Chatty AF 212: 2024 Summer Mid-Season Check-In (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

PETER: One of two scenarios. Like, in Kiznaiver, for example, the B romantic interest has—

CAITLIN: A show that everyone who is listening to this definitely watched.

PETER: First one that popped into my head.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

But the B romance option, the one who doesn’t get the guy at the end of the day, just kind of ends up immediately recognizing that the other guy was interested in her all the time. Oh, should I use Ichigo from Darling in the Franxx instead? Is that a better example?

CAITLIN: Jesus Christ.

[Introductory musical theme]

VRAI: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. This is our summer 2024 mid-season check-in! I’m Vrai. I’m the daily operations manager here at AniFem. I am on Bluesky sometimes @writervrai. And with me today are Caitlin and Peter.

CAITLIN: Hello, I’m Caitlin, preschool teacher extraordinaire and also AniFem editor. [Chuckles] I’m sorry if I’m a little distracted. For some reason, before the podcast started, Peter and Vrai got me thinking about Akihiko from Persona, and now that’s all I can think about. And I’m blaming you guys.

PETER: Stop looking at abs and get on task.

CAITLIN: I’m not looking at him! I’m just thinking about him now.

PETER: Okay, alright.

VRAI: [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: Hmph!

PETER: [crosstalk] And I’m Peter Fobian, I’m an editor at Anime Feminist, and you can find me @peterfobian on Bluesky.

VRAI: Awesome. Now, if you’ve never joined us for a seasonal cast before, what we do is we use our Premiere Digest as a primer. Shows may change in how we feel about them or how they’re doing, but we continue to use the Digest as set up from their first episodes because it’s just easier for folks to reference and go along with. We start from the bottom and we work our way up to the top, and we try to keep it sort of vague on spoilers, but there may be some, just as a general heads-up.

Alright, as far as Red Flags, we’re not watching most of these, and Peter, you said that No Longer Allowed in Another World is still just one joke, so we’re gonna start with VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral After Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream. Peter, you’re watching this. And I also have some quick notes from Chiaki, who says that the reliance on alcoholism has gradually dropped off and Awayuki is more of a full and complex character, and now she has a lesbian stalker, an animal expert who likes talking about gross animal facts, and a girl who’s into adult baby kink as her kohai in the agency. Still more or less accurate to the VTubing experience. Supposedly this is under an agency, but at least to her, the vibes of it feel more akin to indie VTubers, which she would know, since she is one and she’s dating at least one. But the show also is based on a real agency, the Livery [sic]… Liverary (sorry) agency in Japan. So, maybe it’s loosely based on that model of sheer chaos and broken management. What are your thoughts, Peter?

PETER: Well, I don’t know anything about the history of that agency, so I’m not really aware of the super deep cuts. I am glad that Yuki… I think she’s trying to find her own balance between presenting her pure aesthetic and then her drunk one so she’s not trying to do all of her streams just completely blasted, although it does seem like everybody that she collabs with specifically buys a lot of alcohol to ply her with so that she’ll be funny, which is not so great. Actually, it was—just a small correction—it’s her senpai who is the one with the mommy fetish that puts Strong Zero in a baby bottle and feeds it to her. I don’t know. It feels like the show is a lot of just skit-based comedy and doesn’t have much plot. I’m not sure if this is leading to something to do with, again, Liverary’s history or what have you. 

But I don’t know, it just sort of seems like a lot of unrelated comedy that the only real chronological sequence is like, as it introduces new characters, that it’s developed because she’s meeting new people. Otherwise, it’s just the same stuff over and over again. I thought early on that it was kinda going to do some stuff with her being plied with alcohol to be funny, or kind of like… They were sort of setting up something that seemed like it was trying to say something about the performative lesbianism within the space. But I think it just turns out, like, literally all of them are gay and have very hyper-specific fetishes that they are really wearing on their sleeves out there. So…

VRAI: You know? I’m okay with that.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, I guess your mileage may vary, depending upon your expectations.

VRAI: Yeah, it seems like the kind of show that, like, it is what it says and either you vibe with that or you’re extremely not going to find it funny. Like, it’s just doing what it says it’s doing. And, you know, that’s… sure.

Pseudo-Harem, Chiaki was also watching. She placed it in the sort of “going along”… or the, you know, “staying the course” when we did the check-ins, yeah. And so, I think her stance on it is that it’s cute. You know, she’s the best actress who ever lived, and the dude is just kind of average. But he’s not actively shitty, at least as it goes along. He’s basically communicative and, like, her biggest fan. So, if you’re not super skeezed by the initial premise of her acting out all of the baseline tropes for his fantasy harem, it seems like there’s at least a fairly competently built romcom under there.

CAITLIN: Maybe it’s because… I mean, Vrai, you are also a theater kid. I’m only a theater kid by proxy because my dad is a theater… man (I don’t know) and my sister is a theater kid. But I can’t buy it. For one thing, she’s only acting out moe archetypes. Also, Saori Hayami, beautiful voice, lovely actress, does not have a lot of range. You know, to be fair, I only watched the first episode, but even outside of my whole, like, “It’s weird that she is doing all this performative stuff instead of being herself with him,” it just doesn’t feel convincing.

VRAI: Yeah, I get that. My stance out here is “The Dangers in My Heart is right there.” At this point, I’m holding that up as, like, the pinnacle of shounen het romcoms that are about a shitty teenage boy becoming a less shitty teenage boy by an author who’s keenly aware of that. But I know a fair number of people who are watching and enjoying it, so I figured it was worth throwing in a mention just as one of those, like… if you’re not immediately turned off, it seems to be written competently.

CAITLIN: Yeah, I’m just a hater.

PETER: It’s no 2.5 Dimensional Seduction, is what we’re saying.

VRAI: Oh, my God, fuck off. You know? I know that, Caitlin, you know people who swear that gets better so maybe I should watch a little bit more of it in super fast motion, but not today.

CAITLIN: Not today.

VRAI: Let’s move on to one that a lot of folks in the Patreon… If you subscribe to our Patreon, you can vote to make sure we watch something to discuss it, folks at home. But a lot of folks requested this one, which was The Elusive Samurai.

CAITLIN: Yeah!

VRAI: [crosstalk] And both of you are watching this.

PETER: [crosstalk] Yeah.

CAITLIN: It’s a gorgeous show.

PETER: Yeah, crazy good-looking show.

CAITLIN: I think, one of the best-looking shows of the season. Some really awkward CGI in a couple of episodes notwithstanding. [Chuckles nervously] The horses did not survive the transition to CGI.

PETER: Well, that was during the scene where they were shooting dogs anyway, so it’s like… it doesn’t deserve to look good. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: Oh, what’s his name? The psychic guy. The Koro-sensei character, basically.

PETER: Mm-hm, literally just…

CAITLIN: He does stand aside and be like, “By the way, this is not acceptable in the future, but this was a real sport that we are doing in this time period. So don’t get mad at us, please.”

PETER: Yorishige, yeah.

CAITLIN: Yorishige. It’s such a stunning show, though. Just… It pulls out such incredible stops stylistically. And maybe Miura [sic] has grown as an artist since Assassination Classroom, which I read all of, but that’s some direction, man! I can’t imagine, like, the scarf thing in the last episode came out of the manga. In terms of plotting and characterization, it has some flaws, I think. It has issues with not letting a moment land. But I am really enjoying it.

PETER: Yeah, it feels… It’s really fantastic. I love the villain. I love his squad of kids that he hangs out with, to the point where I really wish it was a bit slower just so we could hang out with some of his friends more. I think Genba, Shizuku, Ayako, and… what’s the little sword boy’s name? I can’t remember. They’re a really great, super good cast of characters, but it seems like besides Genba, they haven’t really gotten to do too much besides just kinda provide commentary. But I—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Mm-hm. I like the strong girl.

PETER: Yeah, Ayako. She’s great. She’s big, dumb, strong girl. I like her.

CAITLIN: She’s really fun.

VRAI: I know a lot of the write-up mentioned that it’s one of those, like, “This is historically accurate. That means we have to include a lot of violence against women,” and how well is that handled?

CAITLIN: It hasn’t really come up.

PETER: Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of blood and gore during the fight scenes. It reminds me a lot of Golden Kamuy in that it vacillates between these hyperviolent war scenes and these kids who somehow feel like they’re in a bubble of safety, even though some of these bloodthirsty adult villains are directly trying to kill them. So, I think it’s playing in that space very well. Also, like Golden Kamuy, a lot of the villains are these large, muscular, gimmicky homicidal men who are kind of getting sexualized in certain ways. Like, during that horse chase scene where the two guys are riding the same horse…

CAITLIN: Oh, yeah, that was a little weird.

PETER: I was like, this is the most Golden Kamuy thing I’ve ever seen, where both of them aren’t wearing shirts and one guy’s trying to do horseback archery and the other guy has to keep moving his body around the other guy’s body so as to not get in the way while using his super hearing to detect where the children are so they can literally shoot a child with an arrow. And you’re just like, this scene is… it’s just— There’s so much going on here. Yeah, I would not be surprised if that was out of or inspired by a Golden Kamuy readthrough between his projects or something.

CAITLIN: In terms of sexual and gendered violence, there hasn’t really been much in that way since then. The only female characters we’ve gotten are, you know, the girls in Tokiyuki’s squad, and they haven’t really been threatened with anything. There’s some mikos and a guy shot one in the ear, but there hasn’t been a lot of threats of assault, which has been good.

VRAI: Yeah.

CAITLIN: People— [Sighs] It sucks that we have to talk about this. But we should—

PETER: [crosstalk] [Chuckles] Here it comes. Yeah.

CAITLIN: We should talk about it. Unfortunately, this show has become iconic to shotacons. I do not like that it has been, and I think that if you are here looking for that, you’ll find it, but also, I do not see it. Everything with that can be explained away as just “Oh, he’s watching the child sleep and wants to kiss him on the cheek while he’s sleeping.” Well, I watch kids sleep all the time as part of my job, and, you know, I think that’s normal if a child is adorable. You want to give them a little smooch on the forehead sometimes. I’m choosing to believe that! [Chuckles] I’m choosing to think of it that way!

PETER: It’s kind of like the way that he expresses Hojo getting excited during fights as he kind of blushes. And I don’t think it was intended to be sexual, but that screenshot keeps popping up in deranged shit that I’m seeing, so I feel like that’s what’s driving a lot of it.

CAITLIN: So, if you can’t filter out the whispers that you know people on Twitter are talking about it a certain way, then you might have a hard time with this show. But it’s good. It’s a step above shounen slop, but I always say that during the first arcs of shounen slop.

PETER: Yeah, yeah, the first arc always… you see so much potential, right? And then it’s all about whether it carries any of it.

CAITLIN: Yeah, the first arc… The first arc is like—

PETER: Kaiju, Jujutsu Kaisen. It’s always the same.

CAITLIN: It keeps happening. So, we’ll see. So far, I really like it.

PETER: Yep, it’s great. Matsui is without sin in regards to the allegations.

VRAI: Godspeed that the curse won’t hit it. I don’t have faith in that, but I want to believe in it for you. [Chuckles]

Alright, let’s hop up to Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian. I know that Alex is still watching this. They describe themselves as having… I think the phrase was “morbid fascination,” but they didn’t have time to write up notes. So, Peter, how you going with it?

PETER: Oh, boy. I think it’s kind of like this show’s burying the lede, because it seems like Alya is kind of a secondary character to this kind of A Sister’s All You Need–esque series that… The main heroine really seems to be his sister, Yuki, who is pretending to be his childhood friend at school. And I want to give the series the benefit of the doubt that his sister is hypercompetent, super charismatic, and intelligent and kind of a super hardcore otaku, and she’s kind of doing a lot of dream fulfillment in school, playing out… she plans to become student body president, whatever, like, you know, the student council, and she likes playing out these kind of shoujo or otaku-esque tropes in real life, and that is why she gets into certain situations with her brother. But also, she does this kind of Deadpool-esque fourth-wall-breaking as well, which makes me really think that that’s not the case at all. So, she does a scene like she intentionally has her brother walk in on her while she’s got a towel around her in the bathroom just because she says it’s a popular scene and they’ve never done it despite living together for so long, that kind of shit.

VRAI: Oh! I hate this kind of character. And also, Nozaki-kun is right there.

PETER: Yeah. And it turns out they’ve got one of those… you know, that assigned-maid-at-birth type characters who is just like… kind of like Kaguya-sama, just the blonde girl who has been raised since childhood to be her personal servant. It turns out one of the girls of the student body is secretly that for their family. I think she describes Kuze saying something brave as like, he said something so admirable that it created shock waves in her womb.

VRAI: [Groans in alarm]

PETER: So I think this is really just kind of devolving into one of the sister-fucker shows.

VRAI: Okay, hate that!

PETER: Yeah. Even though their idea of romance is running against each other for student council president or something. I feel like Alya had some juice because she’s got this background of, like, she really wants to excel and she’s always been a top student through a lot of diligent work and relying on other people has burned her in the past, but it seems like she just keeps getting sidelined for comedy scenes with Yuki, and then when she is in scenes now, she just doesn’t fucking do anything, so we’re just left with weird shenanigans as this backstory of their family being super rich and kind of… [Chuckles hesitantly] I don’t know, dare I say, hyper-incestuous keeps developing.

VRAI: Hm. Well, that’s too bad. That’s… Sorry, folks who liked where that started out. My thoughts go out to you.

A quick note on Wistoria: Wand and Sword. Peter, is it still “You can watch this and it’s not Harry Potter”?

PETER: Yeah. Yeah, not too much to say. It’s freaking gorgeous. So far, it’s just kind of like, you know, boy fighting racist wizards. They’re actually straight-up racist now because they are racist against dwarves as a species—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Cool. Can we not? Can we, please?

PETER: —and maybe did some genocide in the past. Yeah. But he’s standing up for the dwarves as well. He’s the only one who is not racist. So there’s that. But past that, it’s just he’s swording down jerk mages most of the time.

VRAI: Okay, so this is a prettier Mashle, then, I guess is how one might center it?

PETER: Uh… Yes. I would say a Mashle that’s actually entertaining to watch, sure.

VRAI: [Laughs]

CAITLIN: When I saw the summary, I did go, “Oh. Don’t we already have Mashle?”

PETER: It’s Mashle DanMachi Black Clover? Yes, it is.

VRAI: Alright!

PETER: Some of those shows are good. [Laughs]

VRAI: Yeah. Yeah, someone’s probably into “I desperately need another one of those,” and this show is for them, and good for them.

PETER: I’m happy for the director, though, because he directed all of Black Clover and he did his best, and now he gets to kinda work with what seems like a really stable production. So, happy for him.

VRAI: Nice.

CAITLIN: Ha! 

VRAI: That’s always nice.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Oh… Man, I just looked at the chart and I saw Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World? and I realized I really forgot about that show.

VRAI: [crosstalk] Nobody’s watching!

CAITLIN: Nobody remembers them in this world either!

VRAI: Hey-o!

CAITLIN: Ay!

VRAI: Is there anything worth adding about Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord’s Army? It seems like a-fucking-nother one.

PETER: I’m not even sure what’s been said so far. Guy is trying to end racism between demons and humans, so he’s got that going for him. But also, he’s got a succubus assistant who’s obviously trying to bang him at all times. So…

CAITLIN: I thought she was fun in the first episode.

PETER: She’s cute. She always fights the maid girl, too, because the maid girl’s, uh, down as well, so…

VRAI: [Hums coolly] Women.

PETER: [crosstalk] I think the pig guy is the best of his lieutenants, though.

VRAI: I just let out the world’s longest sigh in my head.

PETER: [Chuckles]

VRAI: Let’s talk about something that folks are hyped for, which is Shoshimin, which, Caitlin, you are watching.

CAITLIN: I am! Indeed. I even watched the sixth episode this morning, which is the only one of today’s episodes that I watched. But yes, I am watching Shoshimin. It is another pretty, pretty, pretty show, in a very different way from The Elusive Samurai. And every episode, I go, “That was kinda boring.” And then I watch it again the next week.

VRAI: Mm. Mm-hm.

CAITLIN: So, they both have their own reasons for wanting to be ordinary. Kobato wants to be ordinary because he got kinda tired of being this smug boy detective kind of guy who just kinda alienated everyone around him and acted like he knew everything and no one really liked him because he was like that. Osanai, they have not gone into her reason for wanting to be ordinary, but they have started talking about just why she is not quote-unquote “ordinary,” which is that she is angry.

VRAI: Alright.

CAITLIN: Yeah, Kobato has said her greatest source of joy is beating those who have wronged her to a pulp. And you can’t really do that.

PETER: It’s looked down upon.

CAITLIN: The thing is that, even as they are trying to be ordinary, he gets to solve mysteries. She doesn’t get to fight. Now, she did go out of her way to ruin the life of the guy who ruined her strawberry tarts when he stole her bicycle. So, she still got a little bit of that. And she did kick Kobato in the shin with her wooden geta when he thought she was a small child at the festival. So, there are traces of that anger. But I don’t feel like they’re going to unpack the way that she is just… she doesn’t have anything except for searching out sweets in her life. Maybe they will. I honestly am not sure, because the newest episode takes place in her apartment and it is all very stark black and white, which is a little bit of an interesting visual choice. But I don’t know. I can say that I don’t like her voice actor. [Assumes a high-pitched, airy voice] She’s got that very kind of high-pitched, breathy voice that’s, like, very anime girl. [Returns to normal voice] Doesn’t really make her feel like an interesting character. I feel like her acting is very flat.

VRAI: And it’s not a case where she’s affecting that voice to be ordinary and it drops in other scenes?

CAITLIN: It has not dropped. She could be affecting it. She hasn’t gotten into a fight-fight. She did just chase this guy down like a bloodhound and figure out that he was involved in a counterfeit license crime ring. So… [Chuckles] That was a thing. Yeah, I don’t know. The mysteries are very mundane.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Very Hyouka-esque is the impression I get.

CAITLIN: Very Hyouka-esque. I mean, I haven’t watched Hyouka, but I know, kind of, the sort of mysteries they solve and it is the same sort of thing. A lot of “Who did this thing around the sweet of the day?” So, yeah. I don’t know. It’s very beautiful, though. It is very pretty to look at.

VRAI: Alright. Well, I’ll be curious to know how you feel about it once it wraps up, because I definitely know what you mean of, like, “This is kind of boring. I watched another one.” That’s how I got all the way through Just Because!

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

VRAI: Which I still kind of feel fondly about, so there you are.

PETER: Let’s be boring together.

VRAI: Yay.

CAITLIN: Yay. That’s kind of the deal they made.

VRAI: Yeah. And it’s working for them, I guess.

CAITLIN: Eh, he’s having a hard time keeping up the kayfabe.

VRAI: Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin, I know Cy is still watching after they were pretty hyped for it as an adaptation, but I don’t have anything to report beyond that.

Ramen Akaneko… Chiaki actually checked back in on this one. It doesn’t sound like it’s doing super well. So it’s still… Her notes are: “It’s still middling entertainment with an absurdist setup. We get to know some of the other cats’ backgrounds. One’s a gamer. One’s secretly megarich. The tiger is a mixed baby from a pair of zoo tigers whose parents had to go back to their respective countries, and she didn’t want to go with either of them to a country she’d never lived in. The immigrant/minority narrative feels kind of strong here, and the big issue with that is the constant joke that cats don’t want to work. It’s what’s generally used to explain why cats don’t have labor laws or why the ramen shop wouldn’t succeed as a chain. The cats making ramen are special and most cats are quote-unquote ‘normal.’ I don’t think this show is trying to go for immigrant or minority issues, but I feel like this is a dog whistle here in some ways.” And that was her report on it. Also, it still looks like that.

PETER: [Chuckles] Still looks the way it does.

VRAI: Yup!

CAITLIN: Looks how it looks, which is bad.

VRAI: Unfortunately, because ramen and cats, how do you screw that up? Food porn and cats.

Quality Assurance in Another World. I know that the AniFem discord was kind of falling out of love with this one. Caitlin, how are you feeling about it?

CAITLIN: I have been behind on it. Womp-womp. I really only know as much about the recent episodes as the Discord has been saying, which is that it has some [Breaks into cheerful singsong] issues with ableism! Yay! Our favorite!

VRAI: [Disappointed] Yay…

PETER: Also some disturbing content with, like, one of the players just is using people as furniture. And then the Fear & Hunger character that was introduced in the one dungeon as, like, a glitch.

CAITLIN: The using-people-as-furniture thing… For one thing, Umineko already did it better. [Chuckles]

VRAI: Nobody in this show is as hot as Beatrice, and I’m going to go ahead and say that confidently.

CAITLIN: But if you’re in a game, like a game-game, you’re not gonna generally think of the characters as people. And you are trapped in the game and you are just— I could totally understand a sense of nihilism creeping in. So I can’t… I don’t know. I feel like I can’t get too mad at the person doing that, because who has not murdered their Sims horribly?

VRAI: I would like to point out that this was a narrative thread in children’s television series Digimon Adventure 02 25 years ago.

PETER: So it’s just bringing it back old school, is what it’s doing.

VRAI: Yes, that’s what I’m getting at here.

CAITLIN: It is a well-worn plot thread.

VRAI: Yeah, so I guess we will put a pin in that one if you’ve got time to check in on it for the wrap-up, and we will see how it is improving or continuing to devolve then.

CAITLIN: We’ll see. The new school year will have been started by then, so we’ll see.

VRAI: We’ll see! How about Ossan Newbie Adventurer? I know Cy was enjoying this as a chill-out show, and Peter, you’re also still watching it.

PETER: Yeah, I kinda… It was fun, but I’m kind of falling out of love with it, I think. The whole thing… As with most shows nowadays, we’re featuring middle-aged characters who are trying to hang with teenagers, who, as we know, are the only ones who can accomplish anything in the world. It turns out he has a special S-rank skill that makes him the most powerful person ever, so it wasn’t really about hard work or the knowledge that he’d accrued working as a support person for 16 years or whatever; it was [that] they trained him up because he had a skill that could kill the final boss. Also, he is in love with the dark elf in their party, who when they choose to— I mean, the relationship between them is pretty cute, except that they keep having to remind you that he’s attracted to her by having him get distracted staring at her boobs. That’s the only way they know how to do that.

VRAI: Well, of course.

PETER: And then there’s a guy on their team who basically just invents modern technology. That’s his power. So he’s just running around with, like, an M16 and a scooter powered by an internal combustion engine and stuff. And he invents an item so he can upskirt the dark elf and stuff, which is, you know…

VRAI: [sarcastic] Cool.

PETER: [deadpan] Ha-ha, so funny.

CAITLIN: [sarcastic] Cool!

PETER: Yeah, so… Yeah. The initial premise is kinda… it’s got some…

VRAI: Yeah, the shine done come off that apple.

PETER: Less chill, yeah.

VRAI: Alright, how about My Deer Friend Nokotan? I heard that they fixed the subs.

CAITLIN: But is it funny now?

PETER: No.

CAITLIN: Did they fix the terrible humor—uh [Corrects self], comic timing?

PETER: It’s like a… just like a triple-A American blockbuster movie in that all of the funny stuff was in the trailer and there’s nothing left in the actual show. So, I don’t know. I don’t feel like I ever laugh watching the show, and that’s all I can really say. Also, they introduced a character who wants to… little sister of Torako, the blonde girl who obviously wants to fuck her. So, there’s that, too.

CAITLIN: [unenthusiastic] Nice. Great.

VRAI: [unenthusiastic] Cool. Love that. Cool.

[Returns to normal voice] Alright, let us jump up a ways. Alex left us some notes for Dahlia in Bloom, which I appreciate. It really sounds like this is one of those adaptations that has been tragically shredded by its production issues, but the source material is pretty fun, I will say, because I know Lizzie kind of peeked in on the original and was having a good time with it. But as far as the anime: “The pacing has evened out a bit, which kind of makes the whole fiancé farce feel like an important but unwieldy bit of backstory that the show wanted to hurry through. In any case, there’s a new man in Dahlia’s life. She disguises herself as a boy, including magically deepening her voice in a matter of seconds (where is that tech in the real world?) and goes on a forest adventure in which she rescues a knight who’s injured. Said knight immediately recognizes her when he meets her later and she’s out of her masc disguise, avoiding what could have been episodes and episodes of shenanigans, and he and Dahlia settle into a dynamic that’s honestly really sweet. 

“He’s earnestly interested in her work as a magic artificer, and they geek out about magical items together. It’s cute, and they’re written to feel like they honestly enjoy chatting with each other. While it’s not super deep, they even have a brief convo where they discuss the power imbalances and social conventions that can make women unsafe around men, both navigating this towards an agreed-upon mutual friendship. I suspect they’re going to end up as love interests, but for the moment, our knight promises that ‘I want to stay by her side with simple camaraderie and respect.’ It’s nice! Dahlia also gets to do a bit more and make decisions and show off her skills, which is also nice. The writing is still a little clunky, but the show is growing on me and feels like it’s settling into a rhythm of comfy, low-stakes fantasy series.”

So, yeah, I think this is one that I really think maybe… maybe the anime might turn out watchable, but it definitely sounds like one where you should go and check out the source material if you like fantasy novels that are very nominally isekai but not really.

Alright, we need to shake a leg, I suppose. Suicide Isekai actually— Sui— Wow. Well, no, that’s the other show we said wasn’t worth talking about. Suicide Squad Isekai actually finished up this week, but my Hulu account is on pause, so I am going to finish it up and let folks know how it’s going for the wrap-up. I know that it seems like it delivered on being fun but maybe not on having too many thoughts in its head, which perhaps is what I should have suspected all along.

And let us move on to something that I think all of us are watching, although I’m behind. I’ve only seen through Episode 4, so all I can contribute is “Fuck, it’s cute. Fuck, it’s cute.” And that’s Senpai Is an Otokonoko.

CAITLIN: Ah! It’s such a nice show!

VRAI: As far as substantive discussion beyond “My God, it’s nice,” I don’t know that I have too much to add beyond Chiaki’s three-episode check-in. I feel like it’s still very much in that motoring along. I think there are still the occasional shots that feel a little weird, where we’re seeing Makoto through crush-o-vision, but mostly it’s just really nice and it respects them as a character so much, and these are good kids, and gosh, it’s sweet.

CAITLIN: I do have something to talk about here, which is that… So, there’s a— How many episodes have you watched, Vrai?

VRAI: Four.

CAITLIN: Four. So, maybe right around when you stopped watching, there is a subplot with Saki kinda realizing that she doesn’t so much have a crush on Makoto as she wants to like someone, she feels expected to like someone, and Makoto was a convenient target for her affections. She makes a comparison to… The difference between a dolphin and a whale is size, and her feelings for people are closer to a dolphin, which can still be fairly large and meaningful, but the feeling of being in love is closer to a whale.

VRAI: So, she’s maybe aro coded, then.

CAITLIN: She could be. And she’s kind of working on coming to terms with that instead of clinging to Makoto, which I think is interesting. Ryuji, meanwhile, has realized that he is in love with Makoto, which we all knew was going to come. But there’s a lot of interplay between these three feelings, so it’s not so much a trans (question mark?) story as an exploration through this triad of being in this phase where you have this kind of hazy, undefinable sense of “I know I’m different, but I’m not exactly sure what that means, and, you know, maybe you don’t have to be in a rush to define things.” And I like that. I think it’s sweet, because you don’t have— You know, when you’re in high school, a lot of things are in flux. And, yeah, sometimes you do know and sometimes you don’t. And that’s fine.

VRAI: I do value that kind of thing. I will say that I’ve been, that Wandering Son colored my vision of that kind of narrative forever.

CAITLIN: What did?

VRAI: Wandering Son.

CAITLIN: Mm.

VRAI: Which, spoiler alert, handles its transbians real well and its trans guy real bad. But I think— And I think in this case, a lot of my ability to kind of settle and enjoy the series playing around with ambiguity is Chiaki picking up the Japanese versions of the webcomic and confirming that, yeah, this is heading towards Makoto coming out as nonbinary, explicitly, towards the end. And I think that that is important for me because I think… ah, there are a lot of anime that remind me of TV shows I watched in 2009 where they’re about celebrating that it’s okay to be different, and we’re either vague or really low stakes on what being different means, but also we have a rainbow flag in there in the background, so… I don’t know.

CAITLIN: I just… I feel like Senpai Is an Otokonoko kinda grapples with it in a more explicit way. Do you know what I mean?

VRAI: Yeah, no, I think this show has ideas. And I…

CAITLIN: It’s not so much “This character exists and they kinda seem like they’re maybe not heteronormative in a way that we refuse to define.” But rather, the characters are, themselves, grappling with that.

VRAI: Mm-hm. And I think it is valuable to have shows like Sanrio Boys—massive marketing push that it is (love Sanrio or it will kill your family)—where it’s about boys, explicitly, who like cute things and how that’s okay. But I think this is something different and I value that, because it is dealing with a lot of emotionally charged issues. And I think that in the space where things are right now with trans stuff, both here and in Japan, where there’s been a lot of anti-trans-women and bathhouse panic in the lead-up to the election, I think that having that reassurance is especially meaningful. But it’s a nice show. It’s a nice show. And I do have that comfort where I can be like, yeah, okay, this is… I can trust where this is going. You know?

CAITLIN: Yeah.

VRAI: Okay. But let’s dive even further into mess. I actually don’t know how this is pronounced out loud. Makeine [pronounced “mah-keh-EE-neh”]?

PETER: Yeah. Got it.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah.

VRAI: Too Many Losing Heroines! How is it? Is it still mess?

PETER: Yeah, it’s definitely a very messy show. I mean, if you’re unfamiliar with the premise still at this point, it’s about people who are the B person in a romantic series kind of ending up together. I do think it’s good because, especially in a lot of romcoms, you always get the person kind of… one of two scenarios. Like, in Kiznaiver, for example, the B romantic interest has—

CAITLIN: A show that everyone who is listening to this definitely watched.

PETER: First one that popped into my head.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles]

PETER: But the B romance option, the one who doesn’t get the guy at the end of the day, just kind of ends up immediately recognizing that the other guy was interested in her all the time. Oh, should I use Ichigo from Darling in the Franxx instead? Is that a better example?

CAITLIN: Jesus Christ.

PETER: Who just is like, “Oh, this guy liked me all along! And since I’m definitely rejected now, I guess I’ll just fall in love with him instead, very quickly,” which always just seems like, I don’t know, either… bows are being—

CAITLIN: [chanting] They’re the spares! They’re the spares!

PETER: Yeah. … Are being tied, or maybe just they’re settling. Who knows? Or, and into these really… And this happens a lot, I feel like, in lesbian romance series or when there’s someone who is a lesbian and romantically interested in a girl, regardless of where that girl… if she’s straight or gay herself, where she doesn’t get the girl and then it’s just going with the “Oh, well, I’m just happy so long as I can be near them.” You know that one?

VRAI: Yes, we call that the Tomoyo.

PETER: Yeah. Oh, very good. I really like how it kind of dwells on “And then what happens?” which is you end up having to spend the rest of your school life around these two people who are doing lovey-dovey shit, and you’re still their friend so they invite you to do shit, but then you dwell on if they’re going to kiss when that’s happening or they’re going to be talking about relationship stuff and you just have to sit there and not say a single thing. Or your family’s asking you if you’re dating anybody, and they know that you’ve been friends with that guy since you both were kids, so they’re talking to the other parents’ family because they’ve also been friends. So, I really like how it’s just like, oh, no, this actually really fucking sucks, and that they sort of accidentally built this support group around that concept. I think that’s very clever, very funny. I feel like all the girls are… We’ve got a pretty good variety in there, and it gives them room to be kind of shitty about it, too, because, you know, they’re in a really messy situation. They’re not perfect either.

CAITLIN: Oh, my God, I love Anna so much.

PETER: Yeah, a lot of them are very vindictive, jealous, and they can just kinda… it’s a safe space to feel those feelings, right? I’m not quite sure where the MC really falls into all this since he’s just a guy who I think otherwise had no friends, really. But yeah, so far, I think it’s a fun concept.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm, yeah, I’m having… Honestly, it’s one of my favorite shows of the season. I’m having a really good time watching it. It has not gotten as bad as it did with the whole “stuck in the gym closet, she’s getting heat stroke, she’s disoriented, and she starts taking off all her clothes” scene. Didn’t care for that, but it hasn’t really reached those points yet.

VRAI: Which I think is anime original, anyway.

PETER: Oh, really?

CAITLIN: Cool.

PETER: God, that did really… It felt so out of place.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah, like, why? Why?

PETER: [crosstalk] I, like, forgot about it just because nothing like that happened again. They don’t even seem to remember it having happened to them, right? Or she doesn’t remember at all, right? Because she was passing out or something. That’s great. But okay, yeah.

CAITLIN: But, you know, like I said, if we’re gonna have teenage girls being shitty, we gotta have room for teenage boys being shitty as long as it’s in a more harmless way. I loved Komari being really vindictive and rude to Nukumizu. Yeah, no. It’s just… it’s a super fun show. It’s got really snappy writing that I think kinda walks a very good line between naturalistic and also, you know, more clever than real people generally are. Yeah, it’s gorgeous. Once again, lots of beautiful shows this season. I’m having a really good time.

VRAI: Nice. I’m gonna keep it brief about Atri, because I think— It was one of the last things to air, so it’s a little behind everything else. And my feelings that I put out in the three-episode check-in still mostly hold true, so I will just briefly say, oh, no, it got worse. This is one where I am going to explicitly do some relevant spoilers, because boo. 

So I mentioned that the biggest downside of this show, which kind of has some neat things about disability and rebuilding community in the face of ecological disaster and all of that, and the thing that kind of sucks is that Atri is very much treated as a sex object even though we keep also getting lines about how she fits great in this middle school swimsuit and she hangs out with the grade school kids, and now that they’re rebuilding the school, she’s explicitly in the grade school class. But, you know, she comedically offers her body to the main character. He’s not into it, but we’ve still done it, haven’t we? Yeah, she’s the love interest. Yeah, the most recent episode reveals that the main character Natsu’s first love was the woman from his memories who saved him in the accident where he lost his leg. And you get three guesses who that turns out to be, and the first two don’t count.

PETER: Right.

VRAI: So, you know.

CAITLIN: Cool.

VRAI: Yeah, so that’s— At this point, I’m kind of just holding on because I want to see how they kill her off, because this is based on a nakige. It’s a weepy, so she will die. Maybe she’ll come back after that, but we’ll see. Yeah, it’s a bummer because it looks pretty and there are some good thoughts, but ew, gross, I hate it.

Let’s move on to a good romance instead, which is Twilight out of Focus. I’m way out of date on the anime, but I think it’s about caught up to the amount of the manga I’ve read. It’s very good. I’m so pleased with the direction— Deen has really settled into how to make a show look good with limited resources, which has always been the thing that Deen do. Yeah, I’m so happy. How about you, Caitlin?

CAITLIN: Yeah. No, it’s pretty. It’s a really good show. All the guys in it are really good looking. I did think that the arc that just wrapped up had a moment of kinda-sorta body-shaming. It’s like, “I have everything… except I’m fat. And that makes me sad.” But yeah, I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. It’s a good, solid boys’ high school BL. If you’re very like “You should never watch anything about minors having sex or ever think about it, and if you do you should have your eyes poked out,” you know, don’t watch this one. And maybe don’t listen to me, ever. Go away. [Chuckles] Because they’re fictional characters. And, yeah, no, it’s a good show.

VRAI: Like, I don’t care for gross fan— You know, I feel like there’s a difference between fanservice of minors and stories that deal with the fact that teenagers have sex sometimes—often, in fact.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah, absolutely.

VRAI: And this is very much the latter. I feel like it’s a very— I think the anime is a little bit tamer than the manga, but these are, you know, older high school students. They’re like 17, 18, and it’s a really tactful, emotionally— It’s a very tactful relationship-driven sensual-type series, and I think that that’s nice. And Toni did note some sort of pacing issues when they did the write-up, which is fair because this is a one-shot that got longer. But I think now that it’s sort of past that, it kind of lurches back into more of a sense of momentum again.

CAITLIN: Yeah. No, I’m sorry. You know, people get really weird about that stuff these days. You know, teenagers… teenagers like to… Teenagers are horny. What are you gonna do?

VRAI: [crosstalk] Many of them are, it’s true.

CAITLIN: What are you gonna do about it?

VRAI: But, yeah, I think the sentiment that if you like stuff like Given or SasaMiya but you sort of wish it did delve a little bit more into the fact that teenagers are horny sometimes, this is definitely a good one to check out. It’s really very sweet and well directed, even if it doesn’t have the resources for super splashy, robust animation. It’s beautifully boarded.

VRAI: Narenare, I’m the only one watching, huh. I feel like this show is weird. Like, it’s got a really big heart. It wants to be about this concept of cheer as a way to be there for your community. It sort of wants to walk this tightrope where it’s like, “Cheer is really athletic and hard to do, and we’re going to acknowledge the fact that all of these girls do a lot of different athletic practices that really help them do cheer.” But it’s also sort of got this background thing where the team from the high school that the protagonist is no longer in is doing a sports series back there, but we never come back to that and that’s weird.

CAITLIN: I’d like to see that series.

VRAI: Uh-huh. Yeah. And like, it’s… It wants to do a lot of big things, right? Like our protagonist going to the doctor and getting mental health help for the fact that she has the yips. That’s cool. But, you know, then we’re still shackled to the format of a club show, so we have her friends being like, “You know, it’s okay. This takes a long time. It’s alright if you can’t cheer right away, but we need to move on,” so then there’s the most awkwardly inserted montage time skip I’ve ever seen, and we move forward to when she can do it again. It’s got Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 4 problems that way, where it wants to deal with these things that aren’t easily narrativized but it’s still in a very form-driven format, you know?

The most recent arc was about the Japanese Brazilian girl, Anna, trying to save the record shop that was like her home away from home. And it’s… Again, it’s really got its heart in the right place. Like, it has… all of the Brazilians and a lot of the customers at the shop speak their scenes fully in English, and the actors are… they’re trying. It’s not on MayoPan levels, but it’s competently done. I mentioned some of the thornier aspects of that in my write-up, so I won’t go into it too much, but it does feel weird that the big cheer that they do at the festival is ultimately kind of beside the point. Like, yes, it’s about how they all cheered to get Anna to keep from giving up, and so she was able to inspire the people at the shop who loved her to come back and be there for her. But the thing that actually saves the shop is the fact that a Grammy winner was there and somebody saw that and tweeted about it!

CAITLIN: [Chuckles] Sure.

PETER: She’s manifesting.

VRAI: Yeah, yeah, they really manifested it.

CAITLIN: That’s a weird… kind of a weird vibe.

VRAI: I also don’t love that the most recent episode kind of ended with a little bit of what felt like kind of cynical yuri bait, where you have one character who’s very, very autistic coded… Like, she even explicitly has had troubles socially because she has a flat affect. Like, that’s overtly discussed, and then inside, she has an extremely flaily, anxious chibi internal monologue and it’s very cute, actually. But she has a mega-crush on the sort of ojou-type character in the group, and they have a moment at the hot springs where, you know, they’re blushing, and it’s like, “I’m going to ask you something really embarrassing,” and then we cut to the next morning and they’re calling each other by their first names. And I’m like, “Okay. We’re not actually going to go anywhere with this crush, are we?” [Sighs]

CAITLIN: [Sighs]

VRAI: I don’t know. It’s just a show that I feel like is good but also uneven and sort of… It feels very much like not what I expect from P.A. Works, right? Because it’s very, very emphatically a club anime at the end of the day. I don’t know. My feelings were—

PETER: Not very working girls?

VRAI: Yeah, yeah. Like, it’s very in the mold, which is not what I expect conceptually from them.

CAITLIN: I kinda got that vibe from the first episode, and that’s why I said, “I don’t need to watch more of this.”

VRAI: It’s not bad. Like, if you want to watch a club anime, there are way worse ones you could pick. So, yeah, it’s not like a show that I anti-recommend, but I kind of think it’s all over the place. You know?

CAITLIN: Let’s talk about Mayonaka Punch.

VRAI: Let’s do it.

CAITLIN: Let’s talk about Mayonaka Punch! I don’t care about YouTubers, at all, unless they are Jenny Nicholson or Defunctland or Girl With The Dogs. Those are my three. [Chuckles]

PETER: Okay, alright. I’m convinced.

CAITLIN: I don’t care about that MrBeast-style, “doing stupid shit to get views” kind of YouTube that Mayonaka Punch is doing, but it’s having so much fun, and the girls are all so terrible, except for Fu, whose episode did make me cry. You know, I can’t help but loving it. Ai Fairouz is Live. Like, what else could you want in the world? Ai Fairouz playing a terrible, chaotic lesbian vampire.

VRAI: She is very good at it. I think its… I think its attempts at pathos can be hit or miss. Like, I thought Fu’s episode was really good. I think that Ichiko’s episode is more… it’s very funny, but it’s a little bit more uneven in the heartstrings-pulling department. But I do like it. I’m kind of still waiting to see if it goes anywhere in the romance department, but I’m having a really good time watching it every week.

CAITLIN: I don’t know if there’s a lot to actually say about it.

VRAI: Yeah, it hasn’t real— It’s mostly just been, like, shenanigans.

CAITLIN: Yeah. Tokage is specifically designed to give a certain kind of Twitter user a brain illness. It seems like with my— I don’t know what it is. When I see an anime woman who has large boobs but they actually look like they are affected by gravity, that switches something in my brain that makes me go, “Oh, yes, this is good character design.”

[Chuckling]

VRAI: You’re a simple woman.

CAITLIN: I’m a simple woman! I like to feel like maybe sometimes her shoulders feel a bit sore. I don’t know! [Chuckles] I’m just saying, a big-titty gambling-addicted vaping vampire isn’t generally my type, but she’s got a good design and her boobs don’t look like she’s about to float away into the stratosphere. And I appreciate that.

VRAI: Yeah. They are not balloons. They feel like they have heft and are attached to her body.

CAITLIN: She’s got those heavy boobs.

VRAI: Heavy boobs.

CAITLIN: Dense like dying stars.

VRAI: Hm. Yeah. God, MayoPan good, but I think the— Yeah, we’ll see— This is gonna be one that’s like, we’ll see how it comes together as a character study in the second half, apart from the weekly shenanigans.

PETER: That’s how I’m feeling. Like, how is this all going to come together?

VRAI: Mm-hm. Yeah. We’ll see. But you know what it will be? Done, because it’s P.A. Works, baby.

CAITLIN: Yeah, all of their shows for the season are already finished.

PETER: Mm-hm.

VRAI: Alright, Dead Dead Demon I don’t want to spend too much time on, because it’s getting its own retrospective once it’s done. And it’s kind of in a weird place timing-wise because it’s got like 12 episodes of 18 out. But Toni did take the time to write up some thoughts because they have a lot of big feels about this series, which I read probably five or six volumes of the manga but haven’t started the anime yet. I will. But so, I thought I’d close on theirs, and then we can kind of wrap up and come back around because, Peter, I assume you’re doing the wrap-up with us. I don’t know who else is watching it.

PETER: The end-of-season?

VRAI: No, the… uh…

PETER: [crosstalk] Or the retrospective?

VRAI: The retrospective. There we go.

PETER: Okay, well, I mean, happy to do both, so [Chuckles] I guess it doesn’t matter.

VRAI: Cool. I mean, did you have any quick highlights you wanted to thumbs-up?

PETER: There’s so much going on, it’s hard to think of any one thing to talk about. It’s tackling a lot of stuff. I do want to say it feels very present right now. It spends a lot of time— Although we still don’t know the primary motivation of the aliens in coming to Earth, it seems like the majority of the ones who have made it to the ground are literally just trying to find their family members and are definitely like refugees, right? And yet, the JSDF is basically going building to building and executing these people, despite— The aliens have these little goofy character designs. They’ve got little glam on some of them so that you can tell them apart, or awkwardly shaped heads, so they look like cute little dolls almost, but they did not hold back in the portrayals of violence that they commit against these people. 

It is upsetting to watch. I watched Jin-Roh: Wolf Brigade and did not have this sort of visceral reaction to the scenes of state-sponsored violence in it. And, of course, right now, with the US actively participating in a campaign of genocide, it feels like it’s crazy that it came out right now and is doing what it’s doing, on top of, like, the 11 other things we could be discussing in regards to the series right now. So…

VRAI: Yeah. Yeah, when I was reading it five years ago, I definitely… my primary interaction with it was “Oh, boy! Inio Asano has learned how to write characters in addition to covering the really dark themes that he’s genuinely and legitimately angry about instead of just hitting me in the face with a brick over and over again, like when I was reading Goodnight Punpun.” But yeah, it’s only become deeper and more relevant since then.

PETER: Yeah. I couldn’t really read Punpun. Partially, it was too dark for me, but I didn’t feel like what he was doing engaged me enough that I wanted to sit through all the bad stuff that was happening in that. It just kinda put me off. But this… Dedede is completely different. This is, like, his opus.

VRAI: For sure, yeah. Like, don’t get me wrong: Punpun is a genuinely angry screed that I support about the silent problem of child neglect in Japan. But also, “Here’s a cute little thing that’s having a bad time!” over and over again.

PETER: Yeah, yeah. I know some people who… it’s like their favorite manga, too, so I don’t want to talk shit about it, but I definitely… I think Dededede is on another level.

VRAI: Yeah. Alright, let me read Toni’s little write-up, then. “So, I’m sure Peter has this covered and we’ll have the podcast retrospective—” (see, they shouted you out) — “but I wanted to say a little about the experience of watching the show. It’s a hard one to watch for multiple reasons, including a particularly brutal flashback arc that represents bullying, child abuse and child suicide pretty graphically. But the other is our political moment. It’s hard not to see the genocide in Gaza in the way the aliens are treated. The show has not shied away from presenting matter-of-fact but frequent and gruesome imagery of mass state-sanctioned murder. 

“There are good sides and bad sides to this. On one hand, it’s led to some of the most astonishing and poignant moments of the show, such as the scene midway through the series that takes place on a plane I’d rather not spoil but did make me audibly gasp. But it also has the effect of making the relative non-character status of most of the aliens feel somewhat problematic. We get glimpses of their point of view, glimpses of their attempts to survive and resist. But overall, the point of view is firmly within the main cast of girls.

“That is starting to change, particularly through [Oba], an alien who has taken over the body of a former boy idol. His arc of choosing between living out his days peacefully through the apocalypse with his newfound friends or attempting to change the desperate and doomed situation of the Earth and aliens, potentially at the expense of his friendships and life, presents a powerful story that is reminiscent, of all things, of the passing narrative of early 20th century African American literature.

“In terms of our girls, we have two new additions to the cast who are extremely welcome, Futaba and Makoto. In one truly remarkable scene early in their introduction, Makoto comes out as a femme of some sort. It’s unclear if they’re a trans girl, a femboy, or nonbinary, but later in the series, they show strong dysphoria at the idea of being seen without their long-haired femme wig. And Futaba not only accepts them but connects her accepting them to her desire to see unclouded by hate, as Miyazaki so beautifully put it in Spirited Away. This ultimately means militant resistance to fascism, as we soon see, which it seems will have real consequences for her life. This show is extremely interested in the power, or lack thereof, of nonviolent resistance, and Futaba’s choice of how she will resist the increasingly fascist Japanese and American governments is not an easy one. Makoto herself is a delight, if not particularly present in much of the show. Hopefully that changes, because I love them dearly.

“In terms of our main girls, Kadode and Ouran’s arcs almost seem to be about the existentialism of a static life in the space of genocide. Nothing really changes for them. Kadode continues to circle the drain of an unfulfilling, problematic, and thankfully unconsummated situationship with her former teacher, though she certainly loves to lie to Ouran and say it was consummated for a bit. This is handled relatively tastefully by the series, though Watarase deserves to be beat in the face and the crotch with a hammer. Ouran, through her connection to [Oba], is starting to realize she might have more of a role in the world than she thought she did, connected to some kind of parallel-world shenanigans, but the role has yet to be realized.

“The on-screen text for the subs has been fixed in Episodes 7 to 12, but they’re still broken for Episodes 1 to 6, which is a problem because this series has a lot of on-screen title cards.

“So, in short, if you have the emotional energy, watch Dead Dead Demon. It’s good. Otherwise, you know, for fuck’s sake, donate to a Gaza relief fund or go to a protest for Palestinian liberation.”

Thumbs up on their thoughts. And yeah, we might… we might skip talking about this one in the wrap-up altogether and just go straight to the retrospective, because, yeah, this is gonna be… there’s so much to talk about with it!

PETER: It’s dense, super dense.

VRAI: And it doesn’t even adapt all of the manga. It has, from my understanding, an anime-original ending.

PETER: Oh, okay. Yeah, I was wondering. It was like, yeah, it couldn’t possibly reach, so…

VRAI: Mm-hm, yeah. As I believe the films came out before the manga was completed. And that’s why the Episode 0 thing, because that’s from a later part of the manga the movies don’t get to, which makes it all the shittier that they put it out first. Yeah, it’s a whole thing.

PETER: Yeah, I find that… It seems pretty disinteresting. I’m gonna see what they’re gonna do with it, but I mean, it really doesn’t kinda matter how it ends unless they really fuck something up, just if it gets you to what they’ve done so far or if you just decide to read the manga.

VRAI: Mm-hm. Rock on. Alright, any final thoughts that we didn’t cover?

PETER: I think it is worth mentioning that… I think, what was it, last week or the week before last, True Beauty and Delico’s Nursery both came out. So, I don’t know if we’ll talk about those in the wrap-up.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Ha-ha, ha. True Beauty. [Chuckles derisively]

PETER: Not a fan?

CAITLIN: I read three volumes of the manhwa for ANN. It is the most vapid series I have ever encountered!

PETER: She does seem to be the most blackmailed person in history. But yeah, [Chuckles] I’m sticking with it for now. And Delico’s is, of course, about hot detective vampire daddies, so…

VRAI: It was mid. The direction isn’t very good, but the colors… but the visuals are pretty.

PETER: Of Delico’s?

VRAI: Uh-huh.

PETER: Oh, you mean that… Oh, it’s based on a manga?

VRAI: So, it was originally a series of stage plays, and then the director of the stage plays made a five-volume manga, and I think that’s what the anime is based on.

PETER: Okay.

VRAI: But it’s also just kind of, you know, motoring around, doing nothing.

PETER: But those could be things we may be touching on later, possibly.

VRAI: Yeah, maybe. Final exciting news that I won’t have time to put anywhere else, Girls Band Cry is out in English without having to fuck around with a VPN now. If your library has Hoopla, you can watch it through there. It’s really fucking good. It was the best anime that came out last season. This is a stupid way for it to come out, but I’m glad that it’s slightly more accessible now.

PETER: Mm-hm. I don’t know what Hoopla is, but happy for them. [Chuckles]

VRAI: It’s like a library streaming service.

PETER: Oh, kinda like… oh, I can’t remember what their… Canopy?

VRAI: [crosstalk] Like Canopy. Yeah.

PETER: Yeah, okay. Cool. That’s cool. Yeah, good reason to go to your local library.

VRAI: Yeah. Otherwise, it’s exclusively to buy, but only digitally, because… Toei.

Alright. And I would say that wraps us up for this mid-season. Long as always, but not as bad as we could’ve been. Thank you so much for joining us, AniFam. If you liked what you heard/read, you can find more from the team by going to animefeminist.com. If you really liked what you heard, consider going to patreon.com/animefeminist or ko-fi.com/animefeminist. Patreon is where we support our monthly fees, like paying our editors and our contributors and keeping the lights on. The Ko-fi is where we were able to raise money to pay our contributors $75 an article for this year, and we are currently fundraising to keep that up into 2025, so, please, if you just want to throw us five bucks one-off instead of donating monthly and dealing with Patreon’s BS, that is the place to do it.

You can also find our socials by going to our Linktree. That’s linktr.ee/animefeminist. And you will find our Tumblr, our Instagram, our TikTok, Bluesky, Mastodon, all the places where we are. We have a YouTube channel.

And yeah, we will see you next time for… to see how… mm.

CAITLIN: You can do it. I’m gonna do a cheer for you, Vrai!

VRAI: [crosstalk] It was so close. Yes! Cheer for me! Do it!

CAITLIN: Go, Vrai, go! Go, Vrai, go! I don’t actually know anything about cheers! Whoo!

VRAI: It’s hard to do and very athletic! When will my cheerleading sports series return from the war?

CAITLIN: There’s cheer boys.

VRAI: No.