BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defense – Episode 1
MMO meets iyashikei in a laid-back premiere that’s profoundly fine.
Posts by Vrai Kaiser
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Pet – Episode 1
An escapee from the edgelord days of 2005.
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Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! – Episode 1
The rest of the winter season is going to have to work hard to keep up with this one.
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ID: Invaded – Episode 1
A sci-fi detective thriller that’s a touch derivative, but stylish and restrained enough to check out if you’re a fan of the genre.
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Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story – Episode 1
Don’t let the unwieldy title fool you; this one is welcoming both to returning fans and new viewers alike.
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Asteroid in Love – Episode 1
Hey, I get to review a Doga Kobo series that doesn’t make me want to dig out my eyeballs out with a headphone jack!
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Blade of the Immortal – Episode 1
Even with the glossy new coat of paint, this is still unmistakably a gritty ’90s story.
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NO GUNS LIFE – Episode 1
While the writing could stand to take itself a little less seriously, this is a surprisingly good throwback to 2000s-era mashups of noir and cyberpunk.
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Kandagawa Jet Girls – Episode 1
Pack it in, folks. Nothing this season is gonna be hornier than this one.
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Didn’t I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life? – Episode 1
Don’t worry, Mile. Your series achieved what you could not: it averages out its charming elements with some of anime’s laziest fallback jokes to reach a grand total of “basically okay.”
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Babylon – Episode 1
This might be the best premiere of the season: a tense, slow-burn legal drama that viciously punctuates its own simmering tension in the final moments.
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Actors: Songs Connection – Episode 1
If you’re into male idol series, this is not offensively bad.
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Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun – Episode 1
A shounen series seemingly aimed toward the same middle-grade sort of audience as Little Witch Academia, Iruma-kun feels perfect as a bit of fall sweetness.
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Val x Love – Episode 1
It’s been a while since a premiere has so systematically robbed me of every gesture of optimism I tried to offer it.
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Azur Lane – Episode 1
The bait Azur Lane was putting out to attract a certain kind of viewer tuned me out of any meager charms it might’ve had to offer, long before it doubled down with carefully rendered shots of an eight-year-old’s wet shirt clinging to her skin.
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Kemono Michi: Rise Up – Episode 1
This episode has one joke.
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BEM – Episode 1
There will always be a place for episodic supernatural action series in anime, and BEM (mostly) has a solid aesthetic going for its main trio of monster-hunting monsters. Unfortunately, this episode spends most of its time with the least interesting of them.
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The Demon Girl Next Door – Episode 1
Demon Girl is definitely cloyingly cute, but if you’re in the market for low-key slapstick with buckets of shipping fodder between the two leads, this isn’t half bad.
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Isekai Cheat Magician – Episode 1
The show is rough around the edges visually, complete with big hair and wonky eye-to-face ratios straight out of 2004, but the isekai story is fresh air after season after seasons of noxious incel pandering and slavery apologism.
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Cop Craft – Episode 1
You know how Netflix put out that movie Bright back
in 2017, and it was really well-received and everybody liked it? Oh, that’s not what happened at all? Cop Craft might have a problem then.
