AnimeZone

Yeah, this season's anime listing was pretty baren, all things considered.

Honestly, I've looked at most of the shows this season and I only selected a couple of handful to watch for myself. Most of the stuff I watched was on Crunchyroll, which is to be expected. There was only one show I watched on HiDive, which was The Executioner and her way of life.

Leaving aside the fact that HiDive pulled a dick move on me very recently and stopped servicing Romanian customers (after like an entire year where they've streamed to Romania and allowed subscriptions from Romanian customers), The Executioner and her way of life was not as great as I hoped it would be, with the finale ending in a very anticlimactic ending that, admittedly, did make me want more but also it made me think that I've genuinely lost my time watching the show, as very little progress was made plotwise.

But, with that said, The Executioner and her way of life did have a simple style of narration that hooked me up and left me wanting to constantly see what the next episode had in store for its viewers. The cliffhangers it would always end its episodes on always left me longing for more and the world building was half decent, creating a world that felt genuinely believable but also not dwelling too much on its presentation and simply allowing the world to exist in the background and presenting the audience with the bare minimum of information to understand the plot points of the current episode.

I liked this. Even though I consider this show to be mediocre, at best, it did provide me with sufficient entertainment each episode to make me feel satisfied for the week I watched it in and left me thinking that I was not disappointed for having watched the show.

Besides this odd entry, the other shows I've consumed were all available in Romania on Crunchyroll. They were: Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost, The Dawn of the Witch, Love After World Domination, Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie and, finally, In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki.

If you want to know my favorite one out of the entire spring season of 2022, I'd definitely pick In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki as my favorite, by far.

There are various reasons for that but I feel like the most important one is that this particular show had a very simple premise and a very simple promise to its audience. The premise was that the main character, Tsubaki, is a teenage girl living in a village in the middle of the forest along with other teenage girls, all kunoichis, being trained by an older woman that they all simply call “Sensei”, away from society and the intervension of men.

These girls are trained by their Sensei in the arts of ninjutsu, where they practice various ninja techniques so that they can become accomplished and venerable warriors. Tsubaki is a top model student among her peers, diligently following Sensei's advice and trying to keep her own teammates (Sazanka and Asagao) in line, while constantly training with them.

The premise was very simple, but the most important aspect of this story is that there are no men in their village and Sensei tries to instill fear in her students, telling them that men are creatures to be feared and never be underestimated, for they are dangerous foes. The reason why she tries to brainwash the fledling kunoichis and have them fear men is revealed later on in the series.

That's the premise of this series. The promise is that this is primarily intended to be a comedy of sorts. And the simple fact behind this show's success, in my eyes at least, is that it delivers on this.

In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki is based on a manga series drawn by Sōichirō Yamamoto. He is the same mangaka that drew the manga for Teasing Master Takagi-san and this influence is obvious in the characters' design features, particularly the enlarged foreheads.

The reason I put this show above all the others I watched this season is that it simply delivers on its promise without any compromises: each episode if funny, action packed and, most importantly, is fun.

Yamamoto-san takes full advantage of all the possibilities of a teenage kunoichi series which is heavily inspired by the Naruto universe could bring, and runs with this premise, milking it for its maximum potential.

All the girls in this series are lovely and cheerful, each with their unique personalities and quirks and all equally funny.

Their lack of knowledge in men is a highlight focus of many episodes, with many of them developing a caricature of what men must be like, while also making fun of them in many ways, a natural consequence of them living in isolation from other men.

Another point of focus for the show is Tsubaki's natural inquisitiveness and affinity towards learning more and more about men, to the point of even risking actively disobeying rules, in an attempt to better understand what men are like.

The show keeps men in the shadows, deliberately omitting their presence until the very last episode, to present the audience the world that these kunoichi live in, as well as give us a glimpse in their chaotic daily lives.

And it's an absolute joy.

This show doesn't focus much on fanservice, despite the fertile grounds that such a plot would offer, instead having a very clean focus on comedy. While nudity does appear very rarely, it's never done in a lewd manner and it never focuses on it, instead, brushing it off as simply another angle of these girls' lives.

The main characters' personalities are also very fun and rich: Sazanka is, for whatever reason, infatuated with Tsubaki and tries, at every opportunity, to impress her and make Tsubaki reciprocate her feelings of affection and Asagao is just a glutton that's overly optimistic most of the times but has a kind heart and is usually full of energy. Sazanka and Asagao rarely get along with each other, which always forces Tsubaki to try to coordinate and micro-manage them to the best of her abilities.

I would go even more in depth over this series but, suffice it to say, I genuinely recommend it, for anyone that's interested. Go ahead and watch it! It's more than worth your time, if you're looking for a cute, overly energetic but wholesome TV series about a bunch of kunoichi living in isolation from men. It's got a lot of hijinx, to say the least.

That was my favorite show of spring 2022, by a long mile.

Second place is taken by The Dawn of the Witch which is, technically, a sequel to another anime TV series called Grimoire of Zero.

I can't remember if this is true or not but I believe Grimoire of Zero is also available on Crunchyroll. If it is, I definitely recommend watching that first before The Dawn of the Witch, otherwise you would end up being very confused about the latter's plot.

Watching the first show before the sequel, in this case, is almost mandatory, as almost all the characters from Grimoire make a reappearence and, without understading their backstories and the setup of the world itself, you wouldn't understand almost anything in the sequel.

The story revolves around an amnesiac teenager that's studying at a magic school in an attempt to become a proper mage called Saybil. He's struggling at the current school he's learning at due to his very poor control of his own magic. One day, Saybil is called by the headmaster and asked to participate in an expedition to a nearby village with two other students at the school as well as a professor called Loux Krystas Laos, where they are to integrate with the community in that village, provide them with magical services on the school's behest, as part of a project the academy is undertaking to improve on human to witch relationships. This village is to function as an experiment ground, of sorts, to see how such beneficial relationships would evolve.

The story follows this particular team as they make their ways to the village, only to then discover that a plot from higher ups in the church is underway to sabotage the experiment and kill the witches in that village.

This one is more or less a straightforward What you see is what you get experience. This plot pretty much describes the entire series in a nutshell.

Along the way Saybil will discover parts of his own past that he had forgotten about due to his amnesia and, slowly, he will find his path as a proper mage. His classmates will also slowly find their own paths to becoming better mages in this journey, all guided by professor Laos.

It's a very barebones coming of age story, with a bit of twists here and there but nothing particularly amazing. Still, it had some nice moments and the main character's lack of any understanding of social aspects leads to many comedic situations where he embarrasses women in general.

The show was a decent watch and worth the investment.

Finally, the last show I want to talk about of this season was Love after World Domination.

This takes 3rd place in my favorites of this season. The premise is even simpler than before: a group of superheroes equipped with advanced technology called Gelato 5 (think Power Rangers) is fighting against an evil organization called Gecko, who's trying to take over the world. Gecko employs really strong military units and henchmen to act as their underlings, as well as very talented and powerful women to fight under them called Princesses. They also usually employ the usage of forbidden medical and scientific experiments to transform their princesses into human-animal hybrids to confer them more power and even creates monsters and abominations to control in order to subjugate the world.

Sounds like a cliched setup for a really cheesy action series, right? Well, there's a twist: the leader of Gelato 5, Red, one day, confesses his love to the Reaper Princess from Gecko while they are having a one-to-one combat alone. There's no particular reason for this, Red just fell in love with her at first sight.

And, worse, the Reaper Princess, very shy and fidgety from that confession, agrees to enter a romantic relationship with Red, despite knowing that the world would never accept their relationship. And so, Reaper and Red have to navigate all the obstacles that their relationship entails, trying to have secret dates and advancing their love to the next level while also keeping this secret from their teammates and the world at large.

Yes, this is a comedy and yes, it's awesome. It's both wholesome and funny as hell, with many moments having you gasp in shock and wonder what the next episode has to offer.

Almost every joke in this show works. Red's obsession over his own muscles, Reaper's love for girly things and feminine side even though she's part of an evil organization, the cluelesness of everyone around them not figuring out what is obviously in front of them and a lot of cheesy, corny, superhero VS super villain antics. It's just amazing.

Go watch these shows! If nothing else, I, at very least, recommend you give Kunoichi Tsubaki a try! It's definitely a worthwhile show.

The Dawn of the Witch is a bit weirder and, unless you are willing to watch the original Grimoire of Zero first, I wouldn't recommend it. But if you are, it's a fun experience that for the most part is wholesome although it does get dark at certain points.

And Love after World Domination is just pure amazing bliss. This show just wants to make you laugh and it doesn't come across as forced ever. I would absolutely recommend it!