We've now got a genius detective, an immortal dragon deity and an anime about fishing even. What more could you ask for?

Greetings from the other side of the internet! I have returned with yet another ranking, for my audience to read.

This time around I've only picked 5 shows to watch, mainly because this season's selection was quite lackluster. Well, to be fair, they were 6 shows but sadly the sixth show on this ranking got delayed through the middle of its airing until February.

Since I have a personal rule not to talk about a TV series until its current season is fully aired and I finished watching it, I will be omitting that particular one from this list.

And, thus, we have only 5 shows here.

Also, the images that I will be using in this blog post will be more generic than usual, a trend that will continue into the future for all future postings on here. This is because I got a DMCA takedown request on this blog because of one of my images and, as such, I will be going out of my way to use images from either the public domain, or images hosted on other websites than my own.

So yeah, that's why this has happened.

Finally, as a reminder, all of these TV shows are available on Crunchyroll, if you have a premium subscription there. But, since this stuff is subject to regional licensing, I have to mention that these shows were available from Romania. Depending on where you are, some of them may not be available to you.

Anyways, without any further ado, let's get the ball running:

1. Ron Kamonohashi's Forbidden Deductions (Season 2)

It's finally here.

This will cover my thoughts for the second season of this TV series. I recommend you read my thoughts on the first season before you go ahead. You can find them here.

As I previously said in my review for season 1, I really wished that this new season will cover the origin of Ron's curse and how he ended up where he was.

And, thankfully, this new season decided to bless me with what I've asked for.

Well, I'm sure the plot for season 2 was already planned for well in advance of my review, so I take no credit for it, obviously, but still, I'm happy that things panned out the way that they did.

So, in this new season, we finally find out more about Ron's past, who his family is, what his connections are with a house of criminal masterminds that orchestrated a lot of the crimes that they investigated and, interestingly, we also learn about Ron's father figure in this one.

It's pretty much all I wanted out of this show and even more.

Yes, there will be some filler episodes that focus on menial murders that have very little relevance to the bigger plot; they are what I call “filler episodes”.

But, for the most part, this season was what I hoped the first season would be like.

The fact that the first season was composed almost entirely of what I would call “filler episodes” was very disheartening. It made me reluctant to recommend the show, mainly because it had a lot of inconsequential padding that was only there to gather an initial audience so that the staff could actually make season 2 interesting.

It took us a while to get there but, finally, here we are.

And in this one, we get even more interesting modus operandi explored for entirely new criminals, stuff that I find very nice to explore.

We get a surfer that ended up drowned at the beach, a mysterious kidnapper that kidnaps very talented people to make works of art for him and then releases them and, of course, we get into the details of Ron's past and why he ended up as the genius that he is.

The show seriously suffers from cliches, though, and just as before, Ron is still just as eccentric and weird, always making me roll my eyes whenever I see him appear on screen.

But, to make matters a bit better, we also learn why he is so good at deducing what other criminals do this season, as well as learn that the House of M is responsible for his curse.

And, finally, this season, Isshiki ends up being slightly useful towards the end (emphasis on the world slightly).

Either way, this was a good watch.

I genuinely enjoyed this new season and, if you watched the first season and thought it had an interesting premise but lacked in execution, I feel like this season may just be what you want to see.

This is a definite improvement over everything that was shown a year prior and I, personally, am definitely looking forward to a new season. Whether a new season of this will appear or not remains to be seen since, unlike last time, it was not confirmed.

2. Sengoku Youko (Season 2 part 2)

These will be my thoughts for the second part of the second season of this show (yeah, this has been a very long journey, looking back at it). If you wish to read my thoughts on season 1, you can find them here and if you also wish to read my thoughts for the first part of this second season, you can read them here.

I think this was the longest running series that I've written about, in this blog.

Granted, I consumed anime that were far longer than this one, since I was a fan of Naruto since I can remember (although I never finished watching Shippuden the way I originally planned to do), but I never covered the ones that I watched in this blog before.

As I said in my review for season 1, I thought that this anime was playing the long game since, even though I admit that it had good ideas and a very interesting world that it had built for itself in the first season, I thought it was going too slow and that it lacked a proper sense of identity for itself.

Well, I'm glad to say that, as of the second season, most of these issues have been resolved, and I'm thankful that I decided to keep watching this.

It was a long journey, but we got here.

The story continues with Senya's journey in trying to defeat the Void People who have only been causing him trouble, as well as Tama's journey in trying to revert Jinka back to his normal self again.

I cannot go into more details when it comes to this show, since there's really a huge amount of stuff that we have to talk about and, frankly, I just don't want to cover it, given how much story there is in this show.

Season 1 started as this simple journey of Tama's, Jinka's and Shinsuke's who wanted to make the world a better place (and for Shinsuke to become a better swordsman) and it eventually became so much more than just this.

As the plot continued to unfold, I will say, I was becoming more and more engrossed in our characters' journeys.

The closest anime that I did write about in this anime blog of mine that comes only slightly close to what this show managed to accomplish would be Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer which ran from summer of 2022 until winter. That show didn't have as many episodes as this one did (it only peaked at 24 episodes) but it was also an overly ambitious story with a semi-interesting plot, decently fleshed out characters, a large cast and an an energy to do great things that only a few could rival.

But, sadly, all good things must come to an end and that show suffered from a lot of technical problems which, in my opinion at least, were caused by an insufficient budget. Those problems hampered that show's quality a lot, to the point where the last episodes were subpar. And that's a real shame, since it had such a strong start that very few could rival.

This show, thankfully, did not suffer from the same issues and studio Whitefox knew to invest just the right amount of money to make this an experience that would be very memorable for all of us.

Like I said, my main gripe with this show was its very slow beginning, which was really doing it a disservice, but the story compensated for that by switching the protagonist of the show from Shinsuke from season 1, to Jinka in season 2.

That, in my opinion, was a monumental life changer that made this show stand out from the lot. Granted, I'm sure this is not the first anime that did this, and many might say that it's just a simple gimmick that, if overly exploited by other anime in the future will only serve to annoy future viewers, but, as of right now, that was a very interesting decision that did this show a lot of favors.

Senya's viewpoint was far more interesting than Shinsuke's and, thankfully, the time skip that aged up most of the characters also added a great deal of momentum towards the show's favor.

Not a lot of anime do time skips like this one nowadays. The last one I remember (which I watched, personally) was Twin Star Exorcists but, in that specific case, the time skip pretty much ruined the show for me, since all the events that happened afterwards were very much a genuine downgrade from the plot of when the main characters were children.

Here, the time skip was an upgrade, as the characters became wiser but, most importantly, more competent in what they did after they grew up, which allowed for some interesting fights.

But, what I liked the most about this show, was genuinely the theme about the passage of time.

This is very subtle, but the passage of time is a focal point around which the entire plot is focused on.

The ending was incredibly fascinating and it gave this show a timeless feel, with character growth unlike which I've ever seen before. It conferred me a sense of growth, of sadness and bitterness when I saw how certain characters had passed, but also of satisfaction and happiness when I saw how the world had evolved as time went on.

It was a fascinating watch.

This was an incredible experience. I cannot for the life of me recommend this show enough. It was an absolute masterpiece that I am so glad studio Whitefox decided to completely adapt. I sincerely believe that, had Whitefox decided to adapt only 1 season or only 2 seasons but without this last part, the story would have been sorely incomplete and objectively inferior to what we've just had.

The fact that the studio understood the greatness of this plot and said “You know what? This story needs to be told in its entirety” and burned so much money to make it happen, was something that I deeply appreciate.

This was an extremely reinvigorating experience. Was it flawed? Yes. There were times in which the plot became cliched and overly simplistic, plot holes do exist if you look closely enough and I do feel like there were issues with the pacing of the show, since the last episode had to cover so much ground, but it eventually ended in a manner that left me saying “I'm glad I watched this, but I don't wish for more. It's just complete as it is” and left me with a smile.

If you can stomach the 35 episodes that this anime has, I humbly suggest you give it a shot. I admit, the beginning is very slow, and you will get bored, but it's worth the wait. It will eventually grow and become something very special.

3. TsumaSho

Why are anime about families so good?

It used to be stuff like My Home Hero, then Buddy Daddies (not to mention incredible classics like Clannad as well), Grandpa and Grandma turn Young Again and now we have this. Is this just a coincidence or do Japanese writers are just exceedingly good at writing timeless and memorable stories about families?

Well, regardless, it's time we delve into this one as well.

Our story begins when an adult hard working husband loses his beloved wife, Takae Nijima, in a car accident.

This untimely death throws the man into a horrible depression, with their daughter alongside him, as their lives become completely ruined from this.

Fast forward ten years, and the two are still living miserable lives. The daugher, Mai Nijima, is working in a boring job and is suffering from having no friends or relatives she could talk to except for her father, whose name is Keisuke, who is emotionless and very quiet all the time.

The two regularly eat takeout foods that they microwave and they don't even bother trying to change their current lifestyles.

One fateful day, a little 10 year old girl named Marika Shiraishi, rings their doorbell.

Keisuke opens the door, only to be confronted by the furious Marika who yells at him for living an improper life.

She claims to be the reincarnation of Takae, and she wants to scold him for allowing his and Mai's life to go downhill like this after her death.

Naturally, Keisuke is very skeptical and unsure how to take this but he allows the girl inside his house where she continues to explain herself.

Both Keisuke and Mai eventually become convinced that Marika is indeed Takae's reincarnation after she reveals to them information that only Takae would have known.

This causes a lot of turmoil, as they are unsure how to deal with this.

Takae then proceeds to scold the both of them for living like that, her saying that she's very disappointed in them for taking this path.

However, they soon accept the current reality as it is and both Keisuke and Mai immediately agree to accept the young Marika into their family, happy that the Takae that they had always known had returned to them.

Takae decides to start visiting their household regularly (since she lives in a different household, now that she is reincarnated in a different family), while hiding her visits from her divorced mother, Chika Shiraishi.

Takae starts giving Mai advice on what to do so that she can find herself new friends and, possibly even, a romantic partner and she also starts visiting Keisuke at his job to give him bento lunches to eat in his lunch breaks, something for which he is very thankful for.

And so ends the first episode.

So yeah, this is another odd anime.

But, despite its outrageous premise, it is ripe with a lot of drama.

I can't call this a slice of life, for obvious reasons. Some might wonder if this is a mystery kind of plot, in which Marika just pretends to be Takae and fools her family into this ruse, but, really, that's not the case. This is a supernatural story, in which Takae's soul inhabits Marika's body.

It's as simple as that.

Granted, even with this supernatural element thrown in, the show is very down-to-Earth and tries to treat itself as seriously as it can, discussing issues about hiding information from your family, dealing with loss and mourning, and trying to make difficult decisions about sacrifices and compromising.

Really, when you get down to it, the show is very mature and simple in its life lessons.

It's a story about a family that has lost its core foundational member that was the one that made everyone smile but who, ten years later, reunited with said member and is trying to make the best of it, together.

I won't go into any more spoilers than this but, I will say, the ending was especially satisfying to watch.

I was afraid that they would chicken out and do a “everyone is happy” type of ending that leaves a lot of things ambiguous about how they will work out but, thankfully, that wasn't the case. The plot tied all the knots, no loose threads remaining. And sometimes tying all the knots implies that not everyone will be happy. Sacrifices have to be made.

As a fan of drama, this was just my cup of tea.

I loved every episode of this show, it was very much exactly what I wanted it to be.

If I had to nitpick, I will say that one plot thread towards the end got resolved in a rather unsatisfying way. I don't want to spoil what it is, but I will say that a certain scenario that Keisuke was making up turned out to be a lie that he did for someone else's sake, and that felt like a cheap cope out to me that left me very disappointed.

But, overall, the show accomplished way more than it left behind, and I can confidently say that I was happy that I watched it.

A season 2 is almost impossible to happen, given how it ended, but, assuming I am wrong and they do continue the story somehow, I am absolutely up for more of this content. I loved what this show was about and I definitely wish for more.

4. Negative Positive Angler

Do you like fishing?

Your answer to this question may, very well, be a resounding “no” but, even if that's true for you, you may still like this TV anime series that's all about fishing. “How do you know?” you may ask? Well, it's because I am one of those people that hate fishing but I still enjoyed this show.

The plot is as straightforward as it gets.

College student Tsunehiro Sasaki is struggling with a debt problem, as he is struggling financially every day, barely managing to make ends meet.

One day, he is diagnosed with a terminal illness, given a grim prognosis that he will only live another 2 years, and advised by the doctor to immediately seek medical treatment for his condition.

In spite of this, Tsunehiro decides to run away from his problems and spend the little remaining money that he has at a gambling parlor, ignoring all his problems.

But, as bad luck would have it, debt collectors that were specifically looking for him manage to find him there, and realizing that he's in trouble, Tsunehiro makes a run for it, only for them to give chase.

As he runs away through the city streets from his pursuers, doing his best to get away, he eventually gets cornered against a ledge above a large river flowing through the city and, while trying to get away from them, he slips and falls down into the water beneath and is immediately captured by a strong water current and carried out of the city, into the nearby gulf.

Not knowing how to swim, Tsunehiro closes his eyes, expecting to finally meet his untimely demise.

However, soon after, he wakes up on a concrete platform, surrounded by other people around his age: a girl named Hana Ayukawa (who's the one that swam out to save him), a pink haired fellow named Takaaki Tsutsujimori (who was the one that went out of his way to convince her to rescue him) and some others.

Tsunehiro then realizes that he is now on an artificial platform, close to where the city he lived in was, a place that was specifically there for fishermen to fish on.

Tsunehiro thanks them for saving his life, very grateful that he had finally lost the debt collectors that were after him, but realizes that he is stuck on that platform with Hana and Takaaki until morning, since the boat that is supposed to allow them to return to mainland was scheduled to arrive only in the morning.

Not having anything to do to pass time, Tsunehiro eventually agrees to grab a rod and fish alongside them, as they are all clearly enjoying their hobby together.

And so, Tsunehiro is slowly about to discover a new passion in his misery-filled life.

That's the first episode of this show.

So yes, this is, technically speaking, a sports anime, that's about recreational fishing. Unlike many other sports anime though, what stands out about this one is that it has very little competition in its plot.

For the most part, the show treats fishing as a hobby, something the characters engage in only because it's their favorite way to pass time.

There's no fishing tournament in this show (well, OK, there is one but only for one single episode and it's mainly used as a side-story more than anything else), the stakes are very low and it's mostly about having fun with your friends doing this outdoor activity.

And I think that's what this show does best: it's about life engaging in the hobby you like most.

The anime is a slice of life story about recovering from the depths of despair, when you're at the lowest point you can be in life and how you can make a recovery from it, even if it all seems hopeless.

I will admit: the whole premise of “it all seemed doom and gloom until I discovered this new hobby and all of a sudden I've found myself with new friends and a job and it all worked out in the end” didn't exactly strike me as something I would be fond of. And, while I don't wanna spoil how it ends, that's kind of the whole idea that this show is going for.

It's all about living your life to the fullest and trying to make the best of it.

Until recently, I genuinely wasn't interested in these types of stories. I always thought they were very cheesy and unrealistic..

But, now that I managed to sit down and take it for what it is, I realized that, if you simply look at it from a different point of view, it becomes quite nice. Its honesty and simplicity are actually quite refreshing.

It's basically the whole “Make the best of what you've got” Japanese mentality, distilled into a show about fishing. That is quite an interesting concept and, for what it's worth, this show did it fine.

And yeah, there's a lot of talk about fishing here. You will learn a lot about this hobby, whether you want to or not, but it thankfully doesn't overtake the plot of the show.

Fishing is the mechanism with what the show conveys its message, but the message itself is still there, in plain sight.

And if you're like me and don't care much for it, you can still appreciate it for its amount of depth and how fairly accurate it appears to look when describing this activity.

I never knew how many fish types there were in Japan, how many fishing techniques there were, the types of bait you can use, and so forth. Even for me, who's someone that's very uninterested in this hobby, even I've found the stuff that they were talking about quite fun to listen to, even if I still don't plan on picking up this hobby myself.

If nothing else, the show was quite informative.

Maybe it's just me approaching middle age and starting to like stuff that most kids would find tedious and boring, but I've suddenly found myself taking a liking to these menial and straightforward stories about accepting reality as it is but still finding ways of making your life work regardless.

It's a fairly straightforward story about doing your best and allowing your friends to pull you out of your misery, even when you're at your lowest.

My only complaint for this show is that a lot of the stuff that it describes as tragic and horrible get resolved quite swiftly and conveniently; stuff like financial issues, not having a place to live, or even dealing from a terminal illness, they all get conveniently resolved whenever the plot feels like it makes sense for them to resolve for it to have the most dramatic impact on the audience.

Brushing off heavy things like that felt a bit too idealistic and shallow to me, personally, but I still understand why the show did them.

I would have liked for more drama and a far darker ending to the story than what we've got, since I felt like that would have had more impact on me, personally, but I still think that we got something decent here, nonetheless.

Could it have been a bit better? Sure. But what it ended up being was perfectly serviceable anyways.

Even if you're not into fishing, I would still recommend you give this show a watch. If nothing else, it will be a valuable lesson about appreciating what you've got.

5. Yakuza Fiancé

Alright so, we might as well get this one off our chest now.

This is one of those TV series where people will tell me that I'm wrong about, that everyone will try to defend and tell me that it's actually a very underrated masterpiece or what have you, and I will simply disagree with them.

But, at the same time, I don't want for this review to come across like I'm hating on this show. Granted, I don't love the show either.

I'm somewhere in the middle with this one. I don't like it enough to even call it decent, nor am I angry enough at it to say that I hate it.

I'm just indifferent to this one.

The show is about a high school girl from Osaka named Yoshino Somei, who grew up in a yakuza family.

Despite her family's ties to underground crime, she has tried her whole life to distance herself from them and tried to stay clean and safe, doing everything she could to live a normal life for herself.

One day, she finds out that her grandfather had arranged for her to marry the son of another yakuza family, a young man from Tokyo named Kirishima Miyama, who's also in high school.

Naturally, Yoshino is very much against this arrangement, especially since she had never even met the guy before but, at her grandfather's request, she eventually concedes and moves to Tokyo where she meets up with this Kirishima.

Kirishima, initially, presents himself as an attractive and earnest man, who claims he has little ties to his yakuza origins and that he's also doing his best to make an honest living for himself.

This puts Yoshino off at first, as he's the first person she has met outside of her family that also seems to have a dislike for the yakuza.

But, soon enough, Yoshino sees Kirishima return home late into the night with blood on his body, clearly indicating that he had lied and that he still participates in the less savory deals that the yakuza are known for.

Soon enough, Yoshino discovers that Kirishima is actually a very sadistic person and that his nice persona was actually just a facade to pretend to be a well mannered individual.

When seeing how Yoshino is not very willing to be cooperative with him, Kirishima drops the act and demands from her to sell her body to others, in exchange for money to give to him.

That, coupled with the fact that the girl is facing bullying at her new school in Tokyo, causes Yoshino to hate the new life there and want to return home.

When she gets to talk over the phone with her grandfather again, he advises her to try a new strategy: if she wants to get revenge on Kirishima, she should try to seduce him in the next couple of months and then, once she will have him at her fingertips, she should break up with him and leave him in the dust. That way, she will make him miserable.

Yoshino accepts this as a challenge for herself.

After that, Yoshino gives Kirishima the money that he wanted from her, her having revealed that instead of selling her body for sex to make it, she had sold a kidney for it.

Moreover, she's making it clear that she won't give up so easily and that she will put up a fight before she returns to Osaka, revealing a side of herself that Kirishima had never seen before.

This unsophisticated, combative and crass side of her causes Kirishima to suddenly proclaim that he had genuinely fallen in love with her and now he's even more interested in going through with the arranged marriage.

So ends episode 1.

OK so, a couple of things I want to make clear: I didn't care much for this show.

Initially, I said I would want to watch this show because it clearly had a dark edge to it, since anime about yakuza life are usually quite interesting and I wanted to see where this one was heading.

The show had an interesting premise, although I'm never a fan of the old arranged marriage romance cliches.

Nonetheless, I gave this show a chance and I powered through it, following the plot, the characters and everything about it.

And, the general takeaway for me was that, for better or worse, I got what I was hoping for: it does delve deep into yakuza life, into thugs and gangs, manipulation and criminals doing illegal things, and it goes quite hard into action scenes.

The problem is that the show is very underwhelming.

Much like Tasuketsu: Fate of the Majority, which is another show I've encountered that had a similar issue, there's a lot of dialogue and talking in this show that slows it down a lot.

This is clearly a mature show geared towards mature audiences, which is both a blessing and a curse for itself.

The plot advances at a slug's pace and, the few action sequences there are, they aren't very flashy or particularly well animated. In fact, they are very realistic and short, as far as I've seen.

The show doesn't even try to pretend that it has flashy action. And every action scene is padded out by many minutes of dialogue that surround it, in which characters are constantly strategizing, scheming, doing plot exposition or something similar. It's all that, non-stop.

And while this is still miles ahead of Tasuketsu since it at least has some proper action sequences, I would still have preferred something a bit less talky and more shooty.

When you get down to it, this is just a coming of age story for Yoshino. Yes, she hates everything yakuza and she hates violence, but the story will put her in the position of having to deal with thugs and people who are out to get her or Kirishima, to take matters into her own hands and get her hands dirty in the process.

In that sense, it is a bit of a feminist anime since Yoshino is arguably one of the most capable female characters I've seen in anime in quite a long time, which I really like.

On the other hand, it was that this show was constantly trying to shove romance between Yoshino and Kirishima down my throat, which was something I really disliked about it.

Granted, I'm usually all for having romance in an anime and trying to make things work in that sense but this was one that I really felt gross about.

Kirishima has a very sleazy personality, one that lies, manipulates, seduces and is also very sadistic and even blood thirsty at times. He is an incurable asshole that doesn't take “No” for an answer and likes to gloat and takes pride in every single win he gets.

But, with that said, I both hate and like those characteristics about him. For one, I miss this type of character. I wanted someone that's a genuine manipulator and liar, who tries to get into women's pants, who cheats on his girlfriend, has ulterior plans, and who's scheming all the time. I really like this about him.

I wish more anime male leads were this conniving and cold, at least for the sake of diversity. In that respect, this was a breath of fresh air seeing someone as heartless as him.

But, on the other hand, I really don't like seeing this guy trying to sweet talk an honest girl like Yoshino. Clearly he's infatuated with her and he wants to make her his, but I just feel dirty watching these two getting together.

But, then again, I've had to sit through genuinely terrible romance anime like A Condition Called Love (from the spring of 2024 anime), and that felt even more disgusting than this one, so I can at least say that I personally feel like I've seen worse.

Either way, your mileage may vary.

I really wish the anime focused more on the yakuza stuff and the plot developments and less on the romance portion of the series.

Lastly, I want to say that my other gripe with this show is the character designs. I really really hated the designs of these characters.

Visually, they looked like these people were into their 20s, like Kirishima and Yoshino were at least in college, and yet the story told me that they were still in high school. That felt very weird to me.

I don't know why the characters look as old as they do. Maybe it's just my brain playing tricks on me, but these people do not look like teenagers. I know that this is animation, and a character's apparent age is very subjective, but it just felt very wrong to me.

Oh and, another thing is that a lot of characters had very odd looking designs on their pupils. Like some characters had trapezoid shapes in their eyes, for no apparent reason. I don't know what those reasons are but they looked off putting and very distracting to me.

That and, the animation from this show is really choppy.

I don't know what budget this TV series had, but the animation looked very cheap. Maybe it's because it had a lot of action sequences throughout the series (they were very short lived though) and they had to burn a lot of money on that, but the moments of silence or just talking felt like there was very little money being spent on this. The animation was as bare-bones as it got during those moments.

Initially I didn't notice that but, when a friend of mine pointed out this to me, it became very noticeable and jarring.

I don't know why the show had such a lackluster animation, but it stood out after I began noticing it.

Oh well.

Those are my thoughts on this show.

Overall, I felt like the show was a bit too slow, the plot too dialogue-heavy and the animation and character designs off putting in more ways than one.

At times, it genuinely felt like the show was somehow an adaptation of a light novel, it had that much dialogue in it, which obviously isn't the case since this is adapted from a manga. So why there is so little action and so much dialogue in this one, I really cannot say.

I don't think I will be continuing this show, even if a season 2 were to come out. It just lacks the polish that I need and the style of storytelling is just not for me. But, with that said, I'm sure there are other people who would like a show like this one. So, who knows? Give it a shot!