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Spring 2021 First Impressions – Review

Good morning! There won’t be a new first episode review today (and likely not tomorrow either) because I’m helping to run and monitor an online event taking place all day today. But if you haven’t had a chance to read my First Impressions for this season yet, here’s a short review of where we’re at so far.

Mars Red – A theatrical (literally) tale of vampires slowly infiltrating the world of Taisho-era Japan. Atmospheric and artful, but can the series maintain that atmosphere?

Koikimo – A misguided attempt at comedy which pits a high school student against an adult stalker. Not for sensitive viewers.

Joran the Princess of Snow and Blood – A pulpy alternate-history urban-fantasy type series about a young woman with supernatural powers helping to defend a corrupt shogunate. Intriguing set up and nice visuals, but hard to tell if there’s depth to back that up.

Those Snow White Notes – A music-focused drama that plays it fast and loose with emotions and convenient story contrivances, but which features some enthralling musical performances.

Burning Kabaddi – A sports series featuring Kabaddi. Does a good job of introducing the sport, but the atmosphere is undermined by annoying characters.

Stay tuned for further reviews as they come! The pace ought to pick up from here since I’ll be finished with two events that have taken up a lot of my time as of late.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2021 First Impressions – Burning Kabaddi

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Story Summary: Tatsuya thought he’d left sports behind after middle school. Irritated by the cliquish-ness he encountered as a soccer player, as well as by the undue pressure forced on him by adults, he decided to drop sports all together and reinvent himself as a live streamer. His fan count has yet to reach the double-digits, but Tatsuya remains optimistic. His dreams are interrupted, though, by a first-year named Azemichi, who knocks on his door and begs him to join the school kabaddi club. Tatsuya’s “no sports” policy is challenged once there’s a little blackmail involved, so he’s convinced to check out the club, if only once. One thing leads to another, and the combination of strategy and physicality that kabaddi demands is more interesting than he would have thought. After losing a bet, Tatsuya is forced to become a member of the team.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2021 First Impressions – Those Snow White Notes

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Story Summary: When Setsu’s grandfather and shamisen teacher passes away, Setsu loses his will to play the instrument. His feeling of emptiness prompts him to leave home for Tokyo, where he has no plan and no place to stay, but where hopes to rediscover what his own true sound is and to play the shamisen again. He ends up living as a guest in the studio apartment of a hostess named Yuna, whose quest for show business fame has encountered yet another dead-end after a failed audition. She feels like nothing more than a wallet in support of her boyfriend Takuto’s musical aspirations, and her boyfriend is ungrateful about it. When Yuna and Takuto break up, this causes disarray that threatens one of Takuto’s live shows. It’s Setsu, who’s only just begun to try playing shamisen again, to smooth over the performance. As Yuna leaves town in pursuit of her own goals, Setsu is suddenly approached by a rather terrifying woman.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2021 First Impressions – Joran The Princess of Snow and Blood

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Original

Story Summary: In this alternate history, it is the 64th year of the Meiji era. The Tokugawa Shogunate controls resources and technology, exerting authoritarian rule over the country. There are, of course, groups working in the background to bring about the fall of the regime – as well as those tasked with ensuring its survival. Sawa Yukimura works for an organization called Nue, a group of executioners working on behalf of the government to put down any possible rebellions. Yukimura’s goals are more personal, however; after her brother was murdered by one of the dissident groups, she uses her considerable power in hopes of obtaining her revenge.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2021 First Impressions – Koikimo

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Manga

Story Summary: Ryo Amakusa is an attractive businessman (and a known womanizer), but he finds most of the women around him to be tiresome and annoying. One morning he nearly falls down a staircase on his way to work, but is snagged by his collar at the last moment by a high school girl. Later that day Ryo discovers that this girl, Ichika, is his younger sister Rio’s friend when he meets her again at their apartment. That’s when the “fun” begins. Ryo becomes infatuated with Ichika, because she doesn’t fawn over him like the adult women he encounters at work and on the street. “By chance” the two keep encountering one-another and Ryo’s persistence doesn’t seem as though it will wane, much to Ichika’s distress. In Ryo’s case, “no” means “keep bothering her until she changes her mind.”

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2021 First Impressions – Mars Red

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 13

Source: Stage Production

Story Summary: Major Maeda returns to Tokyo after several months and is assigned to the task of interpreting whether a captured vampire might somehow be recruited as an ally in tackling the country’s quickly-emerging vampire crisis. Misaki was an actress, killed in a freak accident during a rehearsal, then mysteriously revived as proven by the stigmata on her tongue. Her mind appears to be frozen in place at her time of death, as she portrayed the titular character in “Salome;” her communication is mostly limited to recitations of lines from the play, though she seems to take an occasional direct interest in Maeda. Maeda encounters a mysterious, youthful actor named Deffrot before learning that Misaki has escaped her confinement. He encounters her just as she speaks her final soliloquy and allows herself to be burned to ash in the morning sunlight.

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Anime Reviews Reviews

Winter 2021 Check-In, Week of 3/7/2021

Whew, it’s been a while since I’ve felt like writing something about what I’m watching and not about something more abstract (though I enjoy, in my own way, putting my emotions to the page in a way that intersects with anime – I hope readers will continue to indulge me). We’re at that point in the anime season where I’ve settled into a decent-ish routine and I’m starting to look ahead to the future (the new season starts in just a few weeks, folks). I’m also prepping for an online convention, and while I’m only really responsible for about 1.5 panels the one I’m mainly involved in is focused directly on great new anime from the past year, so I’ve got to squeeze in some of the shows I’ve missed somewhere. So obviously I’ve dropped a few things I stopped vibing with, and have put a few other series on hold since I’m fairly certain they won’t make the cut-off for my recommendation panel and so I can finish them later. You know, this almost feels like my typical Spring time cram session. Almost.

I’ll try to stay away from revealing major spoilers for any of these, but in all cases I’m at least a few episodes in, so keep that in mind.

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Game Reviews Opinion Personal Reviews

Threads Reconnecting: A Discussion of Supergiant’s “Hades”

Note: This post contains thematic and story spoilers for Supergiant Games’ Hades. If you’re thinking about checking the game out, I highly suggest you do so! Then feel free to come back and let me know what you think.

It’s difficult to resist the urge to refer to 2020 as a lost year, because for so many of us it feels like the culmination of a lot of bad decisions and missed opportunities. For me personally, it was a time period defined by stress without a healthy outlet. I couldn’t attend conventions and see friends, I could really go on vacation, I suffered an undercurrent of fear that something might go awry with my or my husband’s employment situation… and that’s even aside from the relentless thumping of day after day of exhausting election news. It was bad enough for long enough that I couldn’t even get myself to watch anime. For some, their hobbies are an escape; something that lets them settle into a pleasant state of mind and forget about the outside world. For me, it’s kind of the opposite in that I have to be in a certain state of mind to be able to focus and enjoy something.

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Reviews

My Favorite Moments – Week of 1/31/2021

So, friends, we’ve gotten to that point in the anime season where real life starts to get in the way, and it becomes a bit easier to see where one’s priorities are. I’m someone who thrives on regularity, so when I was suddenly asked to fill in for another position at my job due to pandemic-related absences, it threw things into pandemonium. Doing two jobs at once isn’t really my preference, though the second job is the one I used to perform so at least it didn’t require any training. But it did affect my work hours and the overall ability to schedule out my days, and while you wouldn’t think starting and ending the workday an hour later would be a big deal, apparently it was for my brain.

I’m not a great writer to begin with, but making it so that my evenings were shorter and with less time to edit meant that I wouldn’t have much time to turn my words into something passable, so I decided to just let things go for the week and deal with it later (avoidant personality for-the-win). While this job shift is likely to last at least a few days into this next week, I did want to try to at least come up with something to post, so here’s another selection of moments I enjoyed in the anime I’ve been watching lately. Perhaps at some point these posts will get caught-up with the present… but it’s me so I wouldn’t count on it!

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Reviews Short Takes

My Favorite Moments – Week of 1/24/2021

I thought I’d try something new this season since I’m attempting to keep on top of so many series. While I don’t have the time nor the energy to do a weekly recap for all of the anime I’m watching, I thought it might be fun to post periodically about all the specific scenes, story beats, or moments that bring me joy while I’m going through my watch list. In the future, I might not limit it to currently-airing anime, either; lately I’ve even managed to watch a few things lately from previous seasons, or re-watched anime just for fun (I know, right?).

This post will obviously contain spoilers: this time we’ve got spoilers for episode 4 of Laid-Back Camp Season 2, Heaven’s Design Team, Horimiya, SK8 The Infinity, and Bottom-Tier Character Tomozaki. It’s my aim to avoid some of the longer-running, plot-heavy series like The Promised Neverland and Attack on Titan in these posts, mainly because spoilers are more touchy and it gets more difficult to talk about any current revelations without going back and discussing earlier points at length. This could definitely change in the future depending on what happens, though.

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