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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2022 First Impressions – I’m Quitting Heroing

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Leo Demonheart was once hired to be humanity’s savior. Using his immense physical and magical ability, he and his comrades handily defeated Echidna, the Demon Queen. But rather than a hero’s welcome, upon his return Leo was met with apprehensiveness or, in some cases, downright hostility. The people were afraid of his seemingly demonic abilities and shunned him, leaving him without a place to call home.

With little to lose, Leo makes an unexpected pivot and approaches Echidna with a request for employment. She’s immediately hostile to the proposition, but her four generals are somewhat more open-minded. They agree to hire Leo on a trial basis, but he’ll have his work cut out for him; the demon forces are in shambles after having been both mismanaged and defeated by a hero. Can Leo whip them into shape and gain Echidna’s trust?

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2022 First Impressions – Ya Boy Kongming!

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: General Kongming, a brilliant military strategist during the time of the War of the Three Kingdoms, wished on his deathbed to be reborn into a peaceful world. He awakens on the street in what he believes to be “hell,” but what is really Shibuya at Halloween. The tides of the crowd bring him to a dance club where he’s suddenly drawn in by the sublime voice of Eiko, one of the club employees and part-time singer. While the rest of the crowd couldn’t care less about what’s happening on stage, Kongming is moved.

Eiko wants more than anything to become a successful singer, but keeps getting rejected by agents. Kongming, lost in this strange futuristic world. knows one thing for certain – Eiko has talent. With his skills as a strategist (and his status as Eiko’s number one fan), Kongming vows to help her gain an audience and achieve stardom.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Spring 2022 First Impressions – The Executioner and Her Way of Life

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Menou is both a priestess and an executioner, tasked with protecting her world from the destruction wrought by outsiders summoned from Japan. When the noblesse – the rulers of her country – complete their most recent summoning, Menou spends little time with their latest discarded “Lost One” before discovering that his destructive power has the potential to be extremely deadly. After executing him she learns that he wasn’t the only one pulled through the dimensional gate.

Menou has odd dreams that almost feel like memories, of being in Japan, going to school, and being friends with her classmates. But there’s always one mysterious figure just out of sight that she knows in her heart was her best friend. Even her priestess training never managed to erase these odd partial recollections. When Menou confronts the second Lost One to arrive in her world, the girl seems to be incredibly familiar.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Autumn 2021 First Impressions – Lupin the Third: Part 6

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 25

Source: Original story: part of a long-running franchise

Episode Summary: One morning in London, Lord Faulkner returns to his place of business as usual. As he enters his office, he removes a poster from the wall, rolls it up, and slides it into a hidden compartment in his cane before returning to the front door. Later that day, as he’s about to leave a café, Faulkner finds himself surrounded by the police with their guns drawn. They’re on to him – he’s not actually Lord Faulkner, who’s already been detained for questioning at Scotland Yard. This Lord Faulkner is actually French spy Albert d’Andresy in disguise, whose plan to steal this poster was thwarted by none other than Sherlock Holmes himself.

As Albert tries to make an escape and ends up shot in the shoulder, he’s approached by none other than Lupin the Third, in town to steal the very poster that Albert briefly had his hands on. As they leave the city center Albert reveals some details regarding a longstanding situation with an entity called the Raven. Meanwhile, Holmes and Lily, his adopted daughter (and wannabe assistant) deal with an explosion at Scotland Yard and its aftermath. As Lupin returns meet up with Fujiko, he also crosses paths with Holmes. As it turns out, the two seem to have a history together – one that involves Lily.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Autumn 2021 First Impressions – Shikizakura

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 12

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Kakeru Miwa was the lone survivor of a major disaster in Obara 8 years prior. Now in high school, his class is set to attend a museum exhibit commemorating the rebuilding of Obara. On the way to meet up with his classmates, he encounters a beautiful (and very lost) young woman named Oka in need of some directional assistance. As he peels off to help her find her way, the rest of the class views the images and relics of past destruction on display.

When Kakeru finally arrives, he can feel that something is wrong. His inner voice speaks to him in harsh tones, questioning why he was the only person who survived the disaster. As he struggles, terrifying beasts start to spill into the room and he’s nearly eaten. Luckily a group of individuals dressed in futuristic armor, along with Oka, arrive to fight back against these horrors. An accident causes Kakeru to fall to a lower floor, where he finds himself face-to-face with a real oni, one who inhabits a similar super suit. As the other struggle, Kakeru rushes into the fray, mentally battling with this oni as he uses its power to fight back. As he helps the team to a messy victory, Kakeru believes he’ll be asked to join their team, but the others question his trustworthiness.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Autumn 2021 First Impressions – Waccha PriMagi!

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: TBA

Source: Related to PriPara, based on an arcade game series.

Episode Summary: Matsuri is a huge fan of Jennifer, the previous PriMagi champion. She wishes that she had the courage to compete to become a PriMagi superstar, but that dream seems to be nothing but a far-off possibility until a magical being named Myamu arrives through a mystical portal from her magic-suffused world and pegs Matsuri as a potential PriMagi competitor.

Matsuri is initially weirded-out by Myamu, whose forward nature and blathering about the differences between the “Treasured” (those who can use magic) and the “Earthly” (those who can’t) is creepy. Yet, Matsuri just can’t let go of her dream, and once she realizes the true extent and importance of that dream to herself she rushes to submit her application to the PriMagi competition. Luckily she seems to have the inherent gift of performance required by such competitors, and her initial success helps Myamu regain some use of her magic powers. But Matsuri isn’t the only person vying for this distinction, so what sort of challenges might she face in the future?

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2021 First Impressions – Mother of the Goddess’ Dormitory

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 10

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: After his family home was burned in a fire and his dad walked out on the family, rather than take advantage of any social program to get by Koushi decides the best course of action is to try to make his own way on the streets. Being a kid, however, it’s not easy to live independently, so when he’s offered a cushy job as the “dorm mother” of a problematic dormitory associated with the local women’s college, he thinks it may be a dream come true.

Unfortunately the residents are something of a handful. Mineru, the seemingly kind soul who invites Koushi to work at the dorm, is a mad scientist type who has an aversion to wearing clothes. On the other hand, Frey is a cosplayer who enjoys dressing other people up in costumes (whether they want to or not). Possibly the biggest hurdle is Atena, a young woman whose past living situations have left her with a fear of men (apparently even pre-adolescents). It takes a little time, but Atena tries to come to terms with her fears while also attempting to clean up the behavior of the other women for Koushi’s sake.

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Anime Reviews First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2021 First Impressions – Getter Robo Arc

Streaming: HIDIVE

Episodes: 13

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: 19 years ago, a disaster destroyed cities and infrastructure all over the world. Now people struggle to afford food and essentials as the planet is continually attacked by invaders. Hayato Jin, pilot from the original Getter team, has spent the past several years attempting to develop a new robot (and a pilot) who can manage a win against these deadly enemies, but has thus far been unsuccessful. His most recent creation, Getter Robo Arc, requires three pilots to bring out its full power, and thus far he’s only been able to find one whose body can endure the strain piloting it causes.

It’s seemingly by chance (though it’s possibly by premonition) that Takuma Nagare and his companion Baku Yamagishi encounter one of the failed Getter prototypes once its pilot has been defeated. Piloting Getters runs in Takuma’s blood; his father Ryouma was the leader of the original Getter team. Takuma is also incredibly sturdy, which turns out to be a boon once he faces off against a member of the alien forces. But he can’t defeat it alone. It takes Shou Kamui, a half-dinosaur hybrid whose body can withstand the punishment of piloting Getter Robo Arc, to come to Takuma’s aid when the situation becomes grim. Could these two pilots working together possibly be the answer that Jin has been seeking?

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First Impressions Reviews

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.

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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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