It’s been many years since the isekai boom began and it shows no signs of declining. Re:Zero and Mushoku Tensei have both been given what I can only describe as royal treatment in their adaptations, seeming to push beyond the norms of the typical light-novel-turned-anime. As long as their popularity continues, I don’t doubt the current trend will too.
And why not? It’s an established genre and many classics—both in Westernliterature and Japanesemedia—were built around the idea of transference to another world.
But this is not a post about whether their perceived market dominance is good or bad; this is a post about the works that bill themselves as isekai when in truth they really don’t need to be.
I was never intending to write first impressions posts for every anime airing. I don’t have that kind of time or motivation, nor do I care enough about some of them to write any amount of text that would justify an entire post. Yet still, I would like to have said something about them—there are even those on this list that rank amongst my favourites of the season thus far.
There seems to be an unusual degree of melancholy to the selection of cute girls doing cute things shows on offer this season. I felt it first with Yakunara Mug Cup mo and now even more acutely with Super Cub.
This is a quiet anime—quieter than any I’ve seen in quite some time. There’s little music. Sparse dialogue. Few inner monologues at all. Subtle changes in facial expression convey most of Koguma’s thoughts, and the drab colours and persistent silence do a fantastic job of mirroring our protagonist’s empty, lonely existence. It truly lives up to the episode’s title: Nainai no Onna no Ko (The Girl with Nothing).
Since I work with AI on a daily basis it always piques my interest when a work of fiction decides to focus upon it. For the most part, these types of series tend to go in the same direction: ‘artificial intelligence + technological singularity = bad’. I always hope to find one that will take a different route, and I’d very much like to believe we could have that in Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song.
I wasn’t really expecting to get much out of Mars Red. The promotional posters were nothing special and its origins as a stage reading play didn’t exactly stir any particular feelings of excitement. Signal.MD has done a few worthwhile series, but nothing I’d gush about. The only thing it really had going for it was the strong cast of announced seiyuu and an ending theme by HYDE.
As it turns out, this meant I was in for a nice surprise.
There’s something exciting about discovering a manga that explores one of your hobbies—particularly when said hobby is relatively niche.
Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia follows two high school insomniacs who inadvertently revive their school’s defunct astronomy club while using the observatory as a safe place to sleep. Required to perform actual club activities, Nakami quickly becomes interested in astrophotography, for what better hobby could an insomniac take up than chasing elusive clear night-time skies?
The manga chronicles his initial forays into the art and his budding but awkward relationship with Magari, stalked all the while by a sense of impending tragedy.
It’s unfortunate the astrophotography isn’t always on point.
