Chatty AF 217: 2024 Fall Mid-Season Check-In (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

CY: At the start of episode 3 is just some… some cunnilingus. And it was just like, oh! It’s weird to say, like, wow, this psychopathic guy is actually quite a feminist and egalitarian because, like…

ALEX: [Laughs]

CY: … huh, he believes in reciprocal sex as well. Okay! Okay! Like, will he beat a dude up? Yeah. But he also believes in women’s rights to pleasure.

[Introductory musical theme]

ALEX: Hello, everybody. Welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. Over here, we look at Japanese pop culture through an intersectional feminist lens. And today you’re tuning in to our mid-season check-in on the fall 2024 season. 

I’m Alex, one of the managing editors here behind the scenes. You can find me on Bluesky @arhenderson. And you can find me keeping the supposedly dead art of the blog alive over at theafictionado.wordpress.com. I’m joined today by my intrepid coworkers, Cy and Peter.

CY: Hi, everyone. I’m Cy, a ma— I’m a staff editor here who’s tripping over their words because, like, don’t believe that words are easy when you edit. And you can also find me on Bluesky @pixelatedlenses, where I am keeping the faith every day.

PETER: And I’m Peter Fobian. I’m an editor here at Anime Feminist, and I am @peterfobian on Bluesky.

ALEX: Fantastic. Thank you both for being here today. It’s been a weird week, but we are here to talk about some anime and head on into that exciting world. Bit of a distraction? We hope so. And we hope you enjoy listening along, folks.

So, if you haven’t listened to one of our seasonal episodes before, I’ll give you a quick rundown on how it works. We like to give you a fun multimedia experience here at AniFem, so here’s how the life cycle of our seasonal coverage goes: We start off with written reviews of all the premieres, putting out our first impressions [on] all the new shows. We then check in with some of them about three episodes in—and you can find all those updates together in one big post. And then we pop over to the podcast medium for a more general chat about how things are progressing at the midpoint and again at season’s end, before bringing it all together for another big post of all of our recommendations. 

We’re not covering every show, simply because they are making too many of them to reasonably cover, but we’ve whittled down the list to a set that we think will be the most interesting to talk about. And if you want to help vote on what gets on that list, you can head on over to patreon.com/animefeminist.

Now, speaking of shows that are going to be interesting to talk about, we are going to come in hot and start off today in our Red Flags section with Yakuza Fiancé. How is this one going, guys?

CY: Whew! This show so viciously wants you to simultaneously remember and forget that these are, like, legally minors [chuckles] who are just having the wildest high school experience.

ALEX: So, yeah, I’ve experienced this show entirely through out-of-context dot points about crazy shit that’s happening in it. Do you have any more of those to bring to the good people listening at home?

CY: Yeah, absolutely. She doesn’t get her kidney removed. [Chuckles] That was a joke! Kidney’s not really gone! [Chuckles mischievously]

PETER: Well, she doesn’t know that.

CY: Yeah, she doesn’t know that. But the person she went to, her cousin, definitely…

PETER: Fellas, has your friend ever played a prank on you where they told you they took your kidney but they actually just are keeping a lot of your blood in a fridge somewhere?

ALEX: [Chuckles, baffled] No, I can’t say I have had that experience. [Laughs]

CY: That’s what family does.

PETER: Let it not be said that the Anime Feminist team does not watch anime that it calls problematic, because I think the majority of the team is watching Yakuza Fiancé right now and very much enjoying the experience. I think it’s probably my number two anime this season, behind Dan Da Dan.

CY: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

PETER: It’s very messy and violent and corny and kind of just a very different… a different beat than what you usually get, especially with rom-coms, even yakuza ones. I mean, the most recent example is Girl and Her Guard Dog, which was just a very bad age gap. Although, also, I don’t know, Kirishima, the male lead, is a self-proclaimed masochist, although I don’t think it has many opportunities to show up. One episode has, pretty famously now, opened up with him eating a woman out.

CY: Oh, my God! Yeah. [Laughs]

PETER: It’s just… Yeah, there’s a lot of people having sex in this, although Yoshino is not one of them. And the majority of it really just… It kind of surprised me because I thought it was going to be like one of those “I can’t fix them but I’d let them ruin me” kind of shows, but it’s actually engaging in, like… It’s got, like, an overarching kind of yakuza plot going on that these two are in the middle of. 

And I think Yoshino has turned into a really interesting protagonist as well, very much not the kind of passive female lead who is kind of swept away by the dangerous guy. She is very active when all these plot points come up, especially… I won’t get into details. Further on, she is even more, I think, kind of the lead in this show—or story. I’ve read the manga. 

But I think, yeah, she’s very proactive, and their relationship develops in a pretty interesting way. I think she’s a very interesting protagonist since— Although, it seems inevitable that they will both end up… I mean, he’s obviously obsessed with her now, ever since she sold her kidney.

CY: He’s down bad.

ALEX: [Chuckles]

PETER: Yeah. At least for the time being, she does not reciprocate his feelings whatsoever, but it is kind of like she has to handle him and this situation she’s been put in by her grandfather with a lot of soft power, which… it’s pretty interesting how she has been utilizing that so far and the ways that it shows up. 

Like, when he kept sneaking into her room and braiding her hair while she was asleep, she said, “You need to stop that, not because it’s morally incorrect, because I know you don’t care about that, but because I do not like it when you do that.” And she’s learning— It’s like “How to Train Your Psychopath” kind of situation going on. But yeah, it’s really fun.

CY: Yeah, it’s really engaging and I really like Yoshino as a character as well, because I think that she’s a really interesting look at, partially, what she has to do to kind of… I don’t want to say “survive the situation,” but to endure the fact that the guy she’s living with is in need of BetterHelp. And also, she’s very in control, though. 

Shout-out and a moment of silence for Yoshino’s new hair dryer that she did use to bash a dude’s head in.

PETER: Mm-hm. Of course.

CY: It looked like— It folded up and she had to break it. And a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. 

Also, I will say, yeah, if you had told me in 2024 that I was gonna see an anime open up with just… and I mean, you know, no genitalia is shown, but it’s pretty clear what’s happening at the start of episode 3 is just some… some cunnilingus. And it was just like, oh! It’s weird to say, like, wow, this psychopathic guy is actually quite a feminist and egalitarian because, like…

ALEX: [Laughs]

CY: … huh, he believes in reciprocal sex as well. Okay! Okay! Like, will he beat a dude up? Yeah. But he also believes in women’s rights to pleasure. That’s a weird place to sit, and I kind of love it. That’s where the feminist potential secretly is.

PETER: It’s immediately followed by him showing that girl a picture of his girlfriend.

[Chuckling]

CY: Yeah! Everything is really well set up and really staged well in this adaptation, because I haven’t read the manga. I think I might have had a copy at some point, and I just donated it because I hadn’t cracked the cover on it. But I definitely want to go to the manga because I just… I love this whole story. It’s so wonderfully messy.

ALEX: Excellent. We do love a wonderfully messy series every now and again on here. Thank you for that update. That was suitably batshit. [Chuckles]

CY: I will say, if you want one major fault about Kirishima, it’s that he does trade a photo to Yoshino’s cousin for a picture of Yoshino in a bikini, and that’s kinda… mm, that doesn’t feel great. I mean, I would take him beating up like 10 dudes over that. That just doesn’t feel great.

ALEX: Oh, yeah. I mean, as you said before, beating up a bunch of dudes, that’s just a genre convention. He’s a yakuza boy. That’s what you’re gonna do. Now, respecting women: that’s what we’re talking about. That’s the unexpected and noteworthy thing here that we need to dissect.

CY: [crosstalk] Yeah, he’s definitely no Kazuma Kiryu. That’s for sure.

ALEX: Real quick to the Gateway to Anime podcast. They were also doing their mid-season check in and brought up this show, and someone who was not watching it said, “Oh, is this like a prequel to Way of the Househusband?” And the others went, “No!” [Chuckles]

PETER: The opposite actually, yeah.

CY: Very much so.

ALEX: My mans would never.

CY: Right?

ALEX: [Chuckles] Well, thank you both. 

Next up, still in our Red Flags section, I’m going to do a super quick stop-off by The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor. I don’t feel like I have too much to add to what I said in [the] three-episode check-in. I think that nicely lays out both the strengths and the issues with the show. 

If you’re not familiar, this is the one where it’s a sort of a villainess reincarnation kind of thing without the isekai element: girl gets betrayed, gets zapped back in time, she’s in her 10-year-old body with her 16-year-old brain, and she’s being romanced by an ambiguously adult-looking emperor, pretty anime boy who doesn’t seem to know… As far as he’s aware, she is 10 years old, and he’s like, “Yep, that’s my bride. This is a political marriage, but I am being set up as your love interest.” I’m like, ah, thanks! I hate that so much. 

Do you have any extra thoughts on this, Peter?

PETER: I do appreciate that she is… I don’t know if it’s because she’s been reincarnated, but she’s like a little killing machine since she knows how to fight.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Most of what I’ve seen from this show is actually her punching people through brick walls [chuckles] as, like, a 12-year-old girl, which has been very entertaining so far.

ALEX: Yeah. And that’s the shame, too, because this show does have some things that I would usually be really highlighting and praising. Like, I think Jill, the main character, she’s pretty cool. She’s pretty dynamic and interesting. And there’s a range of different female characters in the background. And it was really cool how she punched through that wall that one time. 

And then the fucking love interest turns up whenever I start to have a good time. And it’s just like, we didn’t have to do it like this. It’s even… It has fulfilled a sort of mini-prediction that I made in the check-in, where it turns out, ah, he specifically asked… you know, he said that his betrothed needs to be under 14 years old so that she can’t get possessed.

CY: [Gasps] [Crosstalk]

ALEX: Yep. So there’s a lore reason, you see! It’s because she—

PETER: Suspicious criteria. [Chuckles]

ALEX: That way she can’t get possessed by this goddess that has it in for him. I’m like, ah, that’s great. So you made a convoluted magical reason for why it’s creepy instead of just not writing it that way.

CY: He was like, “Ten! That’s where it’s at.”

ALEX: He’s like, “That’s fi—…” [Rolls lips, flustered] Yeah. Yeah, it’s like— I don’t— [Babbles] Yeah, no. I’m gonna keep watching this because I’m kind of morbidly fascinated to see if it does anything interesting at all with the interesting bits that it’s doing. But again, every time the boy turns up on screen, I’m like [grunts nervously].

CY: I might have to try it because… I will say I am not opposed to age gaps because I grew up reading American author Tamara Pierce, who openly is like, “I loves an older man.” But when I think age gaps, I think, like… I don’t know, like you’re legally an adult in your world, not a 10-year-old. That’s just weird. And even now, I’m just like, “I don’t know, I’m 32. Certain age gaps are weird. Can’t everybody just be legal? Legal is sexier.”

ALEX: Yeah. Well, like, no, that’s totally right. [Chuckles] Yeah, no, that’s totally right because, yeah, even if she was, for example, like the “Oh, she’s a teenager, and he is ambiguously older or a paranormal creature of some kind and adult in that way,” like, that’s not amazing, but it’s common enough and it’s like, you know, you can kind of swing that. You can make that work. There’s really no math that makes… She is, for all intents and purposes, ten, and he is much older.

CY: Ten is like literally prepubescent. And that’s just… [grunts nervously]. Ugh.

ALEX: [Grunts nervously] Yeah.

PETER: I do want to say, from what I’ve seen, I have very much enjoyed it. I think the protagonist is really fun, and there’s a greater plot situation where she’s got this other guy who betrayed her that she’s trying to maneuver into defeating this time before he ruins her life. Since she’s time-traveled backward, it’s not isekai exactly. 

So, that really carried the show for me, along with the dude, as you said, being not quite human and kind of a… He’s sort of otherworldly and a dummy that she has to sort of handle, kind of in a similar way as Yakuza Fiancé, where she’s kinda like… I don’t know. She has to, like, guide him around by the nose a lot of the time while handling all this other stuff, which I really think reduces the impact, whereas if he was the more active one in the relationship and she was along for the ride, that age disparity would feel much worse.

ALEX: Yeah, there’s definitely some… Like, they keep saying, like, “Oh, yes. We’re not going to fall in love with each other. That would be disastrous.” And if it actually did explore a purely platonic political marriage, that’d honestly [be] pretty interesting. 

But no. It’s very like, “Aw, here’s another shot of him carrying her around. And here’s him being sweet and being like, ‘I will bake your favorite treats to woo you.’” And I just am not… Nyeh. We’ll see how it goes. But again, there’s just not— Again, I have a great time until the boy turns up on screen. I’m like, love Jill, love the other characters, love a little dragon… Uh-uh. Don’t love what they have decided to do with that romance setup.

So, that’s fun. Moving on to something kind of equally bonkers in terms of age disparities and also reincarnation, supernatural elements, we have TsumaSho, for which we have some notes from Vrai, which I will just quote from directly here. 

They say, “I’m not always sure this is the most elegantly written, but at this point I can’t deny this show really is very sincere. In the premiere review, I highlighted that there was a bit of a melodramatic ‘good mom, bad mom’ dichotomy between Takae, who is a super mom—she cheated death itself to get back in her family—and her new mother, the mother of the small girl that she has now been reincarnated as, Chika, who is neglectful and emotionally abusive. 

“Now, to its credit, the show has taken on that issue with both hands. Takae is still supernaturally empathetic, but Chika has become a much more fully fleshed-out character. She is the product of an abusive home herself and struggling consciously with replicating that cycle, and the writing is trying damn hard to both give her grace and emphasize that a child shouldn’t be responsible for managing their parents’ emotional needs. 

“We’ll see how the show goes now that the most recent episode has dispensed with secret identities. Folks in the comments have claimed that the source material steers away from romance, and I’d like to believe that. Even if the writing does lean on Takae having a whiff of the Manic Pixie Dead Wife about her to keep the plot circulating, she’s likable enough and the other female characters are rounded enough that the story feels very human, even in its melodrama.”

So, thank you for that one, Vrai. Again, another one we’ll be keeping one eye on as we go.

Next up we have I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History. Just some quick notes here from Chiaki, because the question with this one was kind of “Has she become evil yet?” And yes, kind of. 

Here’s what Chiaki says: “I read ahead of it and got the gist of the story, and God, I’m glad Alicia gets to be a villain, because she’s like the one sensible person screaming, ‘We should do something!’ instead of holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya.’ However, when you look at it from a Japanese lens, you can also get somewhat of an odor of nationalism because it’s always been a bit of a Japanese conservative talking point to say Japan’s too peace-pilled about the way the world is.” End quote. 

So, hey, interesting perspective on that one as well. We will definitely come back and see how that unfolds. Of course, my editor brain is kicking in going, “Hm, that could be a whole article,” but I will leave that to the folks listening at home if anyone wants to pitch in.

PETER: Mm-hm. I don’t know if I got this from someone else on the team, but that show really reminded me of the ProZD sketch where it’s a villain who’s accidentally helpful all the time.

[Chuckling]

PETER: She often says, “The most villainous thing I can do right now is…” like, I don’t know… It’s like, “I’m gonna cure this person’s cancer because then I will own them forever” or “because nobody wants me to do that.” So, she’s just…

ALEX: Right. So dastardly.

PETER: … righting wrongs while laughing maniacally, and everybody is extremely confused by her behavior. So, it’s been very fun so far. I don’t know how she actually goes straight-up villain besides just not dealing with the powers that be.

ALEX: Alright. Now, Cy, I understand you were pondering that Orb. And by “that orb,” I mean On the Movements of the Earth.

CY: Like a wizard that would be burned at the stake in this anime, I am pondering that orb. And the orb is the sun. [Chuckles] This anime is so sad! And I know it’s because it’s… I mean, it’s a historical fiction mystery… It is just all so— So, Rafal dies. Rafal is burnt as a heretic. But that’s not the complete story because he dies by eating poppy seeds, and then they burn his corpse at the stake so that there’s nothing for God to revive on Judgment Day. He is twelve.

ALEX: Hm. Oh.

CY: [Chuckles] He’s twelve. And he’s caught by this guy, Nowak, who is this inquisitor that, I swear to God, must never do laundry because the sleeves of his shirts are just like a dried blood red. Which, like… ew, gross, you gotta stank! But he just never does laundry. 

And he’s like, “Hey, okay, so we caught you. But if you want to recant tomorrow, we’ll even let you go to university, kid. You just gotta study theology and swear to never think about astrology again.” And then he’s in court and Rafal’s in court and Rafal is like, “I’ll take the university paper,” and then he rips it up and he’s like, “I believe in heliocentrism.” And they send him back to jail to, the next day, get killed. And so, what he does is he takes some poppy seeds, which he must have had on him, pours them into his wine, and he drinks a cup full of poppy seeds and wine and perishes. 

And then it hard-pivots to 10 years later! [Chuckles] It is a decade since, and we’re with a whole new set of characters, who are still tangled up in this… I mean, I think society is always messy, but this is a society where the model of the Earth is kind of crucial to, also, the relationship to Christianity. It’s called the C religion. But come on.

ALEX: Oh, that’s how they describe it in the show?

PETER: Like the letter C, or not the ocean?

CY: [crosstalk] The letter C religion.

PETER: Oh, okay. Wow. I wonder what it could be.

CY: And it’s the P Kingdom. Wonder what country that could possibly be referencing.

PETER: [Chuckles, baffled] What?

CY: [Chuckles] And so, it’s just… it is a fascinating show, because this is a country dealing with heretics in the most cruel way possible, which is burning them at the stake alive. But also, it’s just a touch too sad for 2024. But I cannot stop watching it. I just can’t. I just can’t, especially because we’re going to introduce a girl character into the larger plot… which, Lord Almighty, she probably gonna die too. So, [sighs] you know. 

But it is really strangely interesting. I mean, it’s complicated because it is the ugly side of humanity, right? The ugly side of wanting certain types of knowledge that could possibly disrupt and upend religious beliefs is, like, sometimes people die. And for centuries, people died a lot for religious beliefs. 

I mean, you could argue that in 2024 people still definitely are dying for religious beliefs. I would say there’s a pretty major event right now where people are dying because of religious beliefs and because of how those interact with culture, right? And so—I don’t know why I’m poking around saying “Palestine.” [Chuckles] 

But it’s interesting seeing this from, like, a not Salem witch hunt, not involvement with witches, but the model of heliocentrism, though it is a little bit ahistoric because multiple cultures knew about heliocentrism at this time. It was just, like, parts of Europe that were a little bit behind—kind of like with toilets! 

And so, it’s fascinating because you kinda don’t think they’re gonna kill the kid, and he dies and then it’s like, “Anyway, next story.” It was just… I’m gonna keep pondering that orb. I don’t know if I’m doing it because I want to or because I feel compelled to. It’s probably both.

ALEX: Keep pondering that orb. Cool, thank you. That sounds grim but [obscured by crosstalk] in a very different kind of genre space.

CY: [crosstalk] It’s not happy. There’s zero happiness in this anime. Like, I don’t even think the word “happy” exists in the show. I don’t even think anyone’s smiled and actually meant it, except for the inquisitor Nowak, who’s killing people. He’s not even religious. He’s just killing people because he thinks that’s what’s right for society. Like, dude.

PETER: Just for the love of the game.

CY: It literally is for the love of the game, though! He literally almost says that at one point. He’s like, “Yeah, it’s just what I like doing. And I’m gonna go home to my family with my bloody sleeves and eat my wife’s stew.” That’s not a euphemism; it is stew. So, yeah. That’s Orb.

ALEX: Cool. Do you know if that’s going to be a short season or if that’s going to be two cours? Because it sounds like it’s doing some pretty heavy stuff that would—

CY: No, the manga has completed eight volumes. I think it’s gonna be the entire show. Partially because, I’m gonna be real, I don’t think this show is popular enough to get any kind of follow-up. Plus the manga, while detailed, is eight volumes. It’s complete in Japanese and it will soon be complete in English. So, yeah. I think it’ll be complete this year in English, so yeah, I think this is it. And that’s probably for the best.

ALEX: Okay, well, I mean, good for Orb for being extremely different, even if it does make it wildly unmarketable and very depressing. But hey, keep pondering that orb, Cy. We’ll check back in with that one at the end of the season.

CY: We sure will.

ALEX: Well, next up we have Negative Positive Angler. It also has a bit of a depressing start. We have some notes here from Caitlin: “For the last several episodes—” She’s shortened it to NegaPosi, which I don’t… I don’t… Like “negative” and “positive” put together? That’s kinda cute. I don’t know how it sounds when I say it out loud, but I like that. 

In any case, more to the point: the show “has treated Tsunehiro’s issues with a fairly light touch. We haven’t delved into his health problems or the loan sharks after him, but there has been allusions to his gambling addiction and tendency towards an addictive personality. He’s moved in with Takaaki, who sometimes yells at him for making his problems worse, and the two have a lightly homoerotic dynamic. 

“But…” (this is still me quoting directly from Caitlin) “…you know who is not lightly homoerotic? Kozue, who Hiro thinks is flirting with him until she admits with a full throat that she doesn’t really like fishing that much and only does it to spend time with her crush, Hana. Although Hiro is slightly confused about what she means by ‘like,’ there is pretty much no plausible deniability for the audience. That girl is gay, and good for her. 

“Even outside that, the writing of the female characters is overall strong. Hana is a high school student living on her own in the store and a total fishing otaku. Ice is a Thai cosplayer who became a model after being scouted at an event and speaks fluent Japanese and Mandarin. 

“It’s not a super pretty show and the animation has only gone downhill since the first episode, but it’s a nice story about how finding new hobbies allows us to connect to one another and gives us a sense of purpose.” 

So, thank you, Caitlin, for checking on that one.

PETER: I do think one of the charm points of the anime, though, is it looks like they’re capturing PS1 fish.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Like the same fish that Link catches in Ocarina of Time or something are the same things floating in Tokyo Bay. So, it’s pretty cute. And, yeah, that girl, every time she hugs the other girl, these cat ears pop out of her head, so I think… could it be any more obvious, really?

CY: Oh, yeah, that’s not heterosexual. That’s not heterosexual.

PETER: Well, one thing I’m hoping this show gets into that it’s been strangely devoid of so far is he’s in college, which his parents are paying for, which apparently he’s just blown off entirely, and he has not told them that he got a cancer diagnosis and has two years to live. 

So, I don’t know if that’s something that it’s just holding closer to the chest or if it’s something the plot plans to explore later or if it’s just as interested in, but it kinda stands out to me that he has just chosen not to include his parents on this news as he’s just kind of spending the remainder of his very shortly forecasted life fishing with the gang.

ALEX: Yeah, I guess that’s kinda combining these very sort of dark, realistic themes with sort of more slice-of-life elements. You don’t always see it happen. It’s not like it’s completely uncommon, but it’s an interesting bit of a different mix. So it’s going to be, yeah, fascinating to see how all of that kind of unfolds as it goes along. 

Because, yeah, we have, like, hugs and cat ears on the one hand and then also terminal disease and gambling addiction on the other? Not to say those two can’t go together. You can have a tonal mix, but—

CY: It’d be so deeply sad if his parents didn’t find out and he was just like, “Nah. Just gonna keep fishing.”

ALEX: “No, I’ve been catching PS1 graphic fish. Don’t worry about it.” Oh, gosh.

So, for a complete tonal shift, we now have Acro Trip. Which, I am not up on the most recent, recent episodes, but… Look, my quick review of this show is that it’s dumb and I like it.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Nice.

ALEX: Have either of you had a chance to check this one out?

CY: No! But it looks enjoyably dumb.

ALEX: It is. It is very enjoyably dumb. I love that it’s exploring—it’s not like—I don’t know. To call it, like, a genre commentary or anything is, I think, giving it too much credit for being deeper than it is. But it’s doing some fun stuff with the symbiotic relationship between a hero and a villain, right? 

Because the villain withdraws for a while, and so the magical girl has nothing to do and so she’s saving the city instead by putting on [a] little bright green high-vis vest and picking up rubbish on the side of the road, and she looks so sad! [Chuckles]

CY: Oh, okay, yeah, I guess that would actually be really depressing, wouldn’t it? [Chuckles] I guess even magical girls have [obscured by crosstalk].

ALEX: [crosstalk] I mean, yeah, you know, it’s this interesting question— Yeah! Like, it’s this interesting question which other works have also delved into through a much darker and philosophical lens of, like, “What is a hero? Do you need a villain to be one?” 

Which, you know, it’s addressing that in a very goofy way, because you have this main character who’s this 14-year-old girl who’s like, “No, I want to see my favorite magical girl living her best life. Therefore, I will join the villains and create problems.” And it works! She engineers, kinda helps choreograph a villain fight, and the magical girl is genuinely stoked and really happy to be back in business.

CY: That’s so thoughtful! …I think, with, like, a question mark.

[Chuckling]

ALEX: Yes. So, I remain to see if it gets any sort of, I don’t know, deeper and with more thoughts in its head about what this all means. But I don’t know, it’s cute. I like how much of a cringe-fail loser man Chrome, the villain, is. I like that his hench-creatures are these weird bear-looking things that just say “Bear” in English.

[Chuckling]

ALEX: That’s the noise they make. Yeah, not super strong characterization all around, but it could get into some deeper stuff or it’s just… It’s just kind of a fun, fluffy watch at the moment with that little light touch of, you know, sort of… I don’t know. As we’ll get to a bit later, with another show that we’ve got this season, it’s kind of fun to have a meta take on magical girls that’s still lighthearted and fun and isn’t just grim and nasty. So, hey, it’s filling that niche.

So, moving on up now, we are in the “It’s Complicated” section and we’re going to start off with the Ranma ½ remake. Cy, how’s that one going?

CY: So, I should say I have zero history with Ranma other than… Kind of like with Utena, I’m like, I know people like it, I know people like it because of the characters and Takahashi Rumiko, but I don’t have any personal context with it. I love this show. Like, this is in my top five easily. It’s so fun. It’s so colorful. I like that. 

So, one thing I have discovered is I guess the original just really did not seem to care for Akane and, maybe, her characterization. I like Akane. Like, this is number one girl. She’s so enjoyable, she’s funny, she can hold her own. It’s clear that she and Ranma have the start of a romance. She has a traumatic haircut, and Ranma keeps the hair because he’s not really sure what to do and how to console her. It’s very tender and sweet. 

We’ve also got… like, Ranma’s got a rival, and this dumdum baby boy and dumdum baby girl (like “slash dumdum baby girl”) does not remember the rival character at all. And it turns out the rival character, Hibiki, also turns into a little black pig because he also fell into a cursed spring. And where we leave off at is that Akane thinks this little black pig is just [a] cute little black pig, and Hibiki is not gonna spoil the fact that it’s him, but Ranma knows. Ranma knows and Ranma’s like, “No, that pig’s gotta go. Get outta there. Quit cuddling Akane. Leave!” 

And it’s just… it’s really enjoyable. It’s really enjoyable. It’s good comedic timing. It does make me want to read the manga. I think I said this in my review, but part of why I hadn’t was that when I bought it, a friend of mine is the translator for it and they had deadnamed her.

ALEX: Ooh! Oh.

CY: And I don’t know, it felt really uncomfortable, in a manga that deals with gender, to have that huge oversight by Viz. And I have not yet checked to see if that’s different and if that has been fixed, but I don’t know, it unsettled me so severely that I swore off of this. And I would like to revisit the manga if that’s been amended because I really like this adaptation. 

And I love all the characters. I love tough Akane, and I like sweet Akane. I think I’m just actually an Akane stan. I just really love her. I love her new little haircut. Oh, I love her new little haircut. I like that she has a crush on an adult but he’s appropriate and he just doesn’t really… he never acts on it. And I think it’s because, one, he’s oblivious. But I also feel like this is an adult who would handle that conversation of, like, “Hey, I’m an adult and, you know, I care about you like my child. And here’s why having a crush on an adult is not something feasible.” And I just love it. I just love it. It’s so good.

ALEX: Yeah, good to see one character is handling that well this season, navigating that dynamic well. 

I’m just gonna say, before, how is it doing with the gender of it all? Because I am also not super familiar with this show—with this property, rather—and the thing that I know about it is that it’s a lot of trans people’s problematic favorite. So I don’t know, what’s your perspective on the whole… you know, it’s got that magical gender-bending element, and that may not have aged super well, but also a lot of people— I don’t know. Yeah, what’s your thoughts on it as a first-time viewer?

CY: It’s interesting, because the show is really not actually— Like, it’s addressing it in the sense of, like, Ranma… Ranma, when she’s female Ranma, just will sit around, tits out, and everyone’s like, “You cannot do that! You cannot just sit here on the patio, topless! You have breasts!” And they give her Akane’s hand-me-downs and actually help her have clothes that suit her body and feel good, but I don’t want to say “gender affirming” because the default lead character still is Ranma as a AMAB character. 

I understand why this series is really important to a lot of trans people, but I will say, as someone who is in that community, I would struggle to call this a trans story. It is a gender bender comedy. And it’s very interesting because at no point is Ranma as a girl gonna turn to the camera and be like, “I matter, inclusive of my gender, and I’m genderfluid.” Like, I wish! But, you know, the show is and isn’t addressing it.

I would say where its weak point is is actually in the gender stuff, because there are characters that will see Ranma as a girl and immediately fall for her because she’s a tough, cute girl, and that leads to this weird sexualization of her that’s part of the kind of slapstick comedy. 

I actually don’t mind the moments where Ranma is just, like, topless and completely unaware of the world around her, because I feel like if you had been assigned male at birth and you had this ability to essentially flip a switch, or, I think actually inclusive of all genders, you might not have certain awarenesses of things because that’s not the body you maybe are normally oriented in. 

But I don’t like that Girl Ranma gets treated in certain ways that Boy Ranma doesn’t. It’s weird. And I have to just assume that that is a leftover from the source material, because it feels a little too natural in the show. 

I’m thinking of, like… there’s a boy in the kendo club—and I cannot remember his name because he annoyed the shit out of me—that has a crush on Akane, and then he develops a crush on Ranma because Ranma curb-stomps him, and he develops a crush specifically on Ranma as Girl Ranma. And it gets weird. It gets weird. He gets really possessive. And it’s just like, ew, gross. Don’t like it. 

But it’s not egregious. It’s just kind of there. Like, I don’t think the show is ever going to be… hopefully not horrific about gender, but I also don’t think it’s doing anything even slightly poignant with it. Though Ranma does look cute in overalls. I’ll give her that.

ALEX: Excellent. Excellent. Cool! Thank you, Cy. 

I will climb out of that magical pool and into another fantasy series, but a little bit different. I got Nina the Starry Bride next, which I think all three of us are watching?

CY: Yes.

PETER: Looks like it.

ALEX: How are we feeling about this one? It’s gotten… I mean, the fifth episode is a little bit full on, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, but what are your general impressions?

CY: [chanting] Fuck Prince Sett! Fuck Prince Sett!

ALEX: Yeah. [Laughs]

CY: He sucks!

PETER: He’s a jerk.

CY: Such a jerk.

PETER: Yeah, I think early on I didn’t have too much to grab on this show. But I think around episode 4… Also, I guess they’re actually supposed to be pretty close in age. The first two episodes, I was like… I don’t know. I just felt not too much. Then the third episode, of course, they have that kiss at the end, and he’s like twice as tall as she is, so I’m like, “Wait.”

[Chuckling]

PETER: “He’s supposed to be your older brother. How much older are we talking here?” Because it honestly looks like a 14-to-15, 18 type of deal, but I think they’re actually supposed to be pretty close. I’m hoping. I think I tried to check numbers, but I couldn’t get good information on this show. 

But I guess she’s also supposed to be married off to another guy. So maybe it’s… I don’t know, it’s like a cultural marriage versus actual romance kind of thing.

CY: What has soothed me is I’m like, Oh, Nina’s just malnourished because of society [obscured by crosstalk].

PETER: [Chuckles] Okay. She’s so small because… Yeah, brittle bones.

CY: [crosstalk] Yeah, she’s just small because she didn’t get enough milk and bone broth.

PETER: Okay, wow.

ALEX: Yeah. She’s teeny, tiny, cute shoujo heroine and the boys, the two princes, are… one of which is, yeah, her actual love interest, one of which she’s been married off to for political goings-on… they’re both like… I’m like, I don’t know how old you are. You are, like… Again, ambiguously aged anime pretty boy is the design they have going on. [Chuckles] They are Young Men™.

CY: Can we talk about this marriaging-off being like the cruelest version of The Bachelor meets Survivor? Like, what the actual hell!

ALEX: Yeah. So it’s kinda like… She finally gets a bit of a foothold in the court, where she’s been brought to be the body double for this princess who’s died. And then she’s like, “Alright, I’ve gained a bit of confidence and character development. Time to ship me off to a completely different place.” 

Which, in fairness, she’s on board with that. She comes to a point where she’s like, “Look, what can I actually do here? Not much, but if I am a political pawn, I will use that to what advantage I can. So, yes, carry me away. Marry me off. I will entrench myself in the court of this neighboring rival kingdom, and I will use that to keep the people I care about back home safe.” 

And that’s cool, you know? It’s a little bit of world-savviness I was kind of hungry for in her character, because I think I said earlier on that she’s like… Part of it’s pacing, part of it’s the repetition of just her going and doing stuff, but it makes her seem a lot dumber than she logically should be as a character.

CY: Yeah!

ALEX: So, I’m enjoying that we’re seeing a bit more development [where] she’s navigating situations. She’s obviously still a little bit naive, which she herself acknowledges, but she’s got a bit more of a head on her shoulders and is learning to be a bit more… I don’t want to say “ruthless” because one of the developments in the most recent episode is that she’s like, “Well, everything here is horrible, and I’m gonna be aggressively optimistic, and that’s how I’m gonna get through and defeat this man,” which I appreciate.

PETER: [crosstalk] I do like that reframing, too, because I think early on, she’s just “Oh, look at how cutely naive and clumsy she is.” Like, the queen drops the fan into the pond and she just jumps in and everybody is shocked at how “A princess would never do something like that,” because she just didn’t know whether or not she was to do it. 

And I don’t know, something feels very infantilizing about that, but now she’s making a decision not to act in a ruthless way like the people around her, which feels much better than the way she was previously accidentally bypassing other people’s calculations, right?

CY: Yeah, it feels tactful. It feels like, actually, like Nina is thinking, because it… [Chuckles] I will say, what a sharp pivot this show took, because I was expecting her to go to this other kingdom, and I was like, “Oh, she’s just gonna be lonely and stuff.” And then they get there and the princess murdered a girl! And you’re just like, what? 

And then, I should say there’s the attempted weird, like, “I wasn’t gonna sexually assault you but I wanted you to think I was” scene. And this guy just sucks! And good on Nina for—

PETER: He’s just straight up a villain.

CY: Yeah. Like, good on Nina for keeping her chin up. But the fact that they’re having her welcome tea and the other princesses are like, “Get the fuck out of here, Nina. We gotta run!” and she’s just like… because it’s so clear it’s not what she bargained for. 

Granted, I don’t think it’s what any of these girls bargained for. Like, this prince is a nutjob. It’s hard to tell where the story’s going to go from here because I was really enjoying, like, “Oh, it’s just Nina and Azure, Nina and Az,” and now I’m just like, “Oh, Az, please come rescue her. Please come rescue her, Az.”

ALEX: Yes, and now there’s this guy to deal with.

PETER: Yeah. Also, one of the things I liked about that, too, is one of the things that drove her to put herself in this position was because she knew that Azure would probably be killed by his own parents at some point, except she basically said, “Oh, I’m gonna do this, and if I find out he’s dead then I’m gonna basically fuck over this old diplomatic thing and then the other prince is gonna declare war on the kingdom, and I know you don’t want that.” 

So, she is protecting him in this situation, which was… I did not think that that was gonna happen. I thought it was gonna be Azure solving all the problems and every once in a while she’d trip into a pond and solve something accidentally. So, yeah, a very interesting direction, regardless.

CY: I will say, Nina has one more good stab in her before she’s done! [Chuckles] Like, girl, do not take any more damage.

ALEX: I will say, I do… It’s… [Sighs] I also have no idea where this is going to go from here, so I’m very interested, and I may have to take this back later, but I am enjoying so far that it’s doing a little bit of, like, she’s having a really bad time in an unfamiliar zone and she’s having to be resilient. It’s doing that without just pummeling her with terrible torments and having her have to get back up, you know? 

Like, for example, I… I don’t want to say “enjoyed.” Obviously, that’s the wrong word, but I kind of appreciated the nuances of, like, as you said, he kind of moves as if he’s going to assault her and then doesn’t, so she then gets to have that little arc of depicting the trauma you would have from that, without us actually having to have a big, dramatic rape scene kind of thing. You know what I mean? We get to have that emotional moment without the heroine having to be just put absolutely through the ringer for the purposes of the story. 

Obviously, you know, people will have different feelings about that, there are different ways to write that arc, but I appreciate that it’s not going too ham with having her have the worst time ever, so that we can have a lovely story about her overcoming her struggles. You know what I mean? 

So, I agr— I mean, I want to say, “Nina, get the fuck out of there.” It’s obviously not an option for her because she’s playing a political game. Which case, I wish her all the best. You go, Nina. You can do it. You’re one of our few shoujo heroines this season, so Nina, you can do it. We’re all rooting for you.

CY: Please don’t die, Nina. You’re in the title. Please don’t die.

ALEX: Please don’t die, Nina.

[Chuckling]

ALEX: Next up—again, total shift, which is the fun thing about these seasonal coverage podcasts—we have Magilumiere: Magical Girls Inc., which is maybe my favorite of the season at the moment. I’m enjoying the heck out of it.

CY: It’s so good! I love that there is this alternative world where magical girls probably have… they definitely have unions in this world, and they have hourly wages and they work for startups, and their brooms have downloadable upgrades—which does make you wonder, in this world, is there, like, a freelance magical girl out there who’s, like, running Linux on her broom or, like, Raspberry Pi on her broom? 

It’s great. I really, really like it. I like the transformations. I like the characters. Kana is my girl. It’s very New Game!, in a way. Like, it made me think of New Game! I was like, “Oh, this is New Game but with magical girls!” And it’s great and it’s cozy. And that big magical corporation can suck my broom bristles, because it’s not all about money. That’s not all it’s about. It’s about saving people.

ALEX: Yeah, no, I like… [Chuckles] Actually, there’s a great… there’s a quote here I’ve nicked from Christopher Farris’s review of episode 5, where it sort of talks about that.

 It’s like, you know this could be… obviously, we have sort of the big magical girl… the evil corporation that’s much more in it for the money, and our little startup is the scrappy little do-gooders, which is cool because, in the quote here from the review: “It creates a magical girl experience that’s just as much of a fulfilling fantasy for adults as its inspirations are for little girls. What if your job really was satisfying and the pizza party purchased by management wasn’t simply a hollow plea for you not to go on strike?” [Chuckles]

CY: Yeah! You know, it’s nice to see a magical girl enjoy her job. [Chuckles] It’s really nice to see a magical girl enjoy her job.

ALEX: [crosstalk] Yeah. No, it’s fun to me, too.

CY: Oh, I was gonna say, the episode where everyone in the shopping district gives her food? Like, a big fish?

ALEX: Oh, yes. Because they save the day and that’s so… Yeah. Ah, it’s cute, yeah. I’m really enjoying that it’s… You know, like I alluded to before, we had this whole trend a few years ago of, like, oh, it’s a magical girl show for the adult demographic, which means it’s violent and dark and terrible. 

And this is a really interesting contrast to that. I don’t know if the creators are responding directly, but it is interesting to have, like, oh, this is a magical girl show with adult themes, but the adult themes are like insurance and corporate culture, [chuckles] but the tone is still quite lighthearted and aspirational.

CY: And I just… I really love the concept of a world where there’s all these startups because they had to answer a problem with a solution. 

And, you know, you’ve got Kana going around to different companies trying to get hired and she goes to this startup… Well, I mean, she ends up there because she assists a magical girl and they’re like, “Okay, let’s give you the uniform,” and she just gets sent out into the field because they’re like, “Yeah, we don’t really have enough time. That’s not really something we can do. You gotta learn on the job!” 

But they care about her, and it’s like a five-employee company. And then they go out to karaoke, and there’s honey toast and singing…

ALEX: Go out to karaoke and the boss turns up in cosplay as a magical girl that he likes from TV. [Chuckles] Yeah.

CY: I actually really… I really like the boss, too, because I like that this show is… it never pulls the rug out from you and makes a joke of Kana’s boss dressing in feminine clothing. Like, she’s surprised at first because she just doesn’t expect that of a boss. Which, admittedly, having worked in Japan, if the principal… The day that the principal came in in my cowboy hat that I had given him, I was really shook because it was just such a difference.

ALEX: [Laughs]

CY: But yeah, I would be shocked if my boss came in in a magical girl outfit. But the show is never transphobic or gross about it. In fact, [chuckles] there’s an employee that routinely updates the boss’s outfit to his taste because the boss likes particular fabrics.

ALEX: Yeah, they’re all very supportive.

CY: Yeah, it’s just wonderful. I want this startup to exist. Also, I love that the brooms are just these big technological things that you can encode. And I like that they capture kaii, the monsters of this world, on USB drives. I think that’s so funny. It’s just like a little magical USB drive. It’s great.

ALEX: I love the dynamic, as well, where it’s the women in the team who go out and do the fighting and it’s the men who are all like tech support and the more sort of human element back in the office. I don’t know. That’s a fun kind of switcheroo of what you might have in an action show. 

And yeah, boss man’s is great. I find him incredibly endearing. I mean, I will say, apart from that introduction, where it’s like, “Whoa. This guy is man-shaped and he’s wearing a dress? That’s kind of shocking…” Apart from that, it’s been really, yeah, as you say, just really chill about the fact that he just dresses cute.

And in fact, there’s been, you know, it’s… I like to think that it’s playing with the gender roles of it all, because there’s a bit where they’re sort of looking into what he does in the evenings, and he goes into his bathroom with this, like, 12-step skin care routine. 

But the other— I’ve forgotten her name in the moment, but the other girl who just wears a tracksuit and whose hair dye clearly needs redoing, she’s like, “Ugh, that’s so much product. I just wash my face with soap” and kind of looks at us sideways like “Why…?” So, you know, we’re very much mixing up aesthetic expectations of men and women. 

So, hey, yeah, we’ll see how that goes from there. But it’s charming. I’m having a whale of a time with it.

CY: It’s so good. It’s so good.

ALEX: Excellent. Well, we’ll come back to that one for sure. We have All Guy— sorry, How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer next, which is sitting pretty in It’s Complicated, because I do have complicated feelings about it. Am I the only one reporting on this one or [obscured by crosstalk]?

CY: I think you are. [Chuckles] I think you are. I forgot— I’ma be real. I forgot that this anime existed.

ALEX: That’s alright. It’s hiding away on HIDIVE, which is a platform— I don’t know if other people are having this problem, but it’s becoming increasingly user-unfriendly to me, so I don’t blame this one for flying under the radar a bit. 

It’s like… Can you forgive me a super-quick tangent that’s gonna seem completely random? I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

CY: [crosstalk] Do it.

ALEX: [Chuckles] Do either of you remember/know the novel Fangirl—

CY: [Laughs] Yeah!

ALEX: —by Rainbow Rowell? This came out like maybe 10, 12, years ago.

CY: [crosstalk] Oh, God, don’t say that time. But yes, I do.

ALEX: [Laughs]

CY: God, I was in college when it came out! Yeah, okay. Continue, sorry.

ALEX: [Laughs] Sorry to throw the passage of time at you. Long story short for those who don’t know, it’s about… she’s a girl who’s in her first year of college and she writes fanfic. It’s kind of a love letter to Harry Potter fandom back in the days when that was a much more whimsical thing and you didn’t think of militant transphobia every time Harry Potter was mentioned. 

Anyway, I read this book when I was a teenager and really enjoyed it, though something didn’t quite sit right with me about it, and I couldn’t put my finger on what that was until I was a bit older and wiser and more aware of the politics of queer representation. And what it was, was that there are no real gay people in that book. Queer people only exist inside the slash fanfic that the main character is writing about, the story within the story. And once I noticed that the whole thing got a bit unsettled because it is kind of a weird dynamic to have. 

Now I’m not saying this is a one-to-one comparison, but I was reminded of that experience watching All-Guy’s Mixer, because it has this odd thing going on where it’s very queer but only in the abstract. Like, Fuji, who is the purple-haired one, she draws these 18+ BL manga and uses her love interest for posing references while he’s completely oblivious and just along for the ride. But we haven’t met any actual gay characters in the world of the story itself. 

And of course, you have the thing where the main ladies all perform as these anime pretty-boy archetypes at the bar where they work and they’re flirting with the female clientele who is signing up for this. And then you also have, of course… As Caitlin pointed out in the three-episode check-in, the show keeps finding increasingly convoluted reasons to have them still dressed as dudes when they’re not at work. 

And so, you know, there’s lots of shots of these women in the background being like, “Oh, my gosh, he’s so handsome,” outside the context of the bar. So it’s like we keep having all of these women who are attracted to these women but never on purpose, either within the fabrication of the drag bar situation, where they know that they’re women in cosplay, or because they mistake them for hot men when they’re out and about. 

And I just… I don’t know, it’s something about that… And I think… and as well, something solidified, as well, with a recent… It’s done this twice now, with two different couples, where he has seen her out of costume for the first time, and it’s like this huge deal. And something about that is not sitting pretty with me. You know? 

I think we have no reason from the framing of the show to assume these characters are anything but cis. I mean, hey, I may be wrong. I may eat my words. I would love to. But because… you know, it’s doing all this sort of gender play stuff, and so I have to read it through that lens. And so it means that stuff… when it’s like, “Oh, this person usually looks like a handsome guy, but look, they’re really a girl and they really look like this. Isn’t that shocking?” It feels like a character being outed, even though that’s not literally what’s happening. 

And just something about the dynamic of that is like… [Babbles] Am I making any sense, or am I just spinning [obscured by crosstalk]? [Chuckles]

CY: [crosstalk] No, you are, because I will say, as someone— Here’s my dark secret, internet: I really like Rainbow Rowell. Not as much as I did in college, but I will fully admit I have the… shit, I do think it’s the 10th-anniversary copy of Fangirl. God! Time is fake. But Fangirl was a really impactful book on me in college. That said, if anyone wants to claim that that book is queer-friendly, it’s not. 

And so, I do get what you mean from that perspective, because… I don’t know why there’s this discomfort with… Like, you want queer characters? Just make them queer. Like, quit hiding like “Oh, they look masculine, but they’re secretly a girl. Don’t worry if they take off their pants. There’s a vagina!” Like, dude! If you’re gonna do gender play, do it. But if you want characters to be a gender or present as that gender, don’t give me the runaround. It’s 2024. It’s 2024. I don’t want that.

ALEX: Yeah, it’s like… Which, on one hand, there’s really nothing… I don’t know. I don’t think this show has any bad intentions, necessarily. On the one hand, yeah, it’s pretty cool to be like, “Oh, yeah, here’s three different M/F romances where they fall in love with these girls while they’re presenting masculine.” Cool! That’s a little different. You don’t see that very often. 

But on the other hand, it has these weird elements. And, yeah, just the amount of times background characters have been like, “Ooh, that’s two boys together! Ooh, that’s kinda hot!” when it is quote-unquote “secretly” just a girl and a boy and one of them happens to be in cosplay… [Groans creakily] I don’t know. The vibes. The vibes are off.

CY: [crosstalk] I think if there wasn’t a history of this being a thing that happens, then… Because even Wotakoi, a series that I love, has a couple that starts off like that, where you think it’s going to be a male–male pairing and it just turns out it’s a short-haired girl! [Chuckles] Like, if there wasn’t a precedent—

ALEX: [crosstalk, ironic] A short-haired woman? That’s insane! [Chuckles]

CY: If there wasn’t a precedent for it, I think All-Guy’s Mixer wouldn’t be frustrating. But I’ma need some original flavor. I’ma need something new, slightly queer. But—

PETER: Gives you that “McDonald’s at home” feeling.

CY: Yeah. Yeah.

ALEX: [Chuckles] And I’ll say, as well, there’s a scene where the writer… the character who makes BL… her love interest is helping her out writing that, and it just made me think of the “justice for Tomoda” scene from Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun, and now I just want to rewatch Nozaki-kun instead of watching this. But I will persevere. [Chuckles]

Now, onwards, we go to… I think you called this anime of the season before, Peter, so I’m gonna pass you the torch. This is Dan Da Dan. How we doing?

PETER: Oh, yeah, wonderful. 10 out of 10.

CY: It’s so good. It’s so good!

PETER: Yeah. I mean, I definitely… I think on our last podcast I said, like, for a while I had the Shonen Jump app just to read Chainsaw Man, and then they put Dan Da Dan back on, because it was previously web-only, for reasons that may become obvious as we continue talking about it. 

But I just think it is super fun. It’s held on to that early Jump energy, because [in] a lot of series, I think the main characters can kinda get… you know, all their odd angles and fun bits can get ironed out over time, and I think that’s happened to Naruto and Luffy, where they just stop being brats so that they can be heroes more often. 

And I think there’s really great character equity, both in agency and attitude, between Momo and Okarun. I think they are both… They are both really compassionate, they’re both awkward, they both can be jerks, they both feel really free, being their own characters, and I think they’re like… Obviously, it’s going into… like, you know, it’s romance. That’s where it’s headed. And I think it might be the best one I’ve ever read in Shonen Jump. I’m struggling to think of any characters that fall in love that I actually give too many shits about.

CY: [crosstalk] Peter, you can take the “think” out because this is… This is the couple. This is my favorite couple that’s ever been in Shonen Jump. I know they’re the best. Come for me in the comments. They’re good.

PETER: Yeah, it’s pretty confident. They’re super fun together. I love in the most recent episode [how] their first kiss is, of course, them just accidentally walking directly into each other’s faces. Yeah, and, you know, I think we’ve discussed a bit the really intense sexual assault imagery in the first episode, which fortunately, I think has pretty much leveled out. 

There’s one more scene I’m really concerned about how new fans are going to take it in the next couple episodes, but I’m actually curious what non-manga readers think of that.

CY: Yeah, because I came into this completely… I didn’t know anything. Didn’t know about the Pikmin. Didn’t know about episode one’s sexual assault scene. I did know that Creepy Nuts did the opening. 

And I will say, I have since picked up the manga, and that sexual assault scene feels more brutal in the manga than it did in the anime. It’s still jarring. And I’m pretty much at the same episode as was recently aired in the manga because I’m hesitant to read ahead, because I’m just enjoying the weekly experience of Dan Da Dan. But it has calmed down. 

Oh, I think I’m a little bit ahead actually, because I just remembered the image of my iPad falling on my face last night while I was reading manga in bed.

PETER: [Chuckles] Panels zooming toward you?

CY: It really was! It was very in-character for the manga, where I just feel like things are very fluid. I love this show. I think it’s so good. I love Momo. Momo is queen. I love Okarun. I love Momo’s grandma, who is inexpl— The BB cream and facial scrubs and stuff she’s using to look like she’s in her 30s…

ALEX: [Laughs]

PETER: Yeah, drop that skincare routine.

CY: I will say, though, there is one character in this anime that stands above them all, one character that I love with my whole heart, and that is Turbo Granny, stuck in a cat doll. [Chuckles] That is so good!

PETER: I love the voice actor choice for Turbo Granny. It’s insane listening to her talk.

CY: She’s so crotchety. And so she gets stuck in a maneki-neko. And [chuckles] it’s great! It’s great because she’s a sassy something-or-other. And like… I just love her. I love that they just have this evil spirit just kicking it because she didn’t win, and her power’s still in a teenage boy. And it’s the funniest thing, and I am really glad that she actually didn’t disappear from the show because I think, what a funny element to keep in this story. 

No clue if we’re ever gonna see those creepy aliens again. Maybe they should figure out a better way to reproduce than sexual assault.

PETER: I will spoil. They do come back, but it’s really lit. At least I thought so.

CY: I hope they get their extraterrestrial asses kicked, really hard.

PETER: And I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

CY: And I will say, we have gotten introduced to a new character that… I don’t really like her. She kinda mean.

PETER: Mm-hm. I think, yeah, we kind of have gotten the goofy main character dynamic down at this point in the show. I’m very interested to talk about it at the end of the season, because I think these next couple of episodes are going to show the manga’s chops at more serious storytelling and also incorporate… I can’t remember. Is her name Shirataki here or Shiratori? Aira, right?

CY: [crosstalk] Shiratori. Yeah.

PETER: Yeah. …Shiratori into the story. I think she’s pretty funny, and she takes a turn later on. But, you know, your feelings toward her may vary. 

But with the conclusion of the arc with this particular spirit, I think you kind of see the storytelling pattern of the manga, which I really like, because I think— This kind of reminds me of… I don’t remember the name of the other shounen manga that recently got an anime. It was about a little exorcist girl who had… she was carrying around, like, real weapons and stuff in her little demon hoodie. “Dark” something? She was good. 

[Editor’s Note: Peter is thinking of Dark Gathering]

But I think even that one didn’t quite get into… Like, ghosts have a lot of trauma [Chuckles]. And that will show itself in the way that they act, and it all comes from the period in which they’re alive. So I think there is a lot to actually talk about on a more analytical level from these upcoming story arcs. I’m particularly excited about this one.

CY: Because that was the interesting twist for Turbo Granny. Which, shout-out to the fact that we got two different types of Turbo Granny in 2024. We have the Dan Da Dan one and then we have… Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance gave us Turbo Granny again. And I like that Dandadan’s resolution with her is like, she is like this because of the place that she haunted, which is a place where horrific tragedies befell teenage girls. And so, she’s not malicious, but she— Well, okay. Mm. Mm, let me walk that back.

PETER: That made them a malicious spirit, right?

CY: It made her malicious. She is a product of her environment, because Turbo Granny, when she’s not in that situation, is just a Japanese grandma who could run really fast. And now she’s stuck in a doll and so she’s a Japanese grandma who’s gonna eat all your snacks. 

Yeah, because I really do like the way that the show combines comedy with tragedy. You know, a lot of ghosts in a lot of cultures are products of trauma, like intense trauma, which makes sense because if you’re thinking of the spirit as something that is contained within a vessel and that vessel undergoes severe trauma, that’s going to leave a hypothetical mark on the spirit. 

But I also like that this show combines the comedic aspect, which is like, “Oh, if a bunch of ghosts manifest as a giant crab and we kill a giant crab, well, bust out the butter sauce, baby, because it’s dinner time!” They do eat a giant crab spirit.

ALEX: [Chuckling]

CY: Well, okay, and by “they,” I mean Momo and her grandma because Okarun does not eat that crab. He’s a little wigged out. Which, like, I’m not gonna lie. I think I would eat the crab, and I don’t know what that says about me.

PETER: Oh, same.

CY: Whatevs!

PETER: But I think that just something to keep in mind as new spirits show up is that something made them a spirit and… Yeah, that is a turn you can expect at some point in the storytelling of the manga and the anime.

ALEX: Hm, cool. That is something to look forward to. Great year for cooking and eating monsters, I guess.

PETER: Oh, yeah. True.

ALEX: We will head on up to The Tales of Girls Who Couldn’t Be Magicians [sic], for which we have some quick notes from Caitlin:

“In my three-episode review, I criticized The Stories of Girls Who Couldn’t Be Magicians for taking a one-size-fits-all approach as their teacher decided to go all Shang” (from Mulan, I presume), “announce, ‘I’ll make a magician out of you!’ even to the many students who had enrolled in the regular course with dreams unrelated to magic. 

“While I still stand by that take, I have to admit it is interested in talking about privilege. The magic course students have access to resources that the others don’t, and the school at times pits them against each other despite the obvious unfairness. It’s clear that the issue isn’t their lack of magic but that they are put into situations where having magic gives their competitors a leg up, like a cross-country race they must do on foot while the magic students can fly. It’s a very ‘baby’s first’ introduction to institutional discrimination, but considering the overall tone of the show, I will give it a pass.” 

So, that is that one. Thank you, Caitlin.

And last but not least, returning to our kind of unofficial theme of marriages of convenience this season, we have 365 Days to the Wedding, which is cute. I like it. I think that the sort of social commentary stuff I highlighted in the premiere review… that’s still there. It’s more sort of bubbling away in the background rather than something the show is really explicitly drawing attention to, but that’s fine. You don’t want it, you know, shoving that in your face as text rather than subtext every episode. That would get a bit much. 

But it’s sweet, you know? I liked that— It’s doing some classic beats. Obviously, they’ve set up this fake relationship, but the groom, as it were… his family has found out about it. So, I go, “Okay, right. Well, now we’re gonna have to expand the farce and meet the family and do a whole rig—” But no, they go to his little country town and meet his family and tell them the truth. 

And the family is like, “Oh. No, yeah. I mean, I’d [be] kind of upset that you lied to us and I was sort of excited about having a sister-in-law for a minute there, but I can see why you did that. Yeah, we’ll keep your secret.”

PETER: “Yeah, it sounds tough out there in Tokyo. You gotta pretend you’re married!”

[Chuckling]

ALEX: Yeah! They’re like, “Damn, the big city sounds crazy.” [Chuckles] So, I thought that was cool, you know? It was a bit refreshing that it could have done some more miscommunication nonsense, but didn’t. 

And of course, you have another indomitable little Japanese granny from the countryside being like, “I don’t know. I can see some feelings between you two.” Which, again, you know, a genre staple. These two are getting a crush on each other as they are, like, fake-engaged. 

And yeah, it’s sweet. I like it. Do you have anything to add on that one, Peter?

PETER: Yeah. Oh, another granny with a great voice actress doing some fantastic work. Yeah, definitely the thing that interests me most is just how the entire story is structured around the institution of marriage in Japan. I am optimistic about this next story arc with their coworker who appears to be getting divorced and how it might be looking to show you some other things about marriage in Japan, as opposed to just the singular narrative that’s been locked in with the main two characters. 

Also, strangely, this show and Negative Positive Angler… both have had a surprise lesbian romance among side characters as well as a side character getting a Sailor Moon pose in both of these shows, which I think is very funny. But other than that, yeah, it’s just kinda cute, slow burn, very charming. 

I hope it doesn’t become one of those shows where it’s obnoxious how unaware not only that the other person likes them but that they even… they’re unaware that they like the other person, because that can really just make a show intolerable. But so far, it’s kept the charm up. So, we’ll see how the second half goes, I guess.

ALEX: Yeah, it’s cute. It’s also— I mean, hey, it’s kind of noteworthy on its own just for being a rom-com about adults [chuckles], because those are less common than the high school rom-coms. Even stuff like Yakuza Fiancé, which, as you have said, ostensibly, probably should be about adult characters but where [chuckles] they’re in high school anyway, for Reasons. Oh, dear.

PETER: I do like— I mean, you just hear the premise and it’s just like, “oh, they’re getting married because there’s advantages in their work life to being a married person.” 

And I think just that in itself is a— I don’t know, just a reality that stories don’t often explore is how marriage has become, in both business and government, a specific status that awards a lot of benefits and incentives and disincentives and that that can really affect somebody’s decision to get married, or even just get married without even a romantic component just to enjoy those benefits or [avoid] disincentives of not being married.

ALEX: Yeah, so we’ll see how that one unfolds.

And that brings us to the end of proceedings today. Great, chaotic adventure through many different genres as usual. Juicy season, I think. I think we’ve got a pretty good crop of stuff to sort through. So, we hope you enjoyed listening. Be sure to check back in at the end, when we see how all of this shakes out.

If you liked what you heard today and you like our stuff more generally, you can check out our Patreon. That’s patreon.com/animefeminist, as I said before. That helps us keep the lights on, helps us pay our editors and contributors a fair and competitive rate for the hard work that they do. And you also get access to some fun bonus stuff like our Discord. 

We’ve got the Patreon bonus podcast episodes up and running again. The most recent one of those, Peter and some other folks from the team went to see the movie Look Back and had some emotional thoughts about it, which are behind that juicy paywall. So go and check that out if that sounds interesting to you.

You can also find us wherever social media is had. All of that is nicely bundled together on our Linktree, which is linktr.ee/animefeminist. And of course, you can go to our website and find all of our reviews, feature articles, interviews, all that jazz. 

And again, thank you for listening. We hope this has given you maybe a bit of reprieve in a… time in the world. The horrors persist but so do we, so we will see you in the next episode.