10.30
Assault Lily Bouquet
Yet another battle school anime, except this time the girls call themselves Lilies and the monsters are called the Huge. Huge what? How should I know? Euphemisms aside, I don’t know how some anime fans can do it, talking about shows that tread through the same formula and the same thing season in and season out. I’m sure every anime season is always someone’s first, but for longtime fans, what do they get out of shows like Assault Lily Bouquet? Besides the obvious? The battles are mediocre. The animation switches from fun to cheap. None of the characters make any good or even okay first impressions. And the relationship pushing is so blatant that the two lead characters are named Yuyu and Riri.
But some people need a routine, and if that routine is watching the latest version of squeaky-voiced high school girls fight CGI monsters with impractically oversized weapons, then whatever will be will be. But I’m thinking, years from now, or even a season from now, if the first episode wasn’t a fakeout and the rest of the show’s like this, will anyone give it the time of day? When you mention Assault Lily Bouquet to another anime fan in the future, will they remember a thing about the show? Besides the obvious? Maybe it’s all in the name. Even when properly cared for, bouquets only last little over two weeks at most. – Marquis
The Day I Became a God
I spent most of the episode asking why the main character kept humoring the little girl following her around. He had plans and shit, but instead of leaving the girl, he’s like “Okay, this strange girl is calling herself Odin and has a God complex. I will 100% let her follow me much to my apparent annoyance.” And then she reminded me of the other annoying little girl in a Jun Maeda show, and the other annoying little girl, and so on. It’s hard to say anything new about Jun Maeda’s work because you get what you got the last time, except somehow worse. He’s gotten worse with this one. At least Angel Beats and Charlotte had coherent first episodes. This was just noise and obnoxious bickering. It actually makes me want the traditional Key suffering to happen quicker to end everyone’s miseries. – Marquis
Jujutsu Kaisen
This was a fun little ghost show. The pessimist in me wants to say “Oh, another shonen anime revolving around ghosts! Whatever”, but I had a good time regardless. It’s easy to make fun of shonen shows for their formula, but it’s a pretty hard formula to get right. Think of how many series fuck it up in the first few chapters, or the series that screw up so hard they don’t even get an anime adaptation. It’s a harder sell than it looks. Going back to another show Studio Mappa made, God of High School didn’t hit all the right places for me because there was something a little off, like it was using story tropes without actually understanding what those tropes were for. Embracing the cliché can work if you can do it right, or else you get the complete and utter malaise that was Assault Lily Bouquet. Because unlike Bouquet, Jujutsu Kaisen was never boring. It understood what to do and how to do it. It didn’t wow me, but it works. – Marquis
Yashahime
There are ghosts afoot this anime season. Higurashi, Mahouka, a new show from the Hayate the Combat Butler guy, and now it’s come to this. An Inuyasha sequel. Seeing how linked this first episode is with its parent series, the new cast barely appear all that much, I have little doubt where anyone stands on the new series. If you managed to watch the almost 200 episodes of the original show, you’ll watch post-haste. The premiere feels like the show never left and it’s the mid-2000s again. But for the people who grew tired of how monotonous Inuyasha’s story could be, it’s a harder sell. I watched tons of Inuyasha back in the past, not out of love for the show, but simply because I stayed up late at night and it happened to be on at the time. Sure, the characters stood out, and it could be kind of fun at times, but Inuyasha simultaneous felt like a show that never knew where it wanted to go and a show that went in one straight direction against all else.
Which makes Yashahime an anomaly, because it’s the result of what happens after that seemingly endless journey is done. Naraku’s dead. Everybody has kids now. Now what? The actual episode doesn’t say much yet, but it’s hard to shake it off. You can say that about every “now it’s about their kids!” sequel to a long-running anime, but that doubt never ends. Anyway, isn’t it fucked up Kagome couldn’t teach her daughter how to wear shoes? – Marquis