heavenly_pearl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
heavenly_pearl) wrote2025-09-30 06:47 pm
heavenly_pearl) wrote2025-09-30 06:47 pm
Entry tags:
- anime,
- anne shirley,
- captivated by you,
- dan da dan,
- kakuriyo,
- my dress-up darling,
- my hero academia,
- pretty cure,
- rent-a-girlfriend,
- review,
- see you tomorrow at the food court,
- spy x family,
- there's no freaking way i'll be your lov,
- to your eternity,
- toilet bound hanako-kun,
- witch watch,
- with you and the rain
2025 Summer Anime Review
My Dress-Up Darling - Just as good as the first cour! It was nice to see Wakana not worry so much about his "feminine" interests, becoming more confident and actually socializing with his classmates, who think he's super-talented. I also liked how in the first cour, they had a storyline about a girl wanting to crossplay as her favorite male character, which was mirrored in this cour by Marin and Wakana meeting a guy who loves crossplaying as female characters. Both times, there's no real judgement, just easy acceptance and intellectual curiosity as they learn how people can present themselves as different genders, which they even get to put into practice when Marin decides to crossplay for a contest in the school festival. The one thing that kind of annoyed me was Marin's weight gain due to eating too much of Wakana's cooking. On the one hand, she is a part-time model, so a storyline dealing with weight is somewhat expected, and to the show's credit, I think they handled it better than the vast majority of anime I've seen. Marin herself doesn't even really care about the weight gain at first until she realizes she can no longer fit in all the cosplay costumes Wakana made for her, and when she does decide to go on a diet, she seems to do it the right way. There's no crash dieting, dangerous diet pills, or over-exercising with her ending back at her original weight by the end of the episode. (In fact, I don't think she's even back at her original weight by the end of the season.) Instead, it's just mentioned a couple of times over the remaining episodes that she's on a diet, with it not being treated as a big deal at all. That being said, I could have lived without the storyline altogether.
Dan Da Dan - I didn't watch the first cour while it was airing, but upon hearing everybody rave about it, I had to check it out, and this is one show that definitely lives up to the hype -- and, honestly, I think this second cour is even better than the first! The animation and direction is just incredible. Is it weird that my favorite part was just a kind of random training battle with the spirits of dead composers while they sang "Ode to Joy"? Not that important in the grand scheme of things, yet the animators decided to show off by creating one of the coolest battles I've ever seen, period. Also, Momo and Okarun's awkward budding romance is just freakin' adorable!
Anne Shirley - Pacing issues were definitely more obvious with this cour, considering they had to adapt two books, but, eh, I don't really care. I was still just as charmed as I was by the first cour, and now I'm really wanting to reread the books. Fingers crossed that even more of the books get adapted, but even if they don't, the series ends in a great spot with Anne ( (Do I really need to hide this spoiler?) ).
Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun - Such a good cour; definitely my favorite so far! It was great to finally learn more about girl Aoi -- hey, I think I've finally gotten over my confusion regarding Aoi Akane (girl) and Akane Aoi (boy) -- and I loved the arc about the Red House, where we got to learn more about Hanako's family and what is really going on with Tsukasa. But, man, I sure hope we get a new season soon, because this cour did not end in the best spot.( Spoiler )
Witch Watch - I really like the new character of Miharu, a vampire who feeds off life force/magic instead of the typical blood. Nemu's budding crush on Keigo is super adorable as well! Other than that, this cour was basically more of the same from last season, which I'm not complaining about at all. Not all the jokes hit, but I'd say there were more hits than misses, and I certainly wouldn't mind getting more of this show in the future!
With You and the Rain - Cute slice-of-life series about a writer who meets a tanuki on a rainy day and adopts it as her new pet, believing it to be a dog. (Well, I'm not sure how much she actually believes it. Fuji's not an idiot. She has to know that dogs can't write, but that's what she tells everybody it is...and they mostly play along with it.) I have to say, Fuji seems like one of the most realistic writer characters I've ever come across. At least I related to her a lot. Anyway, cute!
See You Tomorrow At The Food Court - What's with this recent trend of short 6-or-less episode cours? There were at least four this season, and I watched two of them. (I have Takopi's Original Sin on my watch list, but I think I need to be in a better headspace to watch it...) Of those two, this is definitely the stronger series thanks to the chemistry between the two leads. It's a simple premise -- two friends meet after school at the mall food court and have random conversations -- but the characters are so fun that it doesn't matter if there isn't much of a plot (even if Wada does often straddle the line of being just funny enough not to be annoying). It's a mystery why the show went the route of six normal length episodes instead of breaking them up into twelve half-length episodes, though, especially when the episodes are already broken up into parts. If any show seemed tailor-made to be a short, it was this one!
There's No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover! Unless... - Okay, this show did not go at all the way I was expecting, and I mean that in a good way. I started out with not knowing much about the series, other than it was yuri and seemed like it was going to be a "friends-to-lovers" type storyline. I wasn't expecting it to be a yuri harem, but I'm glad it was, because I was not a fan of the first girl, Mai. With harem anime, it's rare that I actively root against the apparent main couple becoming official. I may personally prefer one of the other love interests, but I can usually understand why the main character ends up with main hero/ine and support it. With Mai, though... She's not the worst love interest I've ever come across, and to her credit, by the end of the cour, she did get a little better, but, oh, my god, it annoyed me to no end that she would not respect Renako's feelings about not being ready to date and wanting to be friends and kept trying to force their relationship to move in a romantic direction. Then when you compare her to Sena... What you need to know is SENA IS BEST GIRL, hands down, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Since the show aired on YouTube (on the "It's Anime" channel), there were plenty of comments, and the vast majority of fans were also in favor of Sena winning Renako's heart. Still, Mai was the first girl. Conventional wisdom was that Mai was going to be the final girl, too...except the cour ends ( Spoiler )
You and Idol Precure - Nothing really much to say about this one. It's cute, but not a particularly strong Precure series.
Captivated, By You - This is the other short anime I watched, coming in at only five episodes. I was not so captivated by it. It wasn't bad, just kind of...eh. Very forgettable. It didn't help that the character designs were very bland and similar looking, so I had trouble remembering who all the male characters (which made up most of the cast) were.
Rent-A-Girlfriend - Ugh. The last cour was so good, so of course this season had to follow it up with both Mami and Ruka tagging along on a Kinoshita family trip with Kazuya and Chizuru. Nothing could thrill me more... (Note the sarcasm.) To be fair, this cour wasn't quite as bad as I feared it might be (other than the fact that pacing has slowed to an absolute crawl -- seriously, this arc should have been five or six episodes, max, yet it's not even over), but come on, just get Kazuya and Chizuru officially together already and put us out of our misery! Unfortunately, this is getting yet another cour, so we'll have to deal with Mami and Ruka for a little while longer...
Next season, I'll be continuing with You and Idol Precure, of course, and watching the new cours of Spy x Family (SO EXCITED!), My Hero Academia (final season!), Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits- (I'm kind of shocked this got a new season when the first aired all the way in 2018, but I'm not complaining), and To Your Eternity (hoping it'll return to being as good as the first season, instead of the middling second). For new shows, I'm most interested in Mechanical Marie and The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess, which are both shojo series, woohoo! (There's actually a third...fourth? (I think Kakuriyo is considered more a josei based on the magazine the manga adaptation runs in) shojo anime series airing this season called A Star Brighter Than the Sun, but that's airing on Amazon Prime. Boo!)