Momose’s trauma is a constant throughline in the series, but we can rest assured that he’s going to be okay—while there are dark moments, the light-hearted nature of the show and its clear placement as a fluffy, bit-based comedy reassure the audience that ultimately this will be a kind story that lets this wounded person have a good time.
Off the bat, your interest in this show may depend on how you feel about the glamorization of royal figures like Marie Antoinette.
Teru/Shy makes for an endearing protagonist and I hope we get to see her grow and develop beyond her constant embarrassment and awkwardness, and get to show some of that heroic pizzazz in her everyday life.
A lot of your taste for this one will depend on how you feel about the tsundere and her attached tropes, but there’s a lot to hope for too.
Fall 2023 is starting capably and comfortably enough: gifting us some over-competent girls with swords and some Nice Anime Dads with gardening skills.
Series that focus on queer adult characters open the door to a storytelling niche that’s still relatively underrepresented despite the rich narrative potential it offers: the post-adolescence queer coming-of-age story. Or, in other words, the gay quarter-life crisis.
If the male-targeted market is saturated with extremely similar reincarnation isekai, maybe it’s fair enough that the female-targeted market is getting its own version of the trend. It’s equity, ya know?
For a show about sweets, the whole thing is awfully flavorless.
A potentially interesting thread is buried in a premiere that’s otherwise crass, silly, and dumb as bricks.
What? You’re telling me this generic orphan who was always a bit of an outcast secretly has a supernatural family legacy and gets to go live on a cool island? Neat! I wonder if he has a grand destiny he’ll reluctantly have to fulfil, too!
NEJIGANAMETA’s manga Ladies On Top is a cute, sexy josei romcom about the crushing pressures of heteronormative gender roles. I know, the emotional trauma inflicted by society’s narrow expectations about acceptable masculinity, femininity, and sexual desire doesn’t sound very cute or sexy, but trust me when I say Ladies On Top weaves these themes together effectively with its fluffy romance.
How it fares will depend on a couple of key things: how it handles its love interest, Isaki, and how it handles the theme of mental health and isolation that underpins the whole premise.
Fantasy allows us to ask exciting, imaginative “what if?” questions, like “what if this guy punched a wizard in the face? Would that be funny or what?”
It’s a supernatural comedy first and foremost, but that silliness is grounded in characters that feel like characters rather than one-off jokes.
Oh, there’s some fun to be had with this premise.
Mitsumi is immediately an endearing female lead: a nervous overachiever who’s not defined by her anxiety, and who balances “competent and smart” with “hot mess” in a believable and funny way.
Alice Gear is very silly, and because its tone and lore are so at odds it’s silly in a way that’s baffling rather than fun.
While it has its share of familiar isekai plot beats, this premiere manages to exude a certain charm that kept me interested. Maybe even hungry for more!
Intentional or otherwise, the colonial spirit of the heroine’s endeavor—in which an enlightened traveller improves the sorry lives of the locals by bringing them “proper” technology—screams off the screen.
Sugar Apple Fairy Tale is a promising premiere that’s complicated as hell from a feminist analysis perspective.
