Tag: Summer 2019

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Anime Reviews Reviews

Anime Review – Given

Ritsuka played guitar but has lost interest in the instrument. One day, he meets Mafuyu, who is holding a broken guitar. Ritsuka unwillingly starts teaching Mafuyu the guitar, but when he hears Mafuyu’s voice, things suddenly begin to change for Ritsuka. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 11

Source: Manga

Review: Note: this review may contain mild spoilers for the anime series.

When I was in high school I played flute in the concert band. I enjoyed it so much that I even took outside lessons and participated in the annual solo competitions put on by the area schools. I didn’t have a great time in school overall, but being able to express myself through music is one of the better memories I have of that time in my life. I came to the realization at some point that when your emotions operate outside what other people are willing to tolerate on a regular basis, it’s life’s other more artistic avenues that serve as an alternative outlet for those complicated, powerful feelings.

Given is the story of a budding relationship between two high school students, a tale it heartily accomplishes through sensitive, slow-burn character development. But it’s also a peek into the life of someone dealing with trauma and the shame that seemed to crop up in its aftermath. Unsurprisingly, it’s music that seems to tie everything together.

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Anime Reviews Reviews

Anime Review – Astra: Lost in Space

The source of the ship's name.

In the year 2063, travelling through space has become commonplace. Eight students from Caird High School, along with one child, set out for a school camp on a nearby planet. However, the students are then mysteriously transported 5,000 light years away from home, with no way to call for help. Aboard an abandoned spaceship they call the Astra, these nine students slowly try to make their way back and figure out why they were transported in the first place. – ANN

Streaming: Funimation and Hulu

Episodes: 12 (episodes 1 and 12 are double-length episodes)

Source: Manga

Read my first impressions here!

Review: Note – This review may contain minor plot spoilers for the series. Because this show presents major revelations in its second half, I’ve done my best to only speak as generally as possible.

Despite the fact that many fans my age were introduced to anime through the iconic science fiction titles that trickled their way over to the West in the early years, it feels as though it’s been quite a while since the sci-fi genre has really been front-and-center. While the surge in slice-of-life anime in the early 2000’s has certainly provided me with many favorite series, and the current popularity of isekai stories is starting to bear more fruit for fans of my tastes, sometimes I just get nostalgic for stories about space travel and the intrepid spirit of humanity. Astra: Lost in Space, a recently-concluded series from this Summer, does a real bang-up job of scratching that itch.

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Meta Personal

Summer 2019 – It’s Time for a Change

Hi all, it’s been quiet here for a few weeks, hasn’t it? Without going too deeply into the gory details, my partner and I are currently undergoing IVF/ infertility treatment, and since I’m the one with more involved anatomy the medication has left me feeling really exhausted. Unfortunately, I get home from work feeling exhausted, and that leaves me with very little energy to indulge in my hobbies – including this blog. The down time has given me the opportunity to think things over a bit, and I suppose now is probably a good time to implement a few changes.

  1. Regarding the remaining first impressions from this season – I don’t know if I’ll finish them or not. There have been a lot of great things airing this season and I feel a little bit guilty about not providing my personal input, but at this point many series are wrapping up and it feels a little silly to talk about first episodes when many people have already watched the final ones. It’s not like I haven’t been watching stuff, so I may come out with some kind of wrap-up or summary or something similar, but that will depend highly on my free time and energy (I’m getting close to finished with this round of medication and I anticipate there will be some down time after that, so hopefully I’ll feel a little bit more up to writing).
  2. Going forward – I’d like to start switching stuff up a bit. Obviously I enjoy doing first impressions and surveying the anime landscape each season, so I don’t want to stop doing that. Instead of deep-dives into each series, though, I have been thinking about doing a few posts with shorter impressions on some of the series I’m not quite as interested in, and then writing a few “feature” impressions of the things I think are more worth talking about. These could be ones I really like, ones that misfire in interesting ways, or just episodes that provide a lot of food for thought. Part of what makes my current system really difficult sometimes is that I feel obligated to write at length about episodes that I just don’t have very strong feelings about, and that’s always really frustrating for me and wastes a lot of time.
  3. I’d like to spend my energy writing more thoughtful pieces – digging into the details of certain anime series and writing more full-series reviews. Those are the types of things I find more satisfying to write about, but as soon as first impressions start falling behind my time to write these types of things is diminished quite a bit.

It remains to be seen how this will all end up playing out – I’ve got a surgery scheduled right around the start of the new anime season, so my ability to put into practice the things I’ve planned may be compromised somewhat (though on the other hand I’ll have a few days of free time with no obligations, so it might work out to my advantage). But hopefully the new direction will be a good refresh and re-focus for me. Thanks for reading!

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – The Ones Within

Akatsuki Iride and seven other charismatic game streamers wake up in the world of a mysterious free-to-play game called Naka no Hito Genome. Now they are competing in real-life games with life-or-death stakes, but clearing several game tasks could earn them 100 million lives.  – ANN

Streaming: Funimation and Hulu

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: One fateful night, several “Let’s Play” video game streamers are offered the opportunity to participate in a special top-secret gaming session. Streamer Akatsuki awakens in a forest soon afterward, and he and a fellow streamer are soon pursued by a giant panda. Akatsuki’s thoughtfulness wins out when he identifies that the panda isn’t hostile. After clearing the obstacle, they’re approached by Mr. Paka, and alpaca-headed individual who fills them in about their special status.

Akatsuki and seven others were chosen to participate in this real-life streaming event, the goal being to grow a viewership of 100,000,000 individuals. They’ll be completing tasks in small groups to obtain genomic objects for some unspecified purpose. The first goal is to complete the 3 requests of “Kokkuri-san” (the Japanese equivalent of using a Ouija board to summon a spirit). While the others in the group are rightfully spooked when the spirit appears, Akatsuki’s kindness and offer of friendship allows them to fulfill the ghost’s desires.

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – Re:Stage! Dream Days

The story centers around the first-year student Mana Shikimiya as she pursue her dreams of winning at the Prism Stage, the competition that determines the top middle-school idol. – MAL

Streaming: Hidive

Episodes: 12

Source: Mobile Game

Episode Summary: It’s unusual for students to transfer schools right away in the Springtime, but that’s first-year student Mana Shikimiya’s situation. Despite being an oddity, Mana would really like to lay low and not call attention to herself. Unfortunately there’s a school-wide rule that all students must belong to a club or other extra-curricular activity, and so she resigns herself to that reality. After a member of the student council gives her a tour of the campus and its clubs, Mana feels overwhelmed by all the potential choices. By chance, however, she ends up passing a basement room in which the Lyrical Tradition Dance Club holds their meetings.

The president of the club is not-so-subtly looking for new members, and nearly dupes Mana into signing up despite the point of the club being a complete mystery. When Sayu, the only other club member, arrives for the daily meeting Mana learns the truth; despite its traditional trappings, the club is focused around the thoroughly modern art of singing and dancing to pop music. Mana turns out to be a natural, but suddenly insists that she can’t join. It seems she may have some kind of related trauma in her past, and though the club members are sure she’d be a great addition to the team, getting past that trauma may end up being too high a hurdle.

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – Granbelm

In a world that long ago featured the existence of magic, but has long since lost that ability. The story begins when the very normal high school student Mangetsu Kohinata meets Shingetsu Ernesta Fukami, who has migrated back to Japan from Germany, on a night with a full moon. – MAL

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: TBA

Source: Original

Episode Summary: Mangetsu is a typical high school student whose propensity toward helping others has resulted in her making lunches for many of her classmates. One evening, as the full moon shines brightly out her window, she realizes that she’s left a lunch box at school, so she goes to retrieve it. As she’s about the leave the school, the world seems to dissolve, leaving in its place an illusory world that’s somehow familiar, but very different.

Outside several girls in magical mecha entities battle one-another, and they wonder why Mangetsu doesn’t seem to have her own suit of armor. One of them, Shingetsu Ernesta, defends Mangetsu until she’s able to hear the truth – at one time, the world was filled with magic, but it was sealed away to save humanity. Now, those from magical bloodlines meet at the full moon and battle for dominance until only one remains. Soon Mangetsu numbers among them as her powers are awakened and she quickly learns to draw upon them.

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – Fire Force

In the year 198 of the Age of the Sun, Tokyo is a crowded cosmopolis. But the world’s most populous city is threatened by devils that cause people to burst into flame at random. The only ones who can stop it are the Pyrofighters, a team of specialized firefighters. The young Shinra, blessed with the ability to ignite his feet and travel at the speed of a rocket, wants nothing more than to be a hero, and knows that this is the place for him. But he’s not the best at following orders. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll and Funimation

Episodes: 24

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: As a child, Shinra witnessed the death of his mother and younger brother in a horrible fire. As one with pyrokinetic abilities, he was blamed for the accident, but Shinra remembers having seen something terrifying withing the billowing flames. Now, his talents with fire have lead him to join the Fire Force, a group of firefighters who help put to rest the souls of infernals, those inexplicably consumed by flames.

No one knows what caused the appearance of the infernals in the first place, though one of the duties of the Fire Force is to attempt to deduce the cause of these seemingly random fiery transformations. As Shinra goes on his first mission, he begins to experience the parallels between his own experience and the situation at hand. It’s this understanding that allows Shinra to draw upon his pyrokinetic power and put the infernal to rest.

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – Wasteful Days of High School Girls

There are three high school girls: Tanaka, nicknamed “Idiot” for her low test scores; Kikuchi, nicknamed “Ota” for her obsession with boys-love stories; and Saginomiya, nicknamed “Robot” for being a genius but emotionless. Together with a colorful cast of characters, the hopeless girls live wasteful days of youth. – ANN

Streaming: Hidive

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Nozomu and her friends are about to start their first day of high school, but even with all the big changes that are likely in store for them she really only has one goal – to become popular with boys. That might be an issue, since she’s only now realized that her high school is girls-only, she doesn’t have any childhood friends to hit up, and her two closest friends are a girl with a robotic personality, and an otaku – not exactly experienced in the romantic arts. Even their homeroom teacher immediately quashes any latent fantasies about teacher-student relations – he drastically prefers college women, especially those in business attire interviewing for jobs, and has no interest in getting fired for the sake of a forbidden romance.

Nozomu tries her best to troll for male prospects, approaching strangers in the hallway between classes and asking them to introduce her to their male friends. Of course, she doesn’t endear herself to anyone since she’s given most of them unflattering nicknames already. Still, she has vivid (unrealistic) fantasies about meeting boys and leaving an impression as an “interesting woman.” The difference between her idealized life and her reality earn her the nickname “Baka.”

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – If It’s For My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord.

Dale is a cool, composed, and highly skilled adventurer who’s made quite a name for himself despite his youth. One day on a job deep in the forest, he comes across a little devil girl who’s almost wasted away. Unable to just leave her there to die, Dale takes her home and becomes her adoptive father. Devil or not, Latina is beyond adorable, and the adventurer soon finds himself head over heels with being a parent. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 12

Source: Light Novel

Episode Summary: Dale has never had to think far beyond his next mission or his next meal, but when he finds an orphaned devil girl in the forest one day, he’s suddenly forced to look beyond his own day-to-day survival. The girl has one broken horn, marking her as a criminal – but one would be hard-pressed to come up with any scenario in which a kid her age should be banished in such a way. Dale learns that her name is Latina, and he takes her back to his home in the walled city of Kreuz.

After cleaning Latina up, Dale considers his options. He’s barely 18 and his job as an adventurer keeps him away from his home base for days at a time. But the “perpetually under-funded” city orphanage probably wouldn’t be that happy to have yet another mouth to feed. And Dale has a support system in Rita and Kenneth, the proprietors of the restaurant where Dale rents a room. Rather than dump Latina in the hands of strangers, Dale chooses the path toward instant fatherhood, with all its challenges and surprises.

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First Impressions Reviews

Summer 2019 First Impressions – Dr. Stone

Taiju is about to confess to the girl he loves when a mysterious force hits the Earth and turns every human into stone. Taiju and his friend Senku wake up thousands of years later and begin to rebuild society. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll

Episodes: 24

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Senku is a scientific genius, and Taiju is a lovable meathead. But neither boy’s particular strengths allow them to escape the mysterious green light that envelopes the Earth and turns all of its people to stone. By sheer force of will, Taiju holds onto his consciousness and vows to finish his confession to his crush, Yuzuriha, should they ever break out of their stony prison.

When Taiju finally does manage to break free, he finds the landscape almost completely transformed. Senku has been awake for 6 months already, and tells him the news – it’s now 3,700 later than when they were transformed, and the world has essentially been thrust back into the stone age. But Senku has a goal, and with his brains and Taiju’s brawn, he believes it’s a realistic one. He plans to use scientific knowledge and technique to recover humanity’s lost technology, and restore civilization to its former glory.

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