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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2022 First Impressions – Cue!

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 24

Source: Game

Episode Summary: AiRBLUE is a newly-established voice acting agency whose primary claim to fame is that it’s starting from the ground up with a roster of talent who have no training or experience in the industry itself. Haruna is one such hopeful who’s aiming to get her big break with AiRBLUE; she wants to emulate a voice actress she idolizes from her favorite animated film.

But Haruna isn’t alone; she’s one of fifteen girls on the starting roster. As soon as they all arrive at the AiRBLUE offices they hit the ground running with their first lesson – to pair up with a partner and enact a scene from Hamlet. As each group portrays the scene the actresses inject a little bit of their own personalities into it. When Haruna and her partner, Maika, portray the scene, however, they bring it to life in the most anime way possible. Each of the girls is talented, to be sure. But can they survive their first real test – an actual audition?

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2022 First Impressions – The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Prince Wein has been handling the affairs of his small country in his sick Father’s absence. His ultimate goal is to build the value of the kingdom to the point that he can sell it off and fade away into obscurity, but he suffers from a peculiar issue – his decisions made throughout the course of his tenure as de facto leader have only proven his innate gift for leadership, meaning that those around him are unlikely to leave him alone long enough to make his plans into a reality.

When a neighboring nation starts making moves to invade, Wein would much rather put up a minimal fight in order to keep from depleting the country’s modest war funds than to launch a large-scale counterattack, but decisions he made months earlier, including one providing top-notch training to the army, means that the soldiers are raring to defend their nation to the death. One major victory later (and a secondary one to secure a valuable gold mine near the border of the two nations) and Wein finds himself even more entrenched in the country’s affairs than before.

Categories
Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2022 First Impressions – Life With an Ordinary Guy Who Reincarnated Into a Total Fantasy Knockout

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Tachibana and Jinguuji have been friends since childhood, but couldn’t be more different. Jinguuji is tall, handsome, and good at everything, making him a target of affection from many women. Tachibana, on the other hand, is kind of a scrub. Now in their thirties, the two fear that they’ve become old men and might never find love. Of course, a complicating factor in this is that Jinguuji has never shown an interest in any woman whatsoever and only really seems to have feelings for Tachibana, though he won’t acknowledge those feelings as romantic. And Tachibana’s deepest secret is that, in an ideal fantasy world, he’d rather be a cute blonde woman.

As Tachibana is laying drunk on the sidewalk, a goddess of love and beauty appears to whisk the two men away to another land to become heroes. She also blesses Tachibana with his ideal feminine transformation, something which startles and dismays Jinguuji. The goddess also left them with a curse, forcing them to save the world if they want it broken. As the two navigate these strange, new circumstances, one thing is certain; their feelings toward one-another are anything but straightforward… or straight.