Only 5 shows, this season.

Yeah, sad to say, I didn't have much time to watch anime this season, so I kept my list short. That and one of them is the continuation of a TV series that started last batch.

Hopefully, this will be enough to interest at least some of you since, even though this list is short, it has some good TV series in it.

As always, these are all viewable on Crunchyroll. This list is in the order of my most favorite shows to my least favorite of this lineup.

The List:

1. This Monster Wants to Eat Me

Let's look at a manga adaptation.

This was a very nice surprise to me. It didn't look like much, from its first episode, so I was very impressed by how much this story has evolved throughout this season.

The plot is about a young woman named Hinako, who's just a regular high school student that meets a strange girl named Shiori, that looks to be around the same age as her, who immediately befriends her for no obvious reasons.

Hinako has been suffering from depression ever since the rest of her family has died in a car accident where she was the sole survivor. Ever since then, she's been struggling with wishing for death, because of how painful it is to live without her loved ones around anymore, but, because of her having heard her family's last wish of them wanting her to stay alive, she cannot bring herself to commit suicide.

One day, after school, while waiting for her best friend, Miko, Hinako is lured into the ocean by a strange girl, which turns out to be a horrific monster that tries to eat her, only for her to be saved, at the last second, by Shiori.

Shiori has very long claws and a semi-mermaid form, very Jekyll-esque. She then reveals herself to the saved Hinako to be a Japanese mermaid, a specific type of yōkai (Japanese monster) that is incredibly powerful.

She then also reveals to Hinako that the reason she had approached her, earlier that day, was that yōkai like herself can smell from afar the blood of humans and apparently Hinako's blood smells very savory to them.

It is, for this reason, that that sea creature had just attacked her.

When Hinako tells Shiori that she actually wishes to die, Shiori responds with the fact that she intends to eat her herself, but only after she grows a bit more, so that she becomes even more delicious. In the meantime, Shiori pledges to protect Hinako from other yōkai.

That's the synopsis of episode 1.

Now, there's a lot to unpack here, but I'll start by saying that I think this is a horror manga, but just very toned down.

For example, Shiori's true monster form isn't revealed until much later (in episode 1, she was still more than half in her human form). Apparently, Shiori has the ability to change shape at will, her being able to appear however she desires.

Her true monster form, when it finally gets revealed, was refreshingly horrifying to look at.

I haven't seen such a monstrous design in a long time in anime, which left me very stunned and in awe at how much they could get away with, in her design.

Make no mistake: Shiori has an agenda of her own and is, for the most part, a horrible inhuman creature that lacks any semblance of human morals.

The contrast that this has with her normally beautiful human form is quite shocking, but adds to the delight of the show.

Oh and, before I go any further, I should mention that this is a yuri story (or, for those that don't recognize this Japanese term, it means it's a story involving the romantic relationship between female characters).

I usually hate to use the term lesbian in the context of anime, since that is such a politically charged word that almost has new connotations for the English crowd, but, in a sense, that's what this is: it's the lesbian relationship between Shiori and Hinako.

Granted, it took me a while to piece together the fact that this was even a romance at all, since the show tried so much to make it seem like their friendship was innocuous and innocent.

And, to an extent, it still is, but it gets a bit more physical than I expected towards the end.

But leaving this aside, it should come as no surprise that I'm a huge fan of this plot. I've always been enamored with love stories between humans and monsters, and this is one of those types of plots, thankfully.

Shiori is a surprisingly cunning little woman, that always manages to manipulate Hinako into agreeing with her. Usually this would be a major red flag for a romance, but I'm happy to say that this show is self-aware, and doesn't shy away from showing how damaging their relationship is to each other.

Moreover, while I'm not going to go into spoilers, I will say that the basis of their agreement has a lie somewhere in it. I'm not going to say what that lie is but it will play an important role, later on, one which almost completely fractures their relationship.

But leaving all of these things aside, I just liked the psychological angle that this show adopts: how it talks about depression, trauma, feelings of craving suicide and mental illness.

These are very mature subjects that I would normally very much fear to see in lesser shows, just because of how much damage they can cause if not done right, but here, they are handled quite tastefully.

It shows how much someone can suffer just because of a simple accident, how one's life can go upside down from a single event and how trauma can rear its ugly head even in the most innocuous of moments.

Honestly, big props to the creator of this manga! This story is very original and very well done, as far as I'm concerned. Then again, I'm by no means a mental health expert, so I can't speak with regards to inconsistencies or accuracy.

And the addition of the horror elements to this story was superbly done. When Shiori's past is revealed and her true form is shown, I was genuinely impressed at how incredibly vile looking the show portrayed her to be, and yet the story kept her personality the same and I genuinely liked how well these two elements meshed together.

Usually, I'm not a fan of horror anime, since I feel that they are usually just annoying and cheesy, but this one was done right. Shiori's mere presence on screen, when in her true form, was sending me shivers down my spine.

And the ending, while I can't say did everything I wanted, left me wanting to see more. I liked seeing the moments between Hinako and Shiori, I liked how deception between them almost broke their bond with each other but they found a way to still make it work, and I like how otherworldly Shiori's personality turns out to be, her being incapable of understanding humans and human emotions but eventually having to learn them, when forced to by circumstances.

This was simply a masterpiece, in all shapes and sizes.

This might genuinely be the first horror manga I've seen that I genuinely find to be well done. It's truly scary, psychological, intelligent, symbolic and mature, has deep and introspective characters that learn to grow together and is very much an amazing experience, all around.

I doubt that this will ever get a second season, but I will definitely be watching it if one does get approved.

2. Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right

I'm not gonna lie, I didn't expect much out of this series.

This is a manga adaptation that's about the high school life of a vampire which, in essence, sounded like a very terrible idea to me.

Generally, I'm a big fan of anime about vampires, since I feel like they are the most imaginative and fun to watch (i.e. anime like Mayonaka Punch, Call of the Night, Hellsing, Rosario+Vampire and others). The only one that broke that rule was Seraph of the End, which was just recycled shounen tropes packed into two seasons, but even that had some amount of suspense to it.

Now comes this one about high school, and I was very skeptical I would like it. I thought from its synopsis on Crunchyroll that it might become a romance TV series at some point (spoilers: it didn't), but I didn't have high hopes for it.

Well, it turned out that it was just as good as I had hoped minus the romance part.

The story is about the high school life of a little vampire girl named Luna Ishikawa.

In this world, all sorts of mythical creatures and monsters can attend school (although the show only focuses on Luna as the only monster from her school).

She's popular in her school because of how mysterious and noble she appears to be, with everyone always admiring her from a distance. However, she doesn't have any close friends.

One day, she gets assigned cleaning duty with her classmate, an ordinary guy called Otori, and they remain behind to do the job.

While doing so, Otori notices that Ishikawa is constantly snaking away, which leads him to believe that she is hungry. When confronted about this, it's revealed that Ishikawa, being a vampire, needs to drink human blood to satiate her hunger but is actually bad at sucking it, since she doesn't have anyone to practice on and she's been trying to keep this a secret, since it might ruin her image of a cool vampire that her peers have of her.

Realizing the conundrum she is in, Otori, being the nice and helpful guy that he is, offers her to practice sucking blood on his arm, which Ishikawa gladly takes him up on.

However, since she is unskilled at doing this, she eventually sucks so much blood from him that he faints.

Thankfully, he recovers and a happy Luna asks him whether they can continue practicing in secret because his blood tastes so good, to which Otori agrees.

Later on, during a lunch break when the two are on the school building, Otori advises Ishikawa to take big bites from his arm, instead of nibbling, so that she can suck more efficiently. Afterwards, it's also revealed that when she drinks blood, Ishikawa can fly with her retractable wings.

That's the gist of episode 1.

OK, so right off the bat, I know I already said this but, just to drive the point home, this was not a romance anime, as I expected it would be. Or, maybe the show thinks that it is, but, to me at least, the relationship between Ishikawa and Otori can, for the most part, be described as a parental one, in which Otori acts as a caring mother and Ishikawa acts like his child, always sucking blood from him the same way that a child would suck milk from her mother.

That's not an analogy I came up with, the show constantly makes this joke: treating Otori like a mother figure for Ishikawa.

In a sense, this is pretty fitting since Ishikawa, in the show, has two forms: her usual “cool vampire” form in which she's drawn with full details on her body and of a regular height for someone of her age and her chibi form which is just a very tiny cartoony vampire girl that is the size of a human baby.

The show likes to infantilize Ishikawa this way when she's in her chibi form, treating her as being needy, emotional and very vulnerable, as well as someone that gets lost a lot.

It's the same technique that's used in other anime to make a particular character appear cute and dependent of others, which is supposed to incite feelings of attachment from the audience.

And I'll be damned, it works.

Every episode, whenever I'd catch of glimpse of chibi Ishikawa, I'd go “Awww” like a mindless animal that just saw something incredibly cute in the wild, making me want to affectionately hug her.

It's a very insidious form of manipulation, one that the Japanese are known of employing in their anime, but it simply works and is highly effective.

But, if you're reading this and thinking to yourself that this is just a simple moe-blob anime that relies on the cute factor of the protagonist to stay afloat, I'm happy to announce that this isn't the case. There's more to it than that.

The show is also very creative, which I was hoping would be the case.

For example, it's revealed that Ishikawa, being a vampire and all, doesn't show up in photographs (she doesn't even cast a shadow in real life, either). Because of this, there aren't many ways that you can capture her presence easily, but due to Otori's creativity, he finds a way to do it. I won't spoil how he did it, I'll just say that he has found an ingenious way of doing so.

Also, the blood sucking moments in the show were surprisingly wholesome for me. I thought it could very well become lewd or sexual in some way, but the show had the restraint of not going there, instead making the moments very clean and fulfilling to the soul. I don't know what it is about, but they really did capture the sense of a baby sucking milk from their mother when Ishikawa was sucking blood. Maybe it's because of the fact that they usually portray her in her chibi form when she's sucking.

It's so difficult to pin down, but it just worked.

At other times, during a festival organized by the school, it all looked like it was simply going to repeat the whole festivities thing which, I'll be honest, I've seen done to death in high school anime before but, because this show is creative, it ended in a way that only a show about vampires, could. I won't spoil it, but it was magnificently done, and it made me so glad that this worked in the way that it did.

This made me realize: why did I like the show so much? What's it about that is so well executed that it worked, when so many other high school anime fail for me?

The answer is twofold: one, the moe aspect of this show. It's just cute, endearing even. I cannot look at chibi Ishikawa for a second and tell you “I hate this show” without feeling like I'm a very bad person. Yeah, it's emotional manipulation, at the end of the day, but I just like watching the cuteness simply for cuteness' sake.

The second, and more important aspect is: all the characters are likeable. This isn't to say that they are well written or complex in any way (they just aren't), but they are likeable. I was thinking that Otori will end up becoming just a shallow protagonist, given that his only role was to help Ishikawa with his practicing with her, but nope, it's later shown that he is just that kind of guy: the kind that doesn't just want to help Ishikawa, but help anyone in need. He likes to dedicate time for others and try to sort other people's problems for them, even to a fault. The show recognizes this as an issue and doesn't try to sidestep it.

Ishikawa's friends are also friendly and notable, them always trying to do right by her and trying to take care of her when she needs it, which I also found enjoyable.

And the ending: it was so fun. I will say Otori got a nice present from Ishikawa, one that only her could give to him. It wasn't romantic, but it was still a very nice sign of their friendship having blossomed, and grown.

Overall, I loved all of these characters. I loved Otori, Ishikawa, Sakuma, Kusunogi, Ishikawa's parents, the school principal, all of them. It was just a fun world to inhabit and, by the end, I genuinely felt like I had been part of their lives.

It was a fun world, a colorful world, an imaginative world and one that had me saying “I want more of this” but also, if a new season won't get greenlit, then I can still say “I'm satisfied with just this much”. It never left me being disappointed, all the episodes left me happy and the characters were simply fun to be around.

This world, as fuzzy and cartoony as it was, was a fun one to be a part of. I'm very much glad that this show didn't break the trend of vampire anime being good because, honestly, I would have hated to be disappointed by this one. Thankfully, this wasn't the case.

3. GNOSIA (First half)

I'll start this off by saying that this anime is based off of a video game with the same name, that originally came out in 2019 on the PS Vita.

It later got ported to other, more contemporary consoles as well, and for Windows too.

I'm usually a fan of visual novel adaptations, because sometimes they are geared towards adults and so the stories usually have more mature undertones to them, which I definitely like.

This, however, doesn't feel like one of those adults-only kind of games.

But before I go any further, let's talk about the first episode.

The episode starts out with a young man named Yuri, being woken from a capsule by a woman named Setsu.

Yuri has been unconscious for some time, since the cruise ship that they are currently on has departed from the planet. He is also amnesiac.

Setsu now begins to explain to Yuri the details of what has happened while he was unconscious.

Apparently, their ship, called the DQO, has departed from the planet Liu-An, who was being ravaged by the Gnosia. Gnosia is a disease that makes people want to kill non-infected individuals, and compels them to lie to appear innocent at all times.

The ship's AI computer, LeVi, detected that one of the passengers, on board, is also a Gnosia infected, and is lying to appear as non-infected. Because of technological limitations, the computer cannot determine exactly which one of the passengers is infected, at least not until the infected one is put into cryogenic sleep.

Due to the current state of affairs, and since the ship is programmed to self-destruct if they don't put the Gnosia infected passenger into cold sleep soon, Setsu explains that all the passengers on board will have to hold meetings to determine who the infected person is.

As they finally arrive in the meeting room, Yuri gets to meet these other passengers: a very outgoing and seductive young woman named SQ, a highly intelligent organism named Racio, and a silent introvert named Jina.

When they start the meeting, Racio reveals that she immediately suspects Yuri for being the infected, since it's very “convenient” for him to have amnesia in the midst of all of this.

However, after Yuri defends his position, this ends up going against her when the passengers of the ship decide to vote who to put to cold sleep. The majority vote is that Racio will be put into cold sleep.

After doing so, the ship AI confirms that it was not Racio who was the one infected, so they have to continue having more meetings to decide to choose a different passenger, next.

However, before they could have their next meeting, the ship is programmed to do a warp jump, so they have to each return to their rooms. During this jump, the Gnosia infected will have free reign over the ship while everyone else will be unconscious, and will be able to kill one other passenger.

Yuri struggles to think about this, wondering who he should vote for, next.

But before the warp jump can take place, SQ enters Yuri's room, where it's revealed that she wants to talk with him.

After having a bit of small talk amongst themselves, the warp jump takes place and Yuri wakes up after it in his room.

During the jump, it appears that Jina was the one that was killed by the Gnosia.

Now, it's just Yuri, SQ and Setsu who are left. Yuri is warned that, if there will become a point when there will be the same number of Gnosia infected people as uninfected people on the ship (after leaving out the ones put to cold sleep) the Gnosia will immediately take over.

Knowing this, Yuri knows this is his last chance at saving the ship: if he chooses wrong between Setsu and SQ, he will die, murdered by whoever is the Gnosia.

Feeling the pressure, and also feeling that there's something that Setsu is hiding, Yuri decides to vote for Setsu to be put into cold sleep.

Knowing that these are the rules they have agreed on, Setsu laments that she was not able to sway Yuri on her side.

Just as she is about to enter her cryo-pod, Setsu gives Yuri a strange silver key that seemingly immediately enters his body.

After that, once she is put to sleep, SQ reveals herself to be the real Gnosia, and now she is alone with Yuri. It's at this point that Yuri realizes that he was mistaken for voting Setsu but, it's too late, and gets murdered by SQ.

However, immediately after that, Yuri finds himself back at the beginning, waking up in the same capsule as from the start of the episode, him meeting Setsu a second time.

Thus ends episode 1.

Now, there's a lot of things I like about this show.

The first, and most important thing, is that I like that Yuri makes mistakes in the beginning but, as the show progresses, he learns from them.

Much like the video game, the more you play it, the better you get at it.

Yuri is not a genius, by any means. He is just another random guy who wakes up one day, is put in front of an insane scenario in which he's forced to partake in, knowing that if he makes just one wrong move along the way, he risks either being put into cryo-sleep himself by the other ship mates, or he ends up getting killed by the Gnosia (or something else entirely, as will become apparent later on).

And yes, Yuri will make mistakes along the way. And sometimes, those mistakes will cost him, dearly.

But I just like how well the plot is handled.

I'll just put out a disclaimer now: I did not play the game that this is based off of.

However, it definitely felt to me that this was inspired by a werewolf video game (and I realized this before I looked it up).

The ideas and mechanics behind the plot are very rigid, reminding me of games like Among Us.

But, of course, this is an anime, not a video game; and while it is inspired by a video game, the plot can only be linear. A huge part of the enjoyment of this experience, which is the ability to vote for who you think might be the Gnosia, is removed from here, since this is a linear non-interactive experience.

As such, I was worried that this show might become boring, once all the rules of the game are revealed and the audience can then just use logical thinking to sus out who the Gnosia actually is, each episode.

But, surprisingly, this did not happen. Instead, each new episode would introduce new characters, new rules, more stuff that Yuri has to cope with, all while learning to be better at spotting lies.

And, most importantly, I liked that each character in this show gets fleshed out with important backstory as the story moves on.

Had the show only focused on the rules of the game and trying to sus out who's the Gnosia and who isn't, I'm scared that it would have flopped, big time.

But, thankfully, this never happened. Instead, the show knew when to talk about the game, when to talk about Yuri, and when to talk about other characters as well.

There are some really interesting characters, like an alien looking guy named Shigemichi, a cowboy dressed captain named Jonas, a mute young woman named Kukrushka, a human-cat hybrid called Chipie and so much more.

Oh and I didn't even talk about the talking dolphin in this show. Yes, there's a talking dolphin that will be part of the passengers.

There's a lot of good stuff in this, and I really love the colorful cast of characters and the rich sci fi setting in which, so many bizarre things can end up happening.

The plot twists that we get are very hard to predict, which always keeps you on edge. And sometimes, catastrophes happen that aren't even related to the Gnosia at all.

In the current age when most anime are fantasy, I really miss the sci-fi ones. This isn't to say that sci-fi is more interesting than fantasy, but I feel like the current anime landscape is oversaturated with fantasy (and the current isekai craze didn't help matters, either).

Granted, there are some things that I dislike about the show too: like how the rigid rules behind the game keep reminding me that this was originally meant to be played by a human player.

And by that I mean, there's really no reason why certain restrictions have to be in place, other than because the game just needs them to be there. Stuff like, why can the Gnosia only kill exactly one non-infected person during the warp jumps, why can't the Gnosia vote each other out to confuse the others, why can't passengers who were placed into cold sleep be taken back out once it's confirmed that they weren't the Gnosia (at one point, this even happens for entirely different reasons, so this is possible), why can't there be loops where the starting number of Gnosia is already equal to the number of non-infected passengers and so they can take over immediately? Or, for that matter, why can't there be loops when there just so happens to not be any Gnosia on board at all?

But yeah, I get it, there's some things that just can't be helped.

That's inevitable.

Overall, there's clearly a lot of passion put into this anime though. The art style is very polished, the music is definitely well done, the plot twists are unpredictable, the character development is prominent and there's even romance sideplots that keep things fresh. Hell, I read online that even players of the game were surprised by certain plot twists from the anime.

Clearly a lot of time and effort went into making this piece of art, and I'm all for it. I cannot say that their efforts went unappreciated.

If you really like this type of stories, then I highly suggest you check this out. It is so worth your time.

4. My Friend's Little Sister Has It In for Me!

It's probably best if I keep my review of this show short.

There's not a lot of reasons for why this is, mainly just that this did not interest me a lot.

The story is about a high school boy named Akiteru Ooboshi (or just Aki), who is a young man obsessed with being efficient in life.

He tries his best to follow the shortest possible routes to success in his life, and is also very flexible when it comes to following others' rules, sometimes even skirting the rules entirely if doing so fits with his own goals.

He is friends with a classmate of his called Ozuma Kohinata, who is a very talented programmer and whom he respects greatly.

Akiteru is actually the leader of a video game development group called the 5th Floor Alliance because, as it turns out, all the people working on this indie game just so happen to live in the same country, in the same city, in the same building and on the same floor (the 5th floor). It's on that specific floor where Akiteru and Ozuma also live, as neighbors.

There are also other members on that floor that are also involved in Akiteru's development group but, for now, I'll omit talking about them.

The game they have developed has garnered quite a following in Japan and they are praised as being highly talented despite still being in high school.

Akiteru also has his own nemesis: Ozuma's younger sister, a girl named Iroha who has a very disciplined and orderly personality at school but is, in fact, a childish troublemaker that loves to tease Akiteru while at home.

A running gag between Akiteru and Iroha is that Iroha likes to make fun of Aki's inexperience in love, and how she may have feelings for him, only to do a U turn at the last second, and reveal that she's just playing a prank on him, at his own expense. This always infuriates him.

One day, while the two are bickering amongst each other, Aki receives a phone call from his uncle, who's the CEO of a well established video game company in Japan and who is aware of Aki's success as the director of his team's indie game, and he invites Aki to dinner at a restaurant, but only after Aki confirms that he is not in any romantic relationship with anyone yet, to him.

When the day of their meeting comes, his uncle makes Aki an offer: he will put in a good word for him at his company, to make it likelier that Aki will be hired there after he'll finish high school, if Aki agrees to act as his daughter's girlfriend until they'll graduate. His daughter, Mashiro Tsukinomori, who is Aki's cousin and someone he was very good friends with back when they were kids, has recently moved schools and will now be Aki's classmate in the future, and her dad wants to make sure that other boys will not try to court her, so he wants Aki to act as her boyfriend to keep them away from her.

Aki, always being obsessed with efficiency, takes his uncle up on the offer and agrees to pretend to be Mashiro's boyfriend.

However, things might not go so well when, due to a misunderstanding in which he walked in on Mashiro while she was in the bathroom, Mashiro thinks that Aki is a pervert and has a severe dislike towards him.

Thus ends episode 1.

Yes, this is a love triangle anime, in which Aki will have to pretend to be his cousin's boyfriend, while also trying to handle the childish antics of Iroha on the side.

Or at least, that's what the show will have you think.

In reality, this is barely a rom-com at all. It's just a regular high school slice of life where the romance is set aside and, instead, it's just about the drama that the characters partake in.

Honestly, I liked the beginning and I was hoping that the show would cover the life of a high school video game development group, because anime has seldom focused on these kinds of things.

And, it makes you think that's the direction it's going to be but, in reality, it's just about Aki's high school life, not his professional life.

Like, how difficult it is for Aki to make friends with Mashiro, after she thinks of him as being a pervert, how he wants her to make friends with everyone, how he wants to focus on his tasks as group leader but other issues make things difficult, like how a drama club at his school are about to be disbanded and he has to help them because something something, one of his group's members is part of it.

Basically, if you're still following, it's not about the video game development process, it's just high school drama.

And, frankly, I just couldn't bring myself to care.

There's nothing particularly wrong about high school drama, per se, but I feel like the plot should really be about something a bit more than this, since it promised that Aki was also the leader of an indie game group.

I felt like the story just kept focusing on things that have very little merit, instead of the things that could actually be interesting.

And as for the romance aspect of the show....it's also very underwhelming.

For starters, I generally am forgiving of incestuous relationships in anime because I feel like they have potential for very good drama, when done right, but this show doesn't even acknowledge that Mashiro and Aki are related at all.

I mean sure, it mentions that Mashiro is Aki's cousin in passing, but they never say “Hey, we're actually related. Maybe we shouldn't be doing this, after all?”. Some might say that since they are only pretending to be a couple, that's going to be fine, but then, later on, the show decides to throw that out the window and then try to take their relationship seriously.

This is like the show trying to have its cake and eat it too. Are you actually treating this whole incestuous thing seriously or aren't you? Because, if you are going to take it seriously, you should probably address the elephant in the room and actually talk about it.

Anime that want to have incest in them but just conveniently never address this issue are really bothering me, since that's actually a good premise for an interesting story that can have thought provoking questions behind it, but the show is too scared to even touch this idea with a ten foot pole and suddenly forgets that these two characters are related at all.

But then, there's Mashiro herself: she's just a stereotypical tsundere. She starts off by disliking Aki because of a complete misunderstanding, but then slowly, throughout the show's run, warms up to him and becomes more and more interested in him.

Tsundere have existed in anime for like decades, at this point. I just want something more interesting done with this stereotype. Vanilla tsundere is overdone.

Akiteru, for his part, is the stereotypical efficiency nut that doesn't have any qualms about breaking rules, as long as it suits him. At some points, he ends up actually lying to others' faces, just so he can manipulate them into doing what he wants. Sure, he has a good heart and has no ill intentions, but it's still underhanded when he does it.

The only character I liked was Iroha. She turns out to be a bit more interesting in the show than I expected, but she doesn't get enough screen time, in my opinion.

Again, the show focuses a lot on Aki's relationships with Iroha and Mashiro but, after seeing a lot of love triangles in other anime done much better, it just pales in comparison.

A show, similar to this that I've watched on Crunchyroll a year ago was a show called Love Is Indivisible by Twins, another anime light novel adaptation that's a slice of life high school TV series, but done much better. You can read about my thoughts on it here.

That show, for all its faults, was at least more entertaining and actually compelling with its love story, had a slow romance development but actually got somewhere.

Like, if you're actually going to do a love triangle story, at least commit to the bit and do something with it, reach a conclusion! If not for the audience reading your story, at least for the sake of the characters in your story.

I don't want to read about how Akiteru solves his school's drama club disbandment problems, I want to read about his love life with the two girls! But the show doesn't commit to either, it tries to focus on both at the same time, only doing half as good a job for each, ultimately doing a disservice to both.

This is my problem with romance high school anime in general: they focus too much on the high school aspect and too little on the romance.

And then, at the end, when at least some kind of conclusion has to be drawn in the sand, the show then does a 180 degree turn and goes literally back to the status quo being like Just kidding, there's no actual romance here. You'll have to wait for season 2 for that.

Blow me!

Granted, Love Is Indivisible by Twins also had a very unsatisfying ending as well, but at least that had more focus towards the romance aspect throughout the middle of the runtime. That and, at least Jun, in that show, ended up being slapped in the face (which was greatly satisfying for me). The protagonist here didn't get slapped, so there was nothing satisfying about this one.

My only hope is that the light novels for this were actually much better than how the anime adaptation was. Maybe they are, I don't know. I never read them. This review is strictly for the anime, but the anime itself sucked.

Did this show have more plot than Li'l Miss Vampire Can't Suck Right? Yes, it definitely did. But the reason I liked that show more than this one is that, ultimately, that show was actually fun to watch. It clearly had passion, creativity behind it. I genuinely liked how they integrated the supernatural elements into its high school setting. And even if it didn't have all of that, the show was still hundreds of times more entertaining just because of the vampire lead who was so cute to watch.

This show didn't have any of those, so it was relying on a good story to fall back on. But it didn't have that either.

I'm done. On to the next one.

5. Tougen Anki: Legend of the Cursed Blood (second half)

This will be my review of the second half of this TV series (of its first season). If you wish to read about my thoughts on the first half, you can check them out here.

This show...really went sideways with this second half.

There were some things I liked about it, don't get me wrong. This isn't like the worst TV series I've seen in a while, but it was below average when it comes to delivery.

If you read what I thought about this show during its first half, you'd know that, even back then, I didn't like it very much.

It had good ideas, an interesting execution, and a semi-fleshed out plot but, all things considered, it was still a mediocre action TV series with subpar character development, half baked characters and with a very predictable sequence of events that led me to dislike it quite a bit.

Here, in this second half, not much has changed except that there's even less character development.

After the events of the first half, our team of Oni trainees, along with their teacher, decide to travel to Kyoto, for some reason, wearing undercover clothes to disguise themselves, since the oni-hating Momotaro agency now know how they look like.

In the process of visiting the new city, one of them ends up being forced to use his Oni powers in the daylight to save a little girl from being run over, exposing that they are there.

This doesn't go unnoticed by the local Momotaro agency in Kyoto, who decides to look into these things, further.

That's pretty much the gist of the first episode of this second half.

There's a bit more to talk about, but that is the most important information you need to be aware of.

There's also another Momotaro character named Shinya Momoiwa and Mikado Momodera that get introduced here, that will play a bigger roles as the antagonists of this second half, but I won't go into details about what their involvement will entail.

Long story short, there's gonna be a bit of deception going on behind the scenes in which the Oni, unsurprisingly, will get framed for a lot of devastating incidents in which a significant number of civilians will die.

First, I'll talk about what I liked about this second half.

The main thing that I liked in this part of the story is the introduction of this Mikado guy. He is, for all intents and purposes, a very strong and gifted Momotaro that has a lot of power and is extremely skilled in combat but, more importantly, he is a rational and kind person who wishes to make justice into the world, and doesn't simply hate all Oni just because he's a Momotaro.

That, to me, was a nice addition to this world.

I liked to see that not all Momotaro characters are just some combat driven lunatics that are controlled for their blood lust against the Oni and have at least a little bit of depth to them.

As such, this was the one and only thing about this second half, apart from the combat and action sequences, that I genuinely liked.

During this second half, a fledgling friendship will blossom between a Momotaro and an Oni. That's the crux of it.

And....well, it did play a big role, but not in the way I hoped it would.

But before I get to that, I'll talk a bit about the combat in this series.

Much like in the first half, the combat and techniques that the characters use to defend and attack are awesome. I love seeing the blood techniques being used, how they are countered by the Momotaro agency. I liked the creativity behind the powers of both the Oni and the Momotaro, and I liked that they now added reconnaissance abilities for this as well.

Pretty much everything involving the strength and abilities of the characters and anything pertaining to the action sequences, I liked.

The fight scenes were cool, significantly long and well done and well animated, which made me sufficiently happy.

Now, let's talk about the things I didn't like about this show.

And boy, there's a LOT to talk about.

I'll start with the plot: it's cliched as fuck.

I won't go into spoilers but, I'll just say, this turns into the whole cliche of two friends who believe in each other but who have their relationship put to the test, because an evil third party decides to deceive one of them and make them turn against each other.

I'm not going to say much more than this but, again, this is the whole plot point of 'Who are the real monsters, here?', in which the Momotaro Agency (or, in this case, just one person from this agency) becomes unscrupulous and ends up targeting and killing civilians in order to further their plans against the Oni.

This whole spiel about humans being more evil than the literal Oni has already been done in the first half of this season, so seeing it be done again in the second half as well felt both surprising and unwelcome.

I mean, can't you get a bit more creative than this?

Mikado being introduced kind of offset this a bit, since the plot added some dimension to the agency, thanks to him alone.

But outside of this, it's the same recycled crap all over again: the Oni are framed for doing something truly despicable, the Momotaro confront them and try to exterminate them, fighting ensues between them and the Oni win and then the whole truth gets exposed.

It's the same formula from the first half (except this time there's also a framing element to it), simply repeated. Same candy, with the same taste, just a different color.

And I figure that the whole plot involving the true friendship between our main characters being put to the test was surprisingly badly done this time around.

Had this plot involved characters that were romantically involved with each other, I feel like it would have been highly more effective and entertaining.

Or, at the very least, their friendship should have been even more pronounced and significantly more fleshed out. The fact is that a Momotaro and an Oni have only known each other for a single night, literally, and now they trust each other so much that one cannot even fathom the thought that the other could be evil?

How much trust can you put in someone you've only met during a single night?

I know this seems like a nitpick, but the whole show tries to make this look like a big deal, like the two are genuinely meant to be friends for the rest of eternity, just because they have this weird chemistry between them that's very difficult to fake. And when the Oni is framed as having done these horrible things to civilians, the break-up moment between them is supposed to be stomach churning.

This is, for all intents and purposes, complete bullshit.

There were times in which I was literally siding with the bad guy, mentally asking that specific Momotaro how gullible he can be. I mean, sure, the Oni was being framed for having done all these terrible things but, if the plot had actual depth to it, how much more interesting could it have been if the Oni really was the evil culprit behind those murders?

Or, better yet, what if this second half was more about morally ambiguous decisions, like the righteous Momotaro trying to come to terms with the fact that he's a Momotaro and has a duty to perform to his agency, in which he has to kill Oni, even though they might not be inherently evil per se. Basically, he'd have to make a decision about fulfilling his duty as a Momotaro or following his own personal moral principles.

How much cooler of a plot would that have been?

But no, it's the cliched recycled boring plot of “Oni are actually good and there are some rotten apples within the Momotaro agency that are spoiling the whole bunch”, kind of thing.

It feels like the show is only interested in having straw-man arguments about racism and nothing else, at the expense of so much potential.

But leaving aside the plot, let's talk about some logical inconsistencies in this show.

The show really tries to portray that there's this inherent difference between Oni characters and the Momotaro, even though I still don't understand the argument. Like, both of them have incredible powers at their disposal. What's even the point of trying to differentiate between the two?

The only thing that sets them apart is the fact that the Oni characters have horns on their heads (which they can easily hide, so that barely even counts) and the fact that all their abilities are blood-based.

Other than this, the simple fact that there's even a conflict between these two parties feels like just forced conflicts for the sake of forced conflicts.

I really find it hard to believe that the Momotaro would have trouble accepting a ceasefire with such powerful beings, especially given how much potential for combat Oni seem to have.

Then, there's the less obvious stuff.

Some abilities that Oni have seem to make literally no sense. At one point, a particular character creates a giant wave of blood to engulf a Momotaro enemy in it, to defeat him, so much bood that they cannot possibly have contained all of it in their body. The human body can only house around 5 litres of blood, not nearly enough to create a giant wave of it.

Then, there are points in which characters should very easily have died from the amount of trauma they took during battle; I maybe can tolerate at least a little bit of this happening to the Oni (since, you know, Oni are purely fictional creatures and you can make up any rule regarding their bodies), but then you have Momotaro, who are supposed to be regular humans, that take so much damage that they should have easily died from it, but still don't. The Momotaro sometimes are damage sponges in this show, surviving insane amounts of blunt force trauma that would have normally caused multiple fractures in normal humans in reality, if not immediate death.

Then, there's a case in which a specific Momotaro character just gets a single bleeding wound on his neck and that's it, he's dead. Him, simply for not being a combat person, just died from a single wound in the neck, just like that.

It's very inconsistent.

Another time, an Oni character literally gets his foot blown off one of his legs and he does not bleed out immediately, but is still able to function normally (but don't worry, his leg will be just fine later on, for some reason).

Then, another time, a regular human character ends up in a car crash, just because his vision gets altered by someone's powers that replaces what he should see with what they're seeing, effectively blinding them while they're driving the car. That made me chuckle, I'm not gonna lie.

Here's the thing: the fact that you would somehow get blinded in your eyes while driving doesn't necessarily mean you'll crash the car. Most drivers have an instinctual sense on how they should move their foot to hit the brakes of the car and stop it before they crash. The fact that he died like that made no sense to me.

Or how about when a character walks right into an explosive trap and survives it without even a scratch, just because they were “careful” and “saw it coming”. How does that work? I don't know.

Then, there's the action sequences themselves: don't get me wrong, they are cool, but they don't make sense at all. Like, a character can just stay on the side of a building just by running, somehow defying gravity, or how they can dodge a continuous rain of bullets aimed directly at them just by running sideways.

Yeah, apparently, running in this show makes you invincible.

This is why I hate guns in fiction. They are usually portrayed as being so much more finicky than how they really are. I'm not going to pretend that I know how it is to shoot another person, but I don't feel like it would be that hard to do that while they are running.

This is literally just Stormtrooper aiming, in anime form.

You get the idea.

I don't wanna harp on these inconsistencies for too much, since, like I said, the show is cool and it has flashy fights and cool abilities but damn, the moment you apply even the slightest bit of logic to it, it falls apart so quickly, it's incredible.

Or, and this is my last complaint, I promise, how that particular Momotaro has so much blind trust in the Oni despite having known him for just a single night, but then, the moment he sees the Oni at the scene of a tragedy, he loses all hope and simply refuses to trust literally anything the Oni has to say, not even refusing to hear him out.

That was so contrived and amateurish, that it was pulling me out of the experience. The simple fact that you had incredible blind faith in someone you barely know but, after all of that, you slingshot into the opposite direction and don't even wanna hear them out to see how they defend themselves is unbelievably contrived, on all grounds. There's literally no middle ground when it comes to that Momotaro, it's either he's in full trust mode of the Oni or in complete distrust mode. There is no in-between.

I just can't anymore.

This show was just too ridiculous. I watched it for the cool powers that the characters had but even I couldn't take it anymore, after a certain point.

After watching intelligent shows from this batch like This Monster Wants to Eat Me and GNOSIA, that had so much more logic and forethought put into them, this show just looked like it was written by a high schooler.

Or, at most, someone that's studying writing in college.

This isn't to say that I think that the person who wrote this plot is necessarily from those age groups, but it's at least clear to me that he's targeting the high schooler demographic with this.

In fact, I think even teenagers would find some of the plot points in this show to be extremely dumb, but they are more likely to forgive it, just because the action is cool.

For me, as an adult, it felt jarring. I just couldn't get into the plot. It felt contrived, boring, simplistic and very much predictable.

The only good thing I can say about this show is that, after last season when I watched Kaiju No. 8, I will at least say that this show is better than that. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying it's more intelligent than Kaiju No. 8. All I'm saying is that it's more entertaining than Kaiju No. 8.

Kaiju No. 8 was worse, to a fault, because, unlike this show, it targeted adults as its main demographic (at least, I think it did). Due to this, it had to be more intelligent and add extremely boring side arcs to the story, involving military command structure, power struggles and disagreements between the humans, cadets that are trying to reach new heights and are constantly challeging the status quo, all things that sound really cool on paper and can make for a good story, but in reality just slowed everything down to a crawl and took away time from the fight sequences.

This show, even though it's way more dumb than Kaiju No. 8 on pretty much any level, is at least fun to watch (at least for the fight scenes). When the fight scenes happen, which isn't very often sadly, but when they happen they are very much fun to watch seeing how they play out, what abilities a specific Oni or Momotaro have and how creatively they get to use it.

Granted, none of the fights are surprising, you can see the outcome of the fight from a mile away, but at least they are entertaining to watch. Kaiju No. 8 also had predictable fights too, but they were boring to look at, which made that even worse of a bargain.

So yeah, this show had cooler fights than Kaiju No. 8. That's all I'll say.

The fact that I got more enjoyment out of this show than I did for Kaiju, even though Kaiju was supposed to be more up my alley since it was meant for adults, isn't a complement towards this show, as much as it is an insult for Kaiju No. 8. It's just that bad.

But aside from this? I'm officially dropping this show. I cannot fathom why they chose to adapt 24 episodes for this show, when there are many, so much better written stories out there, that deserve these many resources instead.

If this will ever get a second season, I'm not watching. I'm done. It's just too dumb for me. I can easily see someone that's younger that can get into it, but for me, personally, it just insults my intelligence on a level that is unforgivable (and no, this isn't me saying that younger people are dumber than older ones, I'm just saying that they are usually more tolerant of dumb things than older people).