howdy y’all! my name’s walker and I’m gonna be taking over the newsletter as a special guest host this month while leah is swamped with starting a new job and etc. everything will be back to normal next month, which is good because I’m not nearly as good at having ~opinions~.
that time I got reincarnated as a slime does not waste time pretending that the pre-isekai life of its protagonist matters at all. our main character, satoru mikami, spends maybe two minutes of the show in the real world before being stabbed to death. as he lays dying, his last thoughts inadvertently answer a series of questions posed to him by a mysterious voice, fortuitously granting his new body absurdly OP skills and abilities in the fantasy world he’s transported to…but those powers are somewhat hampered by the fact that his new body is that of a tiny little blue slime creature.
undaunted, our protagonist (now known as rimuru after being granted a new name by a powerful dragon he befriends) sets out to basically just be nice to everyone. in this classical fantasy world, creatures such as goblins, lizardmen, orcs, and so forth all exist, and are generally regarded as monsters by the human and dwarf kingdoms. but rimuru doesn’t carry any of these biases, so when he first meets a clan of goblins, he quickly agrees to help them, and they in turn become his loyal followers. this same basic cycle unfolds again with a pack of dire wolves, a troop of ogres, a tribe of lizardfolks, an army of orcs, a demon lord, and so on and so on until rimuru finds himself running a city of monsters that easily rivals any human settlement. it’s a fun premise, since rimuru is powerful enough that he could easily solve any of the problems with violence but instead simply talks things out with people to help them come around to his side. and when he does have to fight, he often lets his allies take the lead and show off their skills and share in the glory, rather than one-shotting the villain of the week himself.
the show is fun, but towards the end of the first season a couple of things conspired to make me not bother with the second season. first was the arrival of milim, the most powerful demon lord (and owner of the least clothing) in the land. second was the anime’s decision to spend 20 episodes building out rimuru’s allies and friends with a cast of fun characters that we’d grown to know and love, only for the show to inexplicably devote the last four episodes of the season to rimuru going to a different city that we’ve never seen before to become a teacher for five precocious children. it was such a jarring change of pace that turned the final episodes into such a drag, really sapping my enthusiasm for the series.
time for something a little more lightweight! my senpai is annoying is a simple workplace romantic comedy that follows the diminutive futaba in her attempts to make it in the modern japanese workplace. she’s assisted by her senpai, takeda, who is loud, brash, and seems to genuinely want her to succeed, despite teasing her in various ways. obviously, futaba develops a crush on takeda, and the show unfolds about how you’d expect. nothing revolutionary, but a relatively quick watch (only 12 episodes), and with so many episodes devoted to various seasonal events and holidays, it’s a supremely cozy show (seriously, we have christmas, valentine’s day, white day, two birthdays, a blossom viewing party, sports day, golden week, a summer beach trip, and new year’s day). if you like the office, aggretsuko, or other workplace comedies, might as well give this one a shot.
look, it’s good and is going to be on everyone’s best of the year list so I’m not gonna say much here except that, after initially not liking the OP that much it really grew on me (but of course it doesn’t compare to this moment in the ED). leah will have a more thorough writeup with actual thoughts after the second cour wraps up in the fall.
there’s a very specific genre that pops up fairly often in anime and video games that for some reason just hits right for me: cozy child soldier stories. it’s a mood that the good gundam series nail perfectly, and that video games like fire emblem: three houses and valkyria chronicles can use to devastating effect when they kill off your faves. 86 ended up being a bit uneven overall, but its highs were right up there with the best of this genre.
the republic of san magnolia has been at war against the remnants of the empire of giad’s mechanical legion for decades. after suffering innumerable human losses early in the war, san magnolia developed unmanned drones of its own to fight against giad’s robots, allowing the republic to claim that they’ve suffered no casualties in years. of course, it’s not as as simple as that, and san magnolia’s drones are in fact piloted by “86ers”, people who were once citizens of the republic but had their rights stripped away when the war started. since they’re not considered citizens (or even people) by the government, they don’t count as casualties.
the anime follows two characters: major lena milize, a “handler” in charge of commanding the 86ers in battle, and shin nouzen, the leader of the most elite squadron of 86ers. lena is sympathetic to the 86ers she commands, and must strive to prove that she actually cares for these soldiers that her government has consigned to death, while shin has to learn to trust that lena can actually help his squad, and that he doesn’t need to be a lone wolf.
the show’s action sequences are excellent, flawlessly blending CGI and traditional animation in a way that few other shows have succeeded at, but it really shines in the character interactions. this is, after all, a cozy child soldier story, which means we get to know the 86ers well before they inevitably start to be picked off by the giad empire’s war machines. delving into shin and lena’s respective motivations and backstories makes some moments hit particularly hard, especially the end of the first cour, but subsequently makes almost the entirety of the second cour feel like the show is pointlessly spinning its wheels (not to mention the inexplicable introduction of a precocious ten year old girl who can see the future). but the ultimate payoff in the last two episodes makes the wait absolutely worth it. a solid B- of a show, if there ever was one.
okay leah will see you next month bye