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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 New Anime – Premieres for Friday, January 8th 2021

It’s amazing how much things can change in a short amount of time. Yesterday during the day I was all geared-up to come home and watch anime, but then before I went to bed I started to feel suspiciously cruddy. Now I’m working from home and hoping that all I have is a case of the creeping crud. Luckily I don’t feel too poorly, but I’m a little irritated that the only places I’ve been for quite a while (aside from work, which is fairly isolated) are “the grocery store” and “the other grocery store” and I still managed to catch something.

On the upside, it does mean I get to use my lunch time to watch a little anime to maybe catch up a little bit (not that I’m stressing). This group of premieres is the largest so far, but if this post gets too long I might split it in two so that I don’t overwhelm folks.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 New Anime – EX-ARM

I didn’t really plan to do any single-episode posts this season for reasons that have been stated repeatedly by now. But I had a suspicion that I might have reason to set aside some extra time for this premiere, so I skipped ahead a bit in my viewing order to ensure I got to watch it almost as soon as it dropped.

I make it a policy not to dunk too hard on anything nowadays, because as fun as it is in the moment it leaves behind an unpalatable emptiness that I’d rather avoid. That said, because we’re all here to talk about an art form that we really enjoy, I think it’s important to be critical when it’s warranted, at least to the point that folks are able to make their own decisions.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 New Anime – Premieres for Thursday, January 7th, 2021

So far I’m really enjoying the more chill pacing of writing reviews this season. It’s not that there are fewer premieres, it’s more that I’m holding myself to more realistic standards and not getting so stressed about being one person attempting to complete the work of several. Knowing that I’m trying to write a reasonable amount rather than word-vomiting the huge essays I had been writing about each new show has kept me from dreading the process. I can’t guarantee that there will never be word vomit, but I’m trying to keep it as a “sometimes” issue.

These premieres mark the end of the first week of the new year. It’s already been a wild ride, that’s for sure. There have been quite a few jokes about people deciding not to renew after their free 7-day trial… I for one am deeply hoping that the year will be looking up a little bit from here. At least I will try to enjoy some great anime!

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 New Anime – Premieres for Wednesday, January 6th 2021

Well, as I’m writing this it’s definitely been an interesting couple of days in the United States. To be honest, it took a day or two to get enough sleep to feel like I could pay attention to an entire anime episode and write coherently about it. I think there are some folks who can use media to escape from whatever happens to be going on; my anxiety is just too terrible to let up for 25 minutes so I can take in an anime episode. But I’ve been wanting to watch anime, so I’m going to give it a try and see how far I get.

Most folks will notice that the look of the blog has changed; while I wasn’t really planning to switch things up at this very moment, a friend let me know of some image compatibility issues that were showing up on the mobile site so I figured it would be a good opportunity to make a change to my very out-of-date theme. I may be tweaking things in the coming days, but this is pretty close to what I wanted.

Note: There is a small spoiler for Hortensia Saga in its review. It’s one of the main conceits of the series and if you’re looking closely enough you can identify it on your own (even though the show itself is not keen to call it out directly), but I know more than one person who missed it until participating in discussions afterward, so if you’d rather go in completely blind you can skip the second review in this post.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 New Anime – Premieres for Monday, January 4th 2021

Hello friends! So it seems the season has started in earnest now. I, for one, am excited to see whether anything I was excited about actually pans out. We’ll see!

I’m going to be prioritizing non-sequel material for the time being, as I’d rather get a handle on the unknowns rather than the familiar anime about which we’ve probably already made our decisions. Hopefully I’ll be able to carve out some time to talk about my favorite sequel premieres, too.

I’m attempting to group premieres together by premiere date; if a lot of shows premiere on the same date I may have to break some of them into multiple parts. I’m still testing out this change in format and hope to land on something that works for the long term.

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First Impressions Reviews

Winter 2021 New Anime – The Early Bird Catches the Worm

You know, over the past year I’ve come to truly dislike the word “unprecedented,” because it’s been used time and time again to describe the utterly batshit state of affairs in the world today. And yet, here I’m about to use it to describe the roll-out of this most current anime season.

This season is an odd one for various reasons, perhaps the biggest of which is that it’s turned into kind of a catch-up situation for some series that were meant to have been broadcast sooner, but which were delayed due to the Covid-19 situation. Now we’re being delivered more anime than may have been anticipated, some of them extremely high-profile released. Another thing I’ve noticed is that there have been a few early broadcasts. This in itself isn’t that odd; the odd part is that the early broadcasts are available to us in the US, rather than on, say, Japanese Netflix or some other platform unavailable to us in the West.

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Previews Reviews

Winter 2021 Anime – What I’m Looking Forward To

Some of you may not realize how good it feels to be writing “2021” in a post header; some of you probably know all too well the sense of optimism and hope that comes along with it. Needless to say, despite the fact that we’re not out of the pandemic woods yet, I’m trying to be more “glass half full” about what the new year has in store for us all, especially when it comes to new anime. To be honest, I’m still playing catch-up with anime from 2020 – I have a cool super power where I can knock out a 1-cour anime series in a couple of evenings after work, but that power is exhausting and I need some recharge time in between, so I’m sure I’ll be working on completing this quest for a while. But I just can’t help but look ahead toward the new shininess on the horizon, so below are some anime series I’m looking forward to.

Note: There will be discussion of spoilers for some of the returning series, so please read at your own risk!

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Anime Reviews Reviews

Encountering Turbulence Atop a Witch’s Broom

This post contains spoilers for the anime series Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina. This series is available to Watch on Funimation’s streaming service in the US.

Last December, back when going to the movie theater was still a choice one could make on a whim, my husband and I decided to tag along with some members of the anime club who had planned a group viewing of the film Cats. We pretty much already knew what we were getting into; I’d read several reviews lamenting the truly weird design choices, mis-used A-list actors, and pressure that the animation team was put under to adhere to some unrealistic directorial choices. But I wanted to hang out with my friends, and going out to movies was at that time a pretty reliable way to see a bunch of them at once outside of anime club. The movie was definitely an experience, though I’d say the defining moment for me was near the end of the film where Judy Dench as Old Deuteronomy breaks the fourth wall, turning directly to the audience; I audibly gasped and hid my face (a friend of mine still teases me for this). For the most part, though, the adaptation was just a cavalcade of bad decisions and poor attempts at both humor and drama.

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Meta Personal

A State-of-the-Blog Post

Ahh, to be a cozy little mummy… thing.

Hi Friends. With the end of the year coming up swiftly I wanted to do a little “state of the blog” post to set some goals and expectations for the new year. If you’re just stumbling in here randomly, most of this may not be that interesting to you (but I hope you’ll decide to stick around!). If you’re a long-time reader who’s interested in reading some of my thought processes, well, then you’re in the right place.

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Meta Opinion Personal

The Balancing Act of Being Critical: Part 1 – Passions are Personal

Over the past couple of months I’ve had a lot of time to think about how I approach my writing and reviewing, and the things that go into crafting a well-written critique that has value to others. I think media criticism and textual analysis is interesting no matter what your chosen medium of focus is, but anime in particular appeals to me because I feel like there’s a lot to unpack – both regarding the material itself, as well as the ways in which the Western fandom interacts with it. As an affect of the Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, I’ve also had a lot more time to interact online with folks within my anime club friendship circle; as a result I’ve gotten into some interesting discussions regarding anime likes and dislikes and had the opportunity to consider some alternative viewpoints to my own. Because I’ve been hoping to write more about the more “meta” parts of anime fandom, I wanted to use this opportunity to record and ponder some of those thoughts.

I’ve been writing about anime for a long time (since early 2007 at least). While plenty of anime series have crossed my path over the years, some blazing onto the scene with a lot of fanfare before being largely forgotten and some remaining favorites of mine despite all the things I’ve experienced in the interim, one thing that’s been a constant is that anime as a medium has always had its share of controversial material. This isn’t something unique to anime; there are plenty of Western TV shows and films that push the boundaries of our collective social taboos (or just trample all over what I’d define as good taste). But I suspect that there are traits of anime that make these kinds of transgressions stand out to a greater degree than they might otherwise.

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