated you, hopefully this will help make up for it.

Use the links below to navigate to the review you’re interested in:

Wave!!! -Let’s Go Surfing!!
Wonder Egg Priority
Redo of Healer

Wave!!! -Let’s Go Surfing!!

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Original

Story Summary: Masaki gained the nickname “Corgi” because of his excitable personality, as well as for his inability to swim aside from doggy-paddling in the water. Though he lives in an area known for its great surfing, he isn’t interested in the sport until he happens to see an unfamiliar surfer enjoying the waves early one morning. This athlete, Sho, ends up transferring into Masaki’s class, only further inflaming the man crush Masaki has started to develop. When Sho offers to teach Masaki to surf, for the first time in his life he leaps at the chance. As it turns out, he may have some natural aptitude for the sport.

Impressions: One of the first things we learn about Masaki is that he can’t swim, which makes the entire last scene of the episode much more tense than it perhaps was meant to be (seriously, I can swim and being in the ocean still makes me nervous; why go surfing if you know you can’t swim?). That aside, this is a fairly standard first episode for a sports anime. There’s enough actual surfing throughout the episode to provide a good hook, and Masaki’s amateurism suggests a decent character arc as he learns to emulate his much cooler friends. The character designs are fairly attractive, too. It’s making me feel like I’d kind of like to be a the beach. It may be the dead of winter here in Minneapolis, but in anime it’s as warm as we want it to be I suppose.

That said, there’s not much that distinguishes the series among the myriad other sports anime we have available to us currently. It doesn’t appear to be going for the deeper character exploration that has so far made 2.43 Volleyball compelling. It’s also not straight-up over-the-top like SK8 The Infinity. The unfortunate thing about anime (or any other type of media) is that, the more of it that exists at one time, the less likely you are to have time to watch a wide swath of it (I’m already having issues this season, for sure). Sometimes perfectly solid entertainment gets overlooked because it doesn’t do a good job existing loudly among the rabble. I enjoyed this first episode, but did I enjoy it more than some of the other things I’m already watching? It’s hard to say. These are a lot of words just to say that I’m not sure that this show is compelling enough to want to follow along with it.

Pros: So there’s an amusing aspect to this episode that I bet is probably going to annoy some folks, but which I thought was pretty funny. There’s not much of a soundtrack to speak, but in various scenes Masaki’s friend Nalu plays the ukulele in background and occasionally sings little nonsense-songs related to the situation at hand. I thought it was a cute detail.

A good portion of the episode takes place during sunrise and sunset, which provides for beautiful lighting that brings with it feelings of warm weather and being near the water.

Cons: This is unfortunately another series that suffers from mediocre quality CG character animation. Most of the longer shots during surfing scenes utilize 3D models, since it is a complex activity requiring a lot of movement. It’s not the worst example of this, but any time it’s noticeable to be distracting, it kind of bothers me.

Content Warnings: None.

Would I Watch More? – In a world with fewer anime series to watch, I think I’d want to watch more of this. It’s sort of like a corgi in a way – it’s cute and it’s trying real hard and you kind of want to love it. But as much as I like dogs I’m more of a cat person… anyway, I might end up watching more later on but it’s not at the top of my priority list.

Wonder Egg Priority

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Original

Story Summary: Shut-in Ai Ooto leaves on an outing during the night, and is led to an abandoned arcade where she receives a mysterious object called a “Wonder Egg” (and the first one’s free, of course). When she breaks the egg, inside is a girl who leads Ai on a dreamlike escape through an abandoned school. Ai feels that this could be related to her own isolation, including the tragic loss of her only friend Koito to suicide. Ai begins to believe that if she interacts with the Wonder Eggs, she may eventually be able to bring Koito back. But she’s not the only person hoping to unlock the eggs’ mysteries.

Impressions: How do you explain your dreams to someone else? Often while you’re having them, the circumstances don’t make sense. If you’re lucky enough to remember them later on, though, on some level they can occasionally offer some important, though personal, insight. I believe that dreams help us to process our experiences and feelings – grief, stress, loss, joy. I can’t count the number of times I’ve woken up in a sweat truly believing that I’m late for a high school class, when it’s been more than 20 years since I graduated – it’s usually because I have anxiety about something else going on in my life and that’s how my brain chooses to address it – by making me re-live one of the most stressful times in my life (darned brain…).

Wonder Egg Priority cultivates an environment where the borders between dreams and reality aren’t clear. There’s a temptation to label this a fantasy series because it contains strange, horrifying creatures, unsettling dreamscapes, and even the occasional magical weapon. But I think more than likely it’s Ai’s trauma as seen through her point-of-view as an unreliable narrator. Why does Ai seem to have major injuries that disappear and reappear? Where does the dream end and reality begin? Of course, trying to come at this story analytically is likely a great way to completely miss the point, because feelings and behavior (and dreams, really) don’t always follow a certain definable logic or relate one-to-one with the problems we face in life.

What I will say is that this episode alone made me feel pain in a way that few anime ever have. While my school life was verifiably “okay,” there have been swaths of my adult life where I’ve interacted with people whose purpose seems to have been to get me to hate myself. And the funny thing about self-loathing is that you don’t think that you deserve to let people get close to you in your ugliness. Even though I’m remarried now, the damage has been done; I tend to keep friends at an arm’s length and I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt comfortable sharing anything but the most superficial aspects of my life with anyone. The dialog in this episode about the importance of having a “best friend” and Ai’s experience of being reached-out to by someone whose importance she doesn’t realize or acknowledge until it’s too late is like poison to my heart. But the interesting thing about poison is that, sometimes when it’s dilute enough, it can also be medicine. Dream symbols and allegorical imagery are sometimes the medicine we need to navigate our own heartaches and regrets. If the cathartic weeping I managed after watching this episode is any indication, it might be just the medicine I need right now.

Pros: The interesting thing about dreams is that they seem to be more effective if they’re partly based in reality. This episode looks great, and the big reason why is that it feels real – the environmental details, the character acting, the lighting, all manage to evoke reality, as well as things that feel a step or two off from reality, when required.

This episode handles a lot of heavy subject matter – mental illness, bullying, suicide – in a way that can be emotionally shocking but also feels genuine.

Cons: I don’t really have anything negative to say about this episode, other than that the heavy subject matter that appeals to some folks are definitely not going to appeal to others. This isn’t what I’d call escapist entertainment, for sure.

Content Warnings: Discussion of suicide. Depiction of the aftermath of suicide by jumping off a building. Violence, including being injured by sharp objects. Depiction of mental illness, including social anxiety. Depiction of bullying.

Would I Watch More? – I popped into a Discord chat where I’m not a frequent commenter just to tell folks that this was one of the best opening episodes of an anime I’d ever seen, so yes, I plan to watch more.

Redo of Healer

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Story Summary: As the designated healer for a group of heroes, Keyaru was abused and taken advantage of by his party and developed a deep loathing toward them. Using powers he’s kept hidden from them all, he defeats the Demon Lord they’re battling on his own and uses the spoils to send himself back in time to re-live the last few years and get revenge on those who wronged him. He’s again chosen as a hero and joins Princess Flare in her castle, where he trains in court manners (and gains the added benefit of relations with several of the castle maids). When he’s asked to heal the lost arm of a powerful swordsman, it’s then that the drawback of his healing abilities comes to light for the first time; when Keyaru heals he’s forced to absorb the terrible memories of the person who was harmed. This causes him to become sick and pass out, and this apparent weakness disgusts Princess Flare. But this is all according to Keyaru’s grand master plan for revenge.

Impressions: For this review, I would be remiss in not mentioning that I had a pretty good idea about the general story arc of this series before I watched the episode. When you spend a lot of time watching anime and participating in the related online communities, like-minded folks will often warn about egregious content. In general spoilers don’t bother me, and personally I’ll seek them out if I think there’s some kind of material I’ll need to steel myself against. Needless to say, the light novel source for this story has come up several times in the past as being particularly gratuitous in a lot of ways, so I never planned to go in blind even though I’m sure it influenced how I approached this viewing.

With that out of the way, this is clearly a revenge tale through-and-through, and I particularly dislike those kinds of stories. I was re-watching Appare-Ranman! with my husband today, and coincidentally one of the themes throughout that series is that revenge can become an all-consuming obsession, and in the end you generally have nothing to show for it. It’s not really healing or cathartic, it’s just a continuation of violence. This isn’t to say that people who do wrong should get away with it without facing some kind of consequences, it’s more that doling out those consequences, especially from a place of having been personally affected by the act in question, should not become one’s life work to the exclusion of all that’s good and, ahem, healing.

This is the story of a young man who’s mistreated horribly (I don’t think anyone would question that, but don’t go looking up details if you’re sensitive), then takes his rage out by punishing the perpetrators. Even more, it’s about specifically women being evil, and their male victim getting revenge on “those bitches” by raping them right back. Everyone is bad in an unbelievable, almost cartoonish way, there’s no one in the situation worth rooting for, and nothing redemptive about any of it. I get no pleasure out of seeing these kinds of things happen in fiction. The episode itself is wholly mediocre and mostly only hints at the worst of what’s to come (and the nudity is blessedly hidden by some of the more extreme censorship I’ve seen lately). So what’s the point?

Pros: I think it’s sort of a blessing in disguise that the episode is poorly made – the animation is crummy and there’s nothing very distinct about it otherwise. I think all the folks out there licking their lips in anticipation of sad internet wailing from people like me or whatever are going to see the discourse fade into nothing really quickly. There’s no reason to “just overlook” the terrible stuff for a nugget here and there of something positive or worthwhile, because there isn’t any. It’s all just very forgettable.

Cons: There’s a sex scene in the middle of the episode that’s just kind of grotesque because it’s so deeply censored that it looks as though the protagonist is having intercourse with a black void.

The visuals in general are below-average, which wouldn’t be a noteworthy critique from me generally, but there’s a lot of other really nice looking anime this season making this stand out as particularly clunky.

The logic behind Keyaru’s “healing” magic is ridiculous. Apparently “heal” means whatever you want it to mean – healing wounds, time travel, attack magic, syphoning experience points, etc. You too can kill your foes with “”””healing”””” magic!

Content Warnings: Uff-da, okay – Fantasy violence (magic attacks, sword fighting). Physical violence including blood and brief images of mangled bodies. PTSD-type imagery, including a character who is forced to view other characters’ traumatic flashbacks and experiences physical consequences as a result. Forced drug use. Sexual situations, including brief mostly censored nudity and the appearance of dubious-consent (woman-on-man) – the character in question mentions that they grew to appreciate these sexual interludes, but the first instance appears questionable.

Would I Watch More? – So, I actually wasn’t sure if I was going to watch this episode at all, to be honest. It was only once I knew the worst of the content didn’t appear in this one that I even decided to watch it. I don’t think I’m going to watch any further, though, as the next episode title suggests some bad stuff.