AnimeZone

It's that time of the year again; the time where I rank all the anime that I have watched in a given season and tell you how much I (subjectively) enjoyed them.

This time around, I've decided to watch 10 anime series once again, so this can technically be called a top 10 anime list, although, obviously, it's not much of a top 10 list when 10 is all that I have watched at all.

In all fairness, though, not everything on this list is worth a watch and I would personally say that the 10th item on this list (i.e. the TV show that I enjoyed the least out of this whole ranking) is a series that everyone should avoid watching at all costs, in my humble opinion. Maybe I am wrong about this, given how I haven't even watched the entirety of that TV show (yes, I dropped it while it was still airing; it was that bad), but I'll get to that when I get to that specific show's occurrence in this list.

With all of that said, my last note that I want to leave you off on before I get to the actual ranking is, again, the fact that all of these anime are ones you can find on Crunchyroll as of the making of this blog post (or at least, they are accessible on Crunchyroll from Romania, specifically, given how geoblocking is a thing).

Now, let's get down to it.

1. Atri: My Dear Moments

I don't think it's a surprise that I picked this show from Crunchyroll's 2024 summer lineup.

There will be many people that might not have heard much about this show, who aren't aware of what it is or who might not even care much for it. Hell, before watching it, I wasn't very knowledgeable about it, myself.

But, the moment I saw the short preview for the show on Crunchyroll, I had the feeling that this was going to be something special.

I don't know how to put it in any other way but, sometimes it's very obvious, even from the preview of a show, that the staff working on the project had put their heart and soul into making it and that it will be a very special treat. It's hard to describe that feeling but, after watching enough anime, you'll get to understand it eventually.

This is one such special show.

Even from episode 1, I though to myself “Yeah, this is different than all the other anime from this season” and, lo and behold, I was right.

But let's not get too ahead of ourselves! I'll start out by describing the first episode now.

A young 17 year old boy named Natsuki Ikaruga awakens, one day, at the sight of Catherine, an adult woman that he's acquainted with, in his room, smiling at him in anticipation for the good news she's about to convey.

Catherine informs him that she had been informed by a trustworthy source of a possible treasure that they can get their hands on, quite easily, to make quick money.

Natsuki, knowing full well of Catherine's shady past and unreliable sources, is skeptical of this news but decides to humor her nonetheless and goes along with her request.

Later on, Natsuki's childhood friend, Minamo Kamishiro, also arrives at Natsuki's ship (where he lives at), and tries to convince him to join her in going to school, something which Natsuki adamantly refuses to partake in.

Natsuki had been living an unfulfilling life. He had lost his right leg in a tragic childhood event.

Moreover, the entire planet had become victim to a strange rise in sea levels that had engulfed most of the land and continents, leaving behind only a small fragment of humanity who are now struggling to survive by living in whatever small land areas are still above the waters.

No one knows what the cause of this mysterious sea level rise is, but it's quite clear that it's had a devastating effect on the entire planet.

The island that Natsuki, Minamo and Catherine are currently living on is only a small land mass that's also slowly being devoured by the sea, everyone merely waiting for the inevitable to happen and for them to lose their homes too.

Natsuki had traveled, back when he was younger, to the mainland to study so that he can learn how to potentially fix the planet but, sadly, he had given up on doing so when he realized how difficult this would be. He eventually would end up blaming his missing right leg as the reason for his failure and him having returned to the island, even though his grandma, who was a marine geologist and who had predicted the sea level rise but nobody believed her at the time, would scold him for having turned out to be a failure.

Fast-forward to the present and now Natsuki, after having recently gone through his grandma dying a month prior and struggling to use a malfunctioning artificial limb to compensate for his missing leg, is in desperate need for money just so he can buy a new prosthetic leg for himself and replace his current one.

As such, even though he dislikes it, he has to go along with Catherine, for even the slightest chance that she might be on to something.

Catherine tells Natsuki that the treasure she was talking about is something that was hidden in his now-deceased grandma's house, which had been engulfed by the waters.

The only way to reach the house now is by using Natsuki's submarine.

Minamo, worried that Catherine might eventually backstab and kill Natsuki the moment he does recover his grandma's treasure, decides to join them in their adventure, to protect him.

As such, they embark on a journey and Natsuki uses his submarine to descend into the ocean waters and travel to the underwater area where his grandma's house used to be, while Minamo and Catherine wait on the ship above the waters.

As Natsuki descends into the deep water and reaches the house, he doesn't find any treasure but, instead, finds a strange glass capsule that seems to hold a big doll in it.

As Natsuki approaches it to inspect it closer, the doll opens her eyes and it turns out that she is conscious, startling him.

Natsuki realizes that the doll in question is actually a robot in human form, also known as a humanoid in that world.

As he ascends back to the surface, the young boy slips when exiting his craft and falls into the water, beginning to drown when the humanoid from earlier swims up to him and gives him mouth-to-mouth to share air with him to keep him alive, effectively saving his life.

After the girls save the two and bring them onto dry land, the humanoid reveals to everyone there that her name is Atri and that she is an old generation humanoid, a model that's been discontinued in the past, and that she had been built and kept alive by Nonko, Natsuki's grandma.

Atri is a very cheerful, 14 year old looking girl, very energetic and a self proclaimed “high performance” humanoid.

She wishes to be reunited with Nonko, her master, to continue to follow her orders but, it's then revealed to her by everyone that Nonko had already passed away and that, because of this, her new master should logically be Natsuki, her grandson.

Atri agrees and so she designates Natsuki as her new master. Since she's a humanoid, she's programmed to follow her master's orders, at all costs.

Not having much use for a humanoid, though, Natsuki and Catherine decide to see if they can sell her instead, seeing how this was most likely what was actually the treasure that Catherine had heard about.

So, Natsuki and Catherine travel to a local wares market where Natsuki, taking notice of Atri's worn down legs, decides to buy her new shoes to wear.

After consulting with an expert about how much she is worth, they learn that Atri, due to being a discontinued old model that cannot be acquired anymore very easily, is actually worth a lot of money, which makes Catherine very excited.

Natsuki, however, is a bit hesitant to the idea of selling her, seeing how she had just saved his life.

Atri then reveals to them that they should wait before selling her, since she apparently has a very important mission that she has to fulfill first, a mission that's been instilled into her by Nonko since she was created.

When they ask Atri what that mission is, Atri, while trying to remember it, claims that she had forgotten and she can't remember what that is, yet.

Both Natsuki and Catherine are in disbelief, seeing how Atri is a robot and yet she actually forgot her most important mission, prompting Natsuki to call her a “piece of scrap”, which apparently was used as a racist slur against robots in that world, making Atri very angry at him.

Still, because of this revelation, they decide to not sell her that day just yet, but wait off until tomorrow.

As they are traveling, Catherine insists on continuing to sell her, since they need the money, and Natsuki reluctantly agrees with her.

Catherine asks Natsuki to give Atri the order to join her to her house, since she's worried that Natsuki might run away with her and sell her on his own.

Natsuki agrees, gives Atri the order, and she hops onto Catherine's motorcycle to follow her home. As Catherine accelerates and the both of them leave Natsuki behind, Natsuki notices how one of Atri's shoes, the ones he had bought her earlier that day, had fallen off just before they left, prompting him to try to run after them, only to fall behind due to his defective prosthetic limb.

He laments at how pathetic and worthless he is, having to sell his grandma's property for money, and decides to return home to his ship and sleep for the night.

There, he has one of his recurrent nightmares that forces him to awaken, scared, only to find Atri, for some reason now in his bedroom, trying to comfort him after that nightmare.

So ends the first episode.

With a summary like this, it's pretty clear that this will be a plot heavy show.

Even from the first episode, it was packed with a lot of content that it had to go through, revealing the characters, the world, their motivations and their personalities, and also setting up the story.

I will admit that I felt that this episode was a bit rushed, seeing how choke-full of content it was and how quickly it seemed like it wanted to burn through it, but I get it. This is a 13 episode anime, after all, and there's only so much plot you can fit into those few episodes.

That, and given the huge amount of backstory that needs to be filled in to describe the characters, their backgrounds and their life, is also a huge task that needs to be accomplished.

I recently had gotten a brand new OLED TV just before I started watching this show and boy, I will say, this anime is gorgeous to look at on a big screen; the shots of the sea, the sunsets, the crisp clean quality and the vibrant colors popped right off the screen. I might say that this was the best looking show of this lineup, or even the best looking anime TV series that I've personally seen, in recent years.

This ain't movie quality budget, but it's as good as you can get for a regular TV series. I really hope I can get my hands on a Blu-ray for this show, when and if it gets released for region B.

Besides this, when looking up this show on the web, I noticed something peculiar about this: this anime is based on a visual novel of the same name, developed by Frontwing and Makura, the creators of another visual novel series named The Fruit of Grisaia which, incidentally, I did play.

The story for the visual novel was written by Asuta Konno, who had also wrote the plot for another visual novel called If My Heart Had Wings, although I am not familiar with that one.

I tried to look up the visual novel that this show was based on, only to discover that, among other things, it isn't technically an eroge, mainly because the original game did not contain any sexual content in it, whatsoever. Normally this isn't a big deal with visual novels sold on Steam, since developers of said novels usually publish patches that add the missing content into the game after it's already been installed on the system, but there was no such patch here, to be found.

This means that this visual novel was made, from the ground up, to have no erotic content in it whatsoever since day one.

This might seem like an unimportant bit to focus on, but, seeing how one of the developers of this game was Frontwing, who is famously known for their selection of eroge, this feels like an outlier.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I have a special kind of appreciation for these types of games, the kind that are visual novels but that also have zero erotic content in them. Given how over-focused and hyper-fixated the modern Japanese visual novel market is on erotic scenes and mature content, it feels so special seeing one example of such a game that said “No, we're not doing that. We have an important story to tell, and we can't risk botching that over some shallow crap like that” and set itself apart, when doing so.

I tip my hat to that. They have earned my respect.

That and the other developer for this game, Makura, is also the developer of another visual novel called H2O: Footprints in the Sand, an old game that was adapted into an anime by Studio Zexcs back in 2008 and which, incidentally, I have watched and I consider an old underrated gem, from a bygone era of the anime industry.

So yeah, I knew just by seeing those that developed those predecessor games, that I was going to like this story. All the signs were there, pointing me to it.

And yeah, no surprise, I was hooked on it.

If I had to boil this show down into its most basic idea, it's the old tale of the forbidden romance genre, one which I'm also very fond of.

The idea of a human falling in love with a robot is an old trope in literature, and has been for a very long time, but this adds some new spins onto it.

The main thing that this show does that I find to be quite original, is the fact that the show puts into perspective what it means to “love” and have a “heart” in a new way.

I won't go into spoilers, since I feel like this definitely needs to be enjoyed by oneself, but I will say that I like how they handled the fact that Atri is a robot and would have a difficult time understanding human emotions.

The conclusion that they made and how they explain away her behavior, while still making a romance involving her work, is quite clever.

Also, I did find it very ironic that she was arguably the most colorful and charismatic character out of the whole main cast, despite being the only one who was a robot.

Initially I wasn't expecting this to turn out to be a romance though. I've seen instances where an anime would feature a kiss in the first episode of a TV series, but then abandon the whole romance plotline and instead focus on something different while conveniently ignoring it (I'm looking at you, Isuca) , but this thankfully didn't do that. It said that it was going to pursue a romantic arc and it went ahead and did it.

Granted, I will complain a bit about the romance in this show by saying that it was very rushed and felt artificial.

The relationship between Natsuki and Atri felt very spontaneous, considering how they only allocated 2 episodes to it to get it established and then went ahead and used it as a source of drama, later on.

I don't want to sound unfair towards the show, since I understand that budget limitations probably meant that they couldn't extend this anime to more than 13 episodes in length, so some compromises had to be made, somewhere.

It's just that, when the whole structure of your story relies on that one element, I kind of want it to be treated more organically and given more time to develop.

But alas, you can't have everything.

Then there's the elephant in the room that was so subtle that I didn't even realize it myself until the show had to point it out to me but there's a significant age gap between our romantic leads, Natsuki and Atri.

Natsuki, in the show, was 17 years old, while Atri looked like a 14 year old girl. For what it's worth, Atri is actually way older than 14 years, seeing how she was a robot that was created by Nonko to be Natsuki's mother's partner when she had been a child, but I know that most people won't care about that excuse.

Frankly, an age gap of only 3 years didn't bother me and, while Atri was clearly shown to be shorter in height than all the other characters in the show, that was so subtle my mind didn't even register it until they mentioned her apparent age.

If you are someone that finds these issues too glaring to ignore, I advise you to skip this show. The age gap thing wasn't that big a deal for me, personally, but I've also been desensitized to it in the past before, usually with way larger age gaps than this one, to the extent that I didn't even notice this one.

And if the issue is that Atri is too young-looking for you, I can absolutely understand that but, then again, I've seen way more mainstream support for couples like Kazuma and Megumin from KonoSuba, and Megumin in that show was even younger looking than Atri is in this one (and yeah, I am one of their supporters).

But I'm leaving that out in the open so that you can make an informed decision for yourself.

But aside from the seemingly rushed romance that the show had, my other complaint is that it's still full of cliches that have been used before, many times.

Cliches like how generic the villains in this are. There was one villain that made only a brief appearance in the beginning but was quickly forgotten about later on, that felt so terribly one-note and so shallow that I was rolling my eyes with all the scenes with him in it.

Like, his character was so over-the-top evil that it was actively taking me out of the show and boring the hell out of me.

Or how, in a flashback scene, the reason why a young character is on the verge of dying is due to bullying from her classmates.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that these types of things happen and they should be very much called out and discouraged; it's just that, the people in that flashback were so nonchalant and shallow that they were actively cheering on suicide, which I found too over-the-top and ridiculous.

I'm all for calling out bullying as evil, but the show goes to great lengths to have straw-man arguments that feel so shallow that they don't even apply to real life anymore. I found that scene so implausible (especially since it was taking place at a school, with at least one teacher there) that it was ruining the illusion for me.

Or, even the romance part suffered from cliches as well, since the show needed to squeeze in the fact that Atri was actually the mysterious unknown girl from Natsuki's distant past that had saved him and made him fall in love with her, just so that they can manipulate his character into falling in love with her faster in the present.

It's cliches like these that bother me, since I feel like this show is above them but still ends up relying on them to save time, since there's only so many episodes it has in its budget.

Then there's the plot holes and inconsistencies that normally I want to ignore, but then when I actually think about what's going on, I realize that there are glaring issues with this story. Stuff like how, towards the end of the show, we finally find out Atri's true mission, her true purpose that she had, and yet for some reason, despite her having to fulfill this very important role, her creator, Nonko, had set her up in an underwater capsule to be discovered by others, which would allow her to go astray and wander around while interacting with other people, including her grandson (something that could have caused her to be killed, injured or sold to the point where she wouldn't be able to fulfill her mission any longer, as was made obvious over the course of the anime). Why not just set her to wake up on her own in the place where she always needed to be to fulfill her purpose, from the very beginning, so that she wouldn't have to rely on others to help her? Why go about this convoluted way to get her to arrive there?

Or how Nonko, despite having this very important thing she needed Atri to do, kept her grandson in the dark rather than employing his help in assisting Atri to do her job, which would have been way easier, rather than keeping all of this a secret from him and having Atri reveal this to him herself, in the future.

It's little tidbits and inconsistencies like these that really annoy me, since I genuinely feel like this plot could have been so much better, had it only gotten a couple of more rewrites.

But, either way, I still loved it.

I've always been a big fan of the forbidden romance genre, and I did enjoy the drama that came up when discovering why Atri's model was discontinued. I like the angle that they were approaching it from, and I've been a big fan of seeing this style of romantic drama done well.

This is basically what Vermeil in Gold had wanted to be, had it been written with more forethought put into it. This show did it right, Vermeil did it wrong, and I'm so glad to finally see an anime attempt to do this trope justice after so many years of waiting.

Granted, like I said, this show still has its flaws and inconsistencies, but it's miles ahead of what Vermeil and so many other romances before it, did.

However, with that said, because of the issues that I've mentioned, I still won't say that I like this show more than other romance anime that I've taken a liking to, over the past years, like Call of the Night (which, sadly, isn't on Crunchyroll). Those other shows did the romance aspect far more organically and enjoyably than this show did, it didn't rush things and it evolved the characters in a way that made me actually root for them.

Here, I was also rooting for the main couple, but it felt a bit artificial and forced, a feeling that I was pushing to the back of my mind, but was still there, nonetheless.

Hell, even on Crunchyroll, I feel like there are better romance anime than this one as well, that are less cliched and take their time to develop things properly, like Tonikawa: Over the Moon for You, where the romance felt more believable once again, and more natural.

But, still, I enjoyed this show and respect it for what it is.

And the ending did left a very nice taste in my mouth, a feeling which I wasn't expecting to feel to the extent that I did. It felt timeless, almost like it was a very unique and satisfying ending to a tumultuous and exciting story that went full circle. Seeing how much the protagonist had progressed from being the shallow husk of a human being that he was in episode 1 to what he had become in the final episode made me smile and appreciate the journey that he had taken.

That and, as a final compliment to this show, I respect how little pandering and focus it spent on the whole environmental aspect of its story. With a story like this, this felt like prime ground to talk about how important climate change is and how we should all work against global warming, cutting down emissions, and doom tripping us into how this could become our world if we don't take action now.

The fact that the show didn't take that route and never became preachy or self important about these issues didn't get lost on me, and I appreciate it for having the maturity and self restraint to not fall into those lesser obsessions.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable experience.

I have a feeling that I will remember this show for years to come, maybe even decades. It's one of those shows that, despite its flaws, was executed very well and it had the right heart to get across a timeless message. The same way that I still remember to this day H2O: Footprints in the Sand and how memorable and impactful it was, the same way I remember watching Yosuga no Sora and remember how traumatizing it was and yet how pure and emotional, I will probably remember this show as well.

For all its flaws and inconsistencies, it had one thing going for it, and that's the fact that, at its core, it had a beautiful, yet flawed heart.

2. Sengoku Youko (Season 2)

Well, I'm happy to announce that this show has finally got a new season.

I was afraid that Studio Whitefox might pull another Re:Zero on us and take their sweet time to make a new season of this show as well, but thankfully the wait was mercifully short this time around.

If you wish to hear my thoughts on the first season, you can read them here.

Basically, a TL;DR of the first season is that this swordsman-in-training named Shinsuke joins a wise fox girl named Tama and a young sage named Jinka in their quest to make the world a better place and, on their journey, they will encounter many difficult to deal with supernatural creatures named katawara and will, sometimes, also have to fight against a group of spiritually powerful Buddhist monks named the Dangaisyuu.

The ending of the first season really left a mark on me, and I was intrigued and wanted to see where this story will go.

This, I'm happy to report, is a worthy continuation of that story that elevated it to new levels. To keep it short, I will say, I am glad that I continued watching this TV series.

This continuation covers the life of Senya, a young boy that is incredibly strong, for having thousands of creatures embedded in his body that he can control at will.

Back during season 1, Senya was a minor character and an enemy to our main cast.

In this new season, he's the protagonist who, for some unknown reason, woke up one day and realized that he was suffering from amnesia, him having forgotten his own identity and his entire past life.

He is guided by Shinsuke, the protagonist of the first season, who acts almost like a father figure to him, keeping him under his tutelage despite them having been enemies before Senya had lost his memories.

Tama and Jinka are nowhere to be found yet, at least in the first episode.

Also, a new girl character around Senya's age gets introduced, named Tsukiko, who Senya immediately befriends.

Unsure of what to do next, Senya listens to Shinsuke and follows him everywhere they go.

One fateful day, all the children in the village where they were living in get kidnapped, during the night, by a group of katawara that wanted to eat them but Senya immediately defeats them using his powerful morphing body, which he discovers that he can control.

The children are impressed by his abilities and Tsukiko's own family are happy to welcome Senya into their home, her father even suggesting that he should consider marrying her.

After that happens, the village gets visited by a corrupted mad god that attacks Senya, out of the blue, forcing the latter to defend himself.

During their combat, Senya gets thrown back and, one of the blades protruding from his body, accidentally slices Tsukiko's father, killing him.

Eventually Senya defeats the mad god but is very remorseful, seeing how he had been the cause of Tsukiko's dad's death.

The next day, trying to avoid causing more commotion there and suspecting that the reason why that mad god had appeared in such a remote place was because of their presence there, Shinsuke decides to take Senya and leave the village with him but, before they exit, they find Tsukiko begging them to allow her to join them in their journey and train her so that she can also become stronger.

Thus ends episode 1 (of season 2).

I liked this continuation.

I was a bit put off, initially, when seeing that this new arc changed the protagonist to Senya, a character who I didn't care much for during season 1, but I quickly grew to like him. Senya seems like a good kid, a bit of a stick figure initially but he eventually shows that he has many sides to his personality.

The personal conflict that he ends up having, hating his own body and pledging to find a way to turn his body into a normal human was very interesting to me, especially since it was literally the opposite goal that Jinka had had during season 1.

The eventual relationship that will grow between Senya and Tsukiko was a bit cliched, though, since I didn't feel like this show needed a romantic component to it, but it was still passable. Tsukiko turning into a damsel in distress later on, felt unnecessary and boring but I like how, after a time skip, she becomes stronger and manages to hold her own in battles, especially since she has a strong desire to become more powerful after seeing her father die before her eyes.

There were more things that I liked in this season than I did in the first one. For one, Senya has more interesting things happening to him, given that he is a very strong individual that holds a lot of power, so naturally he will end up living an eventful life.

The battles that Senya has are very impressive and the fluid animation from the first season thankfully carried over to here.

I also liked the age progression that some of the characters had. Yes, there is a time skip this season where a lot of the characters age up a significant bit, and I liked how they end up being.

Tama felt just as mature as she was before, although she did change her personality ever so slightly after the time skip.

I also like how her love for Jinka didn't fade at all.

If I were to nitpick at all, my only gripe with this new season is that very little is revealed about the antagonists and their goals, although that's going to be delved into in the future, I'm sure.

And also, just before I end this review, I want to commend this season for having the best opening and ending of the entire 2024 summer lineup that I'm reviewing in this blog post, by a lot. I adored both the songs and the visuals of the opening and the ending, they were incredible.

Clearly Studio Whitefox wanted to make something special here, and that shows.

I can't wait to see more. I want to see Senya's journey and find out what will happen to everyone and their lives in this universe.

3. Too Many Losing Heroines!

This one was a very interesting one.

Out of all of the shows of this particular lineup, this one was the one I had the least amount of expectations for.

After the first episode, I was even more confused than before about where this show would be heading but I still decided to continue watching, hoping that it would go in interesting directions.

So, let's start with a look into the first episode before anything else.

First year high school student Kazuhiko Nukumizu is enjoying reading one of his favorite novels at a local cafe when he, out of the blue, just so happened to notice the voice of one of his classmates, Anna Yanami, talking with a friend of hers at a different table nearby.

Yanami was speaking to Sōsuke, a childhood friend of hers, who was having trouble getting over the fact that another girl that he was having feelings for was planning on moving to another country.

Feeling sorry for him and wishing to be supportive of his feelings, Yanami advises Sōsuke to pursue his feelings and encourages him to go after her nonetheless, so he can confess to her properly and let her know of his feelings for her.

Emboldened by her encouragement, Sōsuke promptly runs out of the cafe to chase the girl at the airport, leaving behind a heartbroken Yanami who was very conflicted with herself, since she also had romantic feelings for Sōsuke.

Seeing how Sōsuke had left, Yanami glances at the soda cup that he had been drinking from and, after a moment of hesitation, she grabs it and begins sucking the remaining soda out of it through its used straw, effectively having an indirect kiss.

However, while she was doing that, she just so happened to notice Nukumizu's shocked and disappointing stare at her, as he had witnessed the whole scene from a couple of tables away, unbeknownst to her.

Feeling the social judgment of having a classmate catch her in the act of desperately engaging in an indirect kiss after, effectively, being dumped by Sōsuke, she immediately moves to Nukumizu's table and starts defending herself to him, as a last ditch effort to prevent him from spreading weird (albeit truthful) rumors about her in their class.

Nukumizu is now in the awkward position of having to be supportive and kind to this girl that had just been rejected by her childhood friend, while also trying to cut the conversation as short as possible, since he doesn't want to get involved in Yanami's love life.

Seeing how she's desperately trying to explain herself in great detail to him, unloading all of her frustrations and feelings about her failed relationship with Sōsuke, Nukumizu offers to lend her money for her food there, at the cafe.

However, he soon starts to regret this when he realizes that Yanami begins ordering a large amount of food for herself, him finding out that she's actually a glutton despite her slim figure.

The next day comes and Nukumizu gets summoned by a member of the literature club, another girl from his class named Chika Komari, to their room. When inquired why he was being called for by that club in particular, Komari (who's very socially awkward and has social anxiety when talking to other people) reveals to him that he, apparently, is also registered officially as a member of their club and that the club president has recently become more intolerant of club members that don't participate in the club's activities.

It's then when Nukumizu remembers that, indeed, he had signed up for that club in the beginning (or, more accurately, was pushed to sign up) but had forgotten about it.

In the meanwhile, another girl, Lemon Yakishio, who's also Nukumizu's classmate and a very prolific runner in the track club is trying to get Nukumizu's help in finding out more about Mitsuki Ayano, one of Nukumizu's male friends who she also has a love interest in, despite Ayano already being in an established relationship with a different girl called Chihaya Asagumo.

During lunch break, Yanami complains about how Sōsuke and his love interest eventually got together after her having encouraged him to confess to her, and is now very angry that the couple is asking her to go out with them, her hating the idea of that since she still hasn't gotten over Sōsuke choosing a different girl from her.

Nukumizu tries to console her but he then shares the receipt for the food that Yanami had ordered at the cafe, the previous day, where he had lent her money.

Yanami, after hearing the huge sum of money that she owes Nukumizu after that day, seeing how she doesn't have money herself, decides that the best way to pay him back is to make bento lunches for him for the next couple of days, with Nukumizu having to estimate the monetary value of each bento that she would make for him, until it'll pay off her entire debt to him.

Nukumizu agrees and so begins their strange (and mostly platonic) relationship with each other.

That's the gist of episode 1.

I'll start my review by first saying that, if you're generally put off by harem anime and are scared that this might turn into one of them, I'm happy to tell you that this isn't the case.

Nukumizu doesn't turn into a harem protagonist and this, thankfully, doesn't devolve into that (not that there's anything wrong with harem anime either).

I think that it's pretty safe to say that, by the end of this first season at least, Nukumizu is straight up friend zoned by all of the heroines in this show. He doesn't get to develop any romantic relationships with any of the female main cast, although he does befriend all of them and is supportive of them.

There are some points in the show where it's hinted that Yanami and Nukumizu might, one day, evolve to become closer together than mere friends, but that's just a false flag that gets planted.

At least for now, there doesn't seem to be any push towards that particular relationship and that idea is merely treated like a comedic gag more than anything else.

Now, with that said, the show is still worthwhile to watch.

This is a slice of life high school drama with a lot of jokes in it, pretty much. The main subject that this show tackles is how a girl of their age should handle rejection from their romantic interest; not the most mind boggling of premises, nor particularly intellectually stimulating, but it's still a pretty important subject that's very relevant to young people nonetheless.

Yeah, that's where the title of the show comes from. It's about “losing heroines”, i.e. girls in Nukumizu's class that get their hearts crushed by boys that aren't interested in them (or can't reciprocate their feelings for them).

I love character deconstruction plots, especially those that take drama seriously and explore how various characters deal with rejection in various ways.

That and I love that the show portrays women as being more than simple love hungry plot devices. The heroines in this show (that is Anna, Lemon and Komari) all have various personalities, hobbies, strengths and weaknesses, and they are all, for better or for worse, very quirky and unique.

Nukumizu grows to learn all of these and respect each and every single one of them, albeit while also trying to maintain boundaries and not get romantically involved with any of them.

Simply put, Nukumizu is a good friend that tries to be there for all of them.

The show covers 3 arcs, one for each of the heroines, and how they deal with their insecurities and sadness after being rejected.

I won't go into detail but I will say that it was a very good and mature story, that was tasteful and showed how to deal with a loss but still come out of it without harboring toxic feelings for oneself or for other people.

Overall, it was an interesting drama.

My one complaint is that Nukumizu was a bit bland and uninteresting but that's pretty much by design. The story treats him as a mere witness to the lives of those around him, while the true protagonists are the girls that he surrounds himself with.

I'd love to watch another season of this show, if it were to ever get greenlit.

4. VTuber Legend: How I Went Viral After Forgetting to Turn Off My Stream

Are you surprised that I'm talking about this show?

It's not very well known that, for a small window of time, I was a follower of VTubers on YouTube and, even today, I may still try to watch some stream if I'm in the mood and I have nothing to do.

As such, I felt like it would be fitting to also watch an anime TV series about VTubers like this one.

I'll get straight into the plot of episode 1.

Kokorone Awayuki is an underappreciated VTuber working for the VTube company Live-On. She's part of Live-On's third generation of VTubers, a generation that has many quirky and fun female characters like Hikari Matsuriya who likes to hold gaming endurance streams, Mashiro Irodori who was the artist that designed Awayuki's 3D model and is very interested in drawing sexually suggestive sketches of her character and Chami Yaganase, who does ASMR streams.

Awayuki herself made her character seem like a very feminine snow princess that's always in a dress, delicate and fragile, and who tries to attract an audience using these characteristics.

However, in reality, she is a very crass and nervous person that needs to drink a specific brand of chūhai called Strong Zero just to have the courage to do live streams and who is also, incidentally, sexually attracted to some of her coworkers' models and who masturbates to them during their streams in secret.

Yeah, the show never explicitly acknowledges this, but Awayuki is a pervert and a closet lesbian.

This is in stark contrast with the persona that she's trying to play during her streams, always trying to deceive her audience by pretending to be a very innocent and pure maiden.

This persona, unfortunately, isn't producing good numbers for her, as she's among the lowest performing Live-On VTubers of her generation, which is causing her an inferiority complex.

One fateful day, however, while streaming, she gets very inebriated off of drinking too much Strong Zero, the alcohol causing her severe sleepiness, and she falls asleep before she can turn off the stream, leaving her mic on and snoring and talking in her sleep across the entire night.

During this time, she reveals hints about her true unhinged personality and how she “goons” to other Live-On VTuber's models, which shock her audience.

The next day, Awayuki is awoken by her phone ringing, her realizing that she was being called by her manager. Her manager reveals to her that she had fallen asleep with her mic and stream still on the whole night, and asks her to immediately close them, before she accidentally reveals personal information across the internet.

Awayuki, very surprised and shocked by this development, does this but, at this point, it's too late, as everyone is now aware of Awayuki's true personality.

However, to her surprise, her accidental stream has also caused her to go viral on the internet and now she has garnered a new following.

Awayuki, later on, apologizes to her manager for her indecent accident, feeling very remorseful about what had happened and scared that she may lose her job at Live-On but, surprisingly, her manager seems very receptive to the fact that she had gone viral and is finally blooming in her career as a VTuber, even though it's entirely by accident.

Her manager encourages her to keep producing content for their company and, to Awayuki's surprise, also suggests that she embrace the new persona that the world is now aware of and double down on her raunchy attitude, since this seems to be what her new fans are fond of.

Awayuki is initially very reluctant to take that advice, her having worked months on building the pure and innocent feminine persona for so long only to have it all shatter in just one night but, after contemplating on the matter a bit, (and after receiving supportive comments and encouragement from her fellow coworkers that were surprised to discover this new side of her, especially that she was gooning to some of them in secret), she decides to follow her manager's suggestion and decides to “free herself” of the shackles she had set up, and instead become true to herself and be honest with her fans, at long last.

And so, with renewed vigor, she pops open another can of Strong Zero and starts a new stream where she's finally honest and direct with her followers.

Despite the occasional troll comment and some haters that dislike her change in character, the majority of her followers seem happy with the change and they affectionately call her new character “Shuwa-chan”.

Thus ends episode 1.

Now, there's a lot to unpack from that synopsis but, the basic gist of it can be understood just from the title of this show.

This is the classic girl is faking her persona to gather a following –> she's very unpopular for being fake –> something happens that reveals to the world of who she really is –> she goes viral –> she embraces her new fame and realizes that all that matters is to be honest with her fans and coworkers –> she becomes free and popular.

This is a telltale story that's been done and redone so many times in the past that it's not even worth talking about, anymore. The only original spin that this TV series did was that it's doing that from the context of VTubing, which is a relatively modern phenomenon.

But, then again, while the formula is very cliched and unoriginal, the reason it's still widely used even to this day is because it's very successful and popular. And, well, this is no exception.

I like this show for having an unhinged female protagonist that likes to drink alcohol and get loud during her streams.

Granted, the show likes to think that she is unhinged but, I hate to be the guy that says this, I've seen real life VTubers that are far more unhinged and unapologetic in how controversial they are than Awayuki could ever be.

But I get it. This is a TV series and they could only go so far in making her into a degenerate, before they would get in trouble for having a crazy main character that could be perceived as a bad role model for young people.

The fact that she is a lesbian is also gonna be a point of contention to a lot of people, I'm sure, but the show purposefully only marginally addresses that and then moves on, never actually focusing on it or making any big deal out of it.

Personally I have no qualms with a lesbian protagonist and I liked the fact that the show wasn't overbearing about it and just glanced over it, almost like saying “Yeah, that's the way she is”, but never bringing that into the forefront, since it's not conducive to advancing the plot.

I also loved the cast of the show.

All the girls in it were very lovely and fun to watch. Besides the third generation VTubers that I've already mentioned above, there's also Sei Utsuki who's very sexually forthcoming and likes to play eroge on her streams, Nekoma Hirune who plays comically bad video games and, later on, we also get introduced to the fledgling fourth generation that includes Alice Sōma who is very much obsessed over idolizing Awayuki, Eirai Sonokaze that is suspiciously very knowledgeable about vulgar animal trivia and Kaeru Yamatani, who's been so heavily traumatized by the adult world when doing job hunting that she likes to psychologically regress into a baby whenever she gets the chance to.

To be honest, all of these characters were so fun to watch and their antics made me smile more times than I can count.

The episodes that they get featured in were also very creative. Some of them feature the girls playing various games on stream including horror games, in another they are doing a pop quiz trivia kind of game, in another they are in a survival game in which two of them are traitors and are trying to sabotage the whole group and, of course, there's the final episode that's about doing a collaboration with a coworker that's always been against doing collabs at all but decided, out of the blue, to do one with Awayuki anyways for some (initially) unknown reason.

To put it simply, it was a lot of fun.

I loved the show for how colorful it was, how vibrant the entire cast was and, sincerely, how much it seemed to love the very idea of VTubing as an art form.

My only complaint is the fact that the show felt a bit directionless since there really wasn't any real overarching plot that this season seemed to want to follow. It was just various events in the lives of these VTubers and having them play off of one another. That's it.

I don't particularly mind that since, if you know anything about VTubing you know for a fact that the craft is intentionally aimless by design, but I can imagine that there are people who might take issue with that.

Overall, it was a fun watch. If there would ever be a second season of this show I'd love to follow up on it. I simply love these characters and I want to see what shenanigans they might get themselves involved with again.

5. Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf (Part 2)

And now we'll talk about the second half of this anime. If you're curious about my thoughts on the first half, feel free to read them over here.

To give a very quick summary of my thoughts on the first half, basically I thought it was a fine beginning to a very interesting story. I genuinely liked the setting and the impeccable world building of the show, although I didn't care much for the extremely slow romance between Holo and Lawrence.

This second half will continue with two new arcs.

The first is about a new character named Fermi Amati, who is a very influential and talented fish broker, who, by pure random chance, meets up with Lawrence and Holo. Holo tells him a fake story that the reason she travels with Lawrence despite them not being married or related in any way is that she owes Lawrence a huge amount of money, so now she's forced to accompany him until she pays off the debt.

Smitten by Holo's youthful charm and feminine appearance, Amati decides to take matters into his own hands and makes a contract with Lawrence in front of multiple people in the merchants guild in which he pledges that he will pay off all of Holo's debt to him, in exchange for her hand in marriage.

Seeing this as an easy opportunity to make money, as Lawrence has faith in Holo's loyalty to him and hoping that she would choose to still stick with him even after her fictional debt is payed off, Lawrence signs the contract.

However, later on, things take a turn for the worst when, due to an ugly misunderstanding between Holo and Lawrence, this loyalty is put to the test and Lawrence realizes that he may have legitimate cause for concern.

That's one of the arcs.

The other is about Lawrence and Holo traveling to a new, small and reclusive village named Tereo, in search for information with regards to Holo's hometown, only to discover that the priest there that may have been able to aid them in their travels is suspiciously missing and, in his place, is a young girl named Elsa Schtingheim that's clearly hiding something.

Worse, the town chief also seems to be harboring secrets that he wishes to keep from these two outsiders.

Lawrence and Holo will have to discover this particular town's mysteries, as well as get involved in the town's politics and also have to perform a miracle just to save the townspeople from being persecuted by the church for paganism, later on.

So yeah, that's the gist of this second half.

The world building from the first half still remains a strong point here as well.

The way the show depicts this world, its inhabitants, their beliefs and loyalties, the social structure and economics, and just the feel of the anime, is impressively done.

The show stands out for taking its time to flesh this world out to a high degree.

There's also a genuine air of mystery in this second half, since Lawrence will be forced to interact and also do business with some fairly peculiar individuals, one of which is a female alchemist with a particular knack for the supernatural and pagan stories.

So yeah, this second half is a bit more detached from reality than the first half, with more supernatural elements playing a role, although thankfully they are very much shrouded in mystery and are kept in the shadows.

There are a lot of questions that remained unanswered by the anime with regards to these elements, and I like how that is done to never reveal too much.

And, like I said for the first half of this show, but I absolutely love the rituals and the devotion that the people in this story have for what pretty much is this universe's version of Christianity. While I don't care much for religion in fictional stories, I genuinely believe that you have to have a heavy focus on it if your story has a medieval setting, something which so many fantasy anime, as of late, get wrong.

I can't say for certain but, to me at least, it seems that isekai anime try to avoid the topic of religion to stay as inclusive and politically correct as possible, to not roughen any feathers. The issue is, medieval Europe was a very Christian-focused historical setting, and omitting this particular aspect from their fictional universes can very genuinely make the world that they inhabit seem very hollow and soulless as a consequence.

This story, for better or for worse, doesn't do that and portrays religion as a key point in these people's lives, it being brought up constantly and highlighting the amount of influence that the Christian church has in this world, much in the way it had in real life medieval Europe.

I find that particularly realistic and, regardless of your personal thoughts on Christianity as a real life religion, it would be disingenuous to argue that it didn't play a heavy role in medieval times, pre-Renaissance era.

That and I still adore this show's focus on portraying merchant life and how to make (or lose) money in this world.

It explains things in a very approachable manner, so that anyone can follow the plot points made in each episode about various topics, such as supply and demand having impacts on prices. These things are still very elementary for anyone and, by modern day, they are considered common knowledge, but the show still shows how they can play key roles in various circumstances and make or break someone's career, especially if you're a merchant in that world.

My only complaint about the show is, again, the love story between Holo and Lawrence. I cannot emphasize enough how shallow and slow it develops.

Back when I wrote my opinion piece on the first half of this show, I made it a point to highlight how the romance wasn't grabbing me and I was hopeful that this second half will fix that. It did not.

The romance in this second half moves at pretty much the same glacial velocity that it did in the first one.

The interaction and dialogue between Holo and Lawrence feel specifically designed to act as teases, hinting very playfully that there might be something blooming between the two but never committing itself to any particular direction.

Worse, in this second half, the whole Amati arc left a very bad taste in my mouth, because it showed how brittle their relationship actually is and how easy it is to become undone over a pretty obvious misunderstanding.

Granted, the show tried to patch that by showing that Holo was still leaving clues behind for Lawrence to pick up on, because she still had somewhat of a faith in him that he will come to get her, but it still felt extremely shallow and unnecessary. I dislike when shows introduce a breakup moment in the story just for the sake of padding. Yes, they eventually did patch things up and correct the misunderstanding, but it just felt disingenuous, forced and, most importantly, cliched.

This left me severely disillusioned with regards to the quality of the romance in this story.

And, to make matters worse, this is the end of this season. Unless the studio decides to renew it for another season, the inconclusive state of the romance will remain permanent. The fact that this season had 25 episodes and yet it was still incapable of giving us a happy ending with regards to their relationship proves to me that this is just a bad TV series, at least as far as being a romance is concerned.

Some might say that the fact that the light novels are still ongoing to this day should have made it obvious that the romance was never going to conclude yet as there's still much much more story left to tell, but, even then, that doesn't make me feel any better, and in the off chance that this will never get renewed for another season, it won't change the fact that it was just a horrible tease that had no satisfying conclusion whatsoever.

But I digress.

Honestly, if you're merely wanting to watch this show for the romance, I will heavily suggest that you quit. There just isn't any here; or at least, none of any real substance.

Honestly, I haven't felt so disappointment in a romance anime not delivering since Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie, and while I will say that this is still far better than that atrocity of a TV show, by a long margin, it's still very shallow and dissatisfying.

However, with that said, if you plan on watching this anime for its world building or its topics of trading and focus on merchant life, then I will say that it is absolutely a worthwhile watch. Its medieval setting is very well fleshed out, the mysteries and supernatural elements add a nice spice to it and the characters are somewhat fun and quite intelligent and resourceful.

It's a nice break from the overload of high school anime that are everywhere nowadays and, at least compared to a lot of isekai shows, it does a better job at portraying a realistic universe with genuinely interesting arcs and thought provoking dilemmas.

So yes, I do feel like this show is worth a watch nonetheless.

Would I watch another season of it if it ever came out? I do think that I would. I just wouldn't watch it anymore for the romance aspects though, since I have since given up on that. But for the world building and the characters that inhabit it, I would gladly spend more time in this universe.

This is just part 1 of this ranking. For part 2, please click here.