March 30, 2022, 2:26 p.m.

intro & march 2022 recap

top ten anime betrayals

Hello and welcome to my newsletter.

before we get started

  • I don't watch anything twice.
  • These recaps will be a mix of current season anime and older stuff, basically whatever I watched during the month.
  • Takedowns of actual garbage are reserved for real life conversations.

Moving on:

march 2022 recap

One Outs (2008-2009)

baseball, gambling

Tokuchi Toua is an unknown pitcher recruited to play for the Saitama Lycaons, the worst team in the league. He's also a gambler and negotiates a unique contract with the team's owner: he receives 5 million yen for every out he pitches, but pays 50 million yen for every run he gives up.

Tokuchi is an improvement on the Light Yagami/Lelouch-style mastermind character because the stakes aren't like, the fate of the world. It's just baseball, and that reduces the edginess significantly. Tokuchi's superhuman ability to guess exactly what his opponents are thinking at every moment (and to control exactly how many spins he puts on a given pitch) comes with an obvious counter: if he's such a cool genius, why's he fucking around in a B-league baseball team and not taking over the world or something? I can tell I'm old now because the reduced scope of Tokuchi's ambitions make this take on a beloved/reviled character archetype way more palatable. And as a bonus treat for me, this time it's the pitcher who's the genius mastermind, not the catcher.

I'd recommend One Outs if you watch a lot of sports anime but you're tired of loud high schoolers. This is also a good pick if you're interested in gambling anime but you're put off by the brutality of something like Kaiji.

My Dress-Up Darling (Winter 2022)

romance, comedy, cosplay, ecchi

Wakana Gojo is a loner who's training to become a hina doll artisan, with the hope of eventually taking over his grandfather's hina doll workshop. He's really good at making doll clothes, but the faces still give him trouble. Marin Kitagawa is a popular girl who's obsessive about her favorite anime and video game characters and dreams of doing cosplay, but she can't sew to save her life. You see where this is going, right?

I don't watch echhi, but I'll watch anything that's about a specific aspect of traditional Japanese culture (e.g. Chihayafuru, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju), even when it's bad (e.g. Those Snow White Notes). So the fact that the male lead is the heir to a hina doll workshop? I'm in. And yeah, this show is definitely raunchy, but I enjoyed it way more than I expected. The chemistry between the two leads feels believable, and a lot of that is because Gojo is an actual catch, not a milquetoast audience stand-in or an overpowered cool guy. You get why someone like Kitagawa would be into him, not only because he's a top-tier cosplay husband, but because he understands what it means to be passionate about something that's strange to other people. Also the animation is gorgeous and lively, even during walk & talk scenes, and the animation within the animation is spot on, going so far as to render Kitagawa's favorite magical girl show in 4:3 with faux VHS scanlines.

Battery (2016)

baseball, drama

A talented and arrogant pitcher joins his new middle school's baseball team and has to learn to work with his catcher. This generic-ass description applies to virtually every baseball anime!

I didn't care that much about the characters or the plot, and there's barely any baseball. The only interesting part was the 2 episode arc comprising a severe bullying incident perpetrated by an older student and its coverup by the school principal. Honestly, it made me wish I was watching Stars Align instead, a 2019 anime that uses its middle school soft tennis club setting to explore themes of bullying and abuse.

Actually yeah, just watch Stars Align instead. It was cancelled halfway through its intended 24 episode run, so it ends on a pretty insane cliffhanger, but it's still worth watching for the story and characters up to that point. The soft tennis matches where our underdog team pulls out all the ridiculous strategies to win against better players are a particular highlight, especially set against jizue's excellent jazz fusion score. Controversial opinion, but I think sports anime should include sports animation!

other stuff

  • Dave Stieb is literally an anime protagonist who's been cursed to live in the real world
  • I listened to this cover like 500 times in the past week

okay see you next month bye

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