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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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Reviews Short Takes

Winter 2021 – Anime Watch-List

I don’t talk about this in detail very often, but in the grand scheme of things I do watch quite a bit of anime as compared to at least some of my peers. Much of it lately has been in “catching-up” mode, marathoning a lot of single cour series in one go over a couple of evenings to fill in the gaps from this past year. This is the first season in a while where I’ve had the presence of mind and the time to stay on top of broadcast anime, the consequence of which is that I’m following a lot of anime this Winter. But that doesn’t mean that I’m giving everything equal weight – there are some anime that I’ve started to look forward to and for which I carve out some time, while there are others that I’m having fun watching but might delay or even drop if my circumstances change. I thought it would be an entertaining (perhaps mildly horrifying) exercise to outline what’s-what, in case anyone else is following along.

Disclaimer: these are just my own opinions, and based on only a few episodes in some cases. This list is subject to change in light of potential future story developments in any of these series.

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Reviews Short Takes Simulcast Reviews

Winter Simulcast Check-In, Week of 1/17/2021

Hi, all. This post should be significantly shorter than the previous check-in, mostly because I’m just cleaning up a few episodes of shows that hadn’t had second episodes at the time I wrote the first post (or which I cut for time and my own sanity). If you’re a new reader, it might surprise you to know that I do actually like to write things other than episode reviews! Yet, I find it helpful to go through the process even if writing about it isn’t as interesting as it could be (though maybe some folks out there find it interesting to read).

I’ll mention this again – these recaps won’t be a weekly feature of the blog, but if there’s an interesting episode of anything in particular in the coming weeks I might take time to write in more detail about that episode specifically.

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Reviews Short Takes Simulcast Reviews

Winter Simulcast Check-in, Week of 1/10/2021

I thought I’d try something new this season, since I’m watching a lot of anime (by design; I’m seeing how much anime I can watch concurrently and whether my ability to keep track of a lot of series was a fluke of my youth, or whether I’ve still “got it”). I’m going to attempt a periodic recap of the simulcast/simuldub series I’ve been watching in order to keep my thoughts organized. I don’t know that I’m in a place where I feel like digging deeper into 1 or more series by giving them their own weekly posts like many other bloggers I follow, but I thought this might be a good way to ease into the routine of posting more on a regular basis.

Some series have not aired their second episodes as of the date I’m using as a cutoff for this post, which is why they aren’t listed this time around. I am almost certain I’ll be dropping a couple anime off the list as I go; this might look like a lot, but this is pretty typical for me during a season where I feel active and I’m not shy about cutting a series off if it’s not providing me with any enjoyment.

…Yeesh, this post got long. I hope you’ll forgive me, haha 🙂

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