Anime Wrap-Up #6

Hello hello! Anime Wrap-Up is a new section of this blog, directed to anime I've consumed in any way during the previous week/month. 

But this time, we're doing things a little bit differently...

Because of my overwhelming January filled with finals and school work, I realized I would not be able to do Anime-Wrap up week by week. In the beginning of the year, it was pretty easy and I was watching anime faster than I could ever dream of.

But then things changed for me and I found myself in a slump, not being able to catch up with the seasonals and not having time even for myself or my friends.

That is why this time, we we'll be covering all the anime I've seen in February - as one monthly update. And based on overall feeling, I'll see if it's better to do this a few times a month ot just once.

So as always, let's get into it, and take a look at what we're covering this time:

Yes, that's right! We are covering everything from February 1st to February 28th!

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Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun (Toilet-bound Hanako-kun)

Our first anime is Jibaku Shounen Hanako-kun which I only remember because I liked the "4 o'clock library". That really caught my attention and made me curious.

[Wouldn't you be charmed too?]

The anime itself was not at all what I expected it to be... Art style of Toilet-bound Hanako-kun is incredibly pretty, chibi-like and it reminds me of pastel colors - even though it's not exactly as bright.

Even if you won't find the summary or the plot interesting, it's eye po*n for sure!

In the beginning, it seems like the plot will turn around love. Our main character Nene (called "Daikon" as in radish) gets told about the school's 7 Mysteries and she decides to summon Hanako-kun, a ghost bound to the girl's bathroom. There she tells him about her unfulfilled love and asks him for help. The methods Hanako-kun uses are... inconvenient to say at least. But it makes up for nice fun!

Getting used to this type of show, I was surprised to realize how the show changed from the beginning. Suddenly, Nene and Hanako are facing the other Mysteries - interacting with them in different ways. Either learning about them, helping them or being in danger thanks to all the new characters the show kept introducing to us.

The little stealing rabbits Mokke, fox statue Yako, Tsuchigomori-sensei, Sousuke Mitsuba, Sakura Nanamine... you have no idea who they are, but you seem drawn to all of them, wanting to know their story and how their change the story around. To me, not all characters were well written, not all of them seemed important... but it gave Toilet-bound Hanako-kun a slice of life feel that is always appreciated. ...but also made the characters that were supposed to be important fall flat.
Honorable mention: Kodama, the confession three that broke the 4th wall.
Even though the main focus was not on the comedy and joked, I found myself grinning at some scenes and at ridiculousness of certain situations. Big thumbs up for that!
In the end, nothing gets resolved, Nene just finds more friends (alive & dead), the original story was forgotten somewhere along the second half and I have no idea why I want to continue watching this.

What can I say... I'll you later when reviewing the TV short. 7/10.

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Chainsaw Man

This was no the last case of getting a great story and shitty ending. 
Popular and a tiny bit overrated Chainsaw Man did the same time, ending on the highest high and making us wait for another season. Oh well. I am getting used to movies and shows blue balling me... (I am watching Alfred Hitchcock's movies so I'm getting used to enjoying shows and not expecting to understand the conclusions.)
But to talk more about Chainsaw Man. To start with negative - I hated the CGI and how flat some scenes looked because of the lack of details in some scenes. I already said the ending sucked ass. And the last but most important - the sexual undertone in the first half of the series was really not hitting the mark. (Sometimes it even seemed like they were using motion blur 😆.)
That's it though... this anime does deserve the hype it gets.
Every episode was filled with incredible action, the good characters were likeable, the baddies were hate-able, we got twists & turns, we had moments to cry over, moments to laugh over, we got sad backstories and dreams getting fulfilled.
AND we got a new ending each episode! That was something else that I've seen the first time!

    

The next part will contain spoilers marked like this, so read it on your own risk, or jump to another show we're covering. (Blogger just has no way of censoring spoilers better, smh.)
From the beginning, it was fu*ked up. Pochita was introduced to us in tearful way and he was taken away from us - but not really. I liked the way they incorporated a very important "If you make a friend - make a friend for life." which is very important.
A pink-haired gold-eyes characters is introduced after an incredible episode and acts all mysterious... which continues to the very end. Leaning about Makimo was hard, but I enjoyed her character, even if she was pretty messed up. I loved it, I loved her.
Another fun character was Power, who stayed the same despite her character development - I loved it though! I liked her instantly when they showed her relationship to Nyaako - thought their scenes left me gasping for air, trying not to cry. Still, I loved her (probably) the most of the females.

[I loved that they went to visit him...]

To talk about the sexual stuff just for a minute - to be clear, I don't mind the sexual stuff, if it's done right. Cyberunk, for example, is doing a decent job at that. But in Chainsaw man it seemed liked they were trying it out and couldn't find a good pace. E. g. = the MC goes batshit crazy just to touch boobs (which, if he was a 30 year old virgin, ok, but he is only 16), and that joke drags for 4 episodes. 4 episodes. 

I loved the Loop episode (5th I believe) where they were stuck on an 8th floor. I am a big sucker for loops, loopholes and mindfu*ks. Well done.

Sh*t went down in episode 8th and I loved the mindfuck of having non-human characters being killed and us, viewers, waiting for when they'll wake up and what will happen. It was a lot, and a new character was introduced that seemed to be controlling at least two demons. I found this twist very interesting because it let us in more on how the world we're in works. To compare it, I'd say Chainsaw Man is sitting at the table with Attack on Titan, Tokyo Ghoul and My hero Academia. (Funnily enough, I didn't enjoy two of those..)

In episode 10 we meet the last guy missing - the scarred guy from the intro. And surprise, surprise he is just as messed up as the others. His job is to train Denji and Power to become stronger and he does that by killing them many, many times... 😂
At the end, Aki makes a deal with another demon, we see Makima talking to important people about important stuff and everything ends with the message "read the manga or wait for the sequel...". Still, Chainsaw Man earned itself 8/10.

Bonus: the most depressing shot ever

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Micchiri Neko

If you're ever in a need of some stupid anime, Micchiri Neko is a great choice. Episodes are only 3 minutes long (+1 minute of ending song) and it's the silliest thing I've seen in a while. The main characters are various cats =  Ribbon, a cat with a Ribbon, Colorful, a yellow-pink-blue cat, Honey, a cat dressed in a bee costume... Everyone has fun names like that.

It goes without saying that not much is happening. But some of the stories were incredibly entertaining.

For comparison - it's like Gudetama, or Little Shark's Day Out. It just heals your inner child. Don't expect much, but it's a good choice if you're ever in a mood for something like that.

It feels wrong to rate it, but I'm giving it a 6/10. 

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Harukana Receive

It seemed like I was really really lucky this month. After those three great picks, I had the incredible pleasure of watching one of the most underrated series ever - Harukana Receive. It's a beach volleyball center anime with cute girls, cute art style, great animation and funny jokes. The sand and water animations were a bit... bad, but other than that it checked all the marks for sport anime.

If you haven't seen it yet, I do recommend it greatly!

Now let's look at the anime closer.

As I mentioned, this anime is full of great jokes. As for some examples:

Upon meeting the pet turtle who refuses to let our MC Haruka pet him, she shouts: "Why does he hate me? He doesn't know me! He doesn't know my life!"

Or when they talk about what kind of swimsuit is best to wear and they use a picture of Narumi having a sort of wedgie with a commentary like "I guess her bottom was pretty cheeky". Which, comedy. 😂 Or when Haruka told Akari "Don't panic" and she turned around to yell in panic: "Somebody call an ambulance!"

      

    

Something that might belong to this category is the grandma having actual drawn and animated eyes. When was the last time we saw anything like that?

Talking about characters - we have the klutz that becomes an ace, the pro that has a dark past, the enemy that actually loves his old partner, powerhouse twins and... an idol? We have enemies that we can't hate, we have unfair matches where we don't know who to cheer for... This anime is a guilty pleasure of every sports anime fan!

Sad backstories weren't missing either. It turns out that Kanata (MC's cousin) had a past of playing beach volleyball but messed a match up and now has a hard time falling in love with it. Haruka coming and falling for the game drags Kanata back into it. And as if that wasn't enough, of course they were third years fighting for a spot in nationals.

Thanks to that we meet not only huge amount of cute girls that are on our side, but we also get a peek into the lives of our "rivals" (which in this case is her ex-partner Narumi and Ayasa). The addition of Akari was a bit weird, but I guess you never know what kind of friends you make along the way...

If you counted with me, we have two (technically three) pairs and one Akari. This shot made me really sad:

But I believe Akari will find her own partner and make her dream come true!

As for the actual sport, the rules were pretty easy to follow and most of them were explained rather well, which is a rarity when it comes to watch anime about a sport you've never played. I think they did an amazing job for a 12 episode anime.

Of course, being only 12 episodes long was a giant disadvantage. Akari, for example, went from friendless to having four besties in 1 or 2 episodes and a whole year got covered in this short span. It wasn't bad, the story didn't suffer... it was just a pity.

Animation was great - the air was whooshing, which we like in anime, the girls were moving smoothly and the art looked really well done. As mentioned, the water and sand animations were a bit hard to forgive, because they didn't look as good, but the overall quality made up for it.

I didn't really think that this anime was "ecchi"... thinking about it now, it definitely was. We got incredible amount of butt shots, scenes that screamed "lesbians!!" and a lot of private parts talk. But it wasn't bad! I was glad they talked about it, because - let's be real - we all had questions about it.

Following that up, this anime was extremely gay. It was so gay, it didn't even need exclamation marks in it's name, it was so gay that it got a little incest undertone (I'm talking about Haruka and Kanata's relationship now), it was so gay that Marissa compared volleyball team to a marriage. 😂

Also, the amount of MILF jokes that feel during the episode with Thomas mom was incredible and I enjoyed every one of them.

And then - during the flashbacks, displayed as a kid, Claire still had rather big boobs.

Of course there were dumb moments. Like the naive scenes where Haruka scored when she had no chance, or Narumi missing her shot because she was surprised to see Kanata receiving again. 

I could forgive it... 

    

Another thing which I might have missed was the bracelet's importance - I don't recall them addressing the bracelet in any way, even though there is a close up on it during the intro.

As usual, we got an important match at the end of the series. This time, the Okinawa teams were fighting each other for the one spot that could move on to the nationals. The match was a close one, it was almost too close for Haruka being a "newbie". (Are you still a newbie if you practiced with a professional for almost a year?) And in the end... well, you as a viewer will always win AND loose at the same time.

The whole time I was screaming about how good this show is and that more people need to watch this. It's seriously such a pity that it didn't get the attention it deserves.

The biggest disappointment was, that there is not a second season - but the manga is finished so maybe there is more that awaits us. (God, please, I beg of you...)

If you want to read more about this anime, or maybe you need the final push whether to give this a short or no, I recommend you reading "The good and the bad - Harukana Receive" on my blog. 😉 But if this was enough, all that's left to do is give this a rating - and you won't be surprised that I gave it a 10/10.  I haven't enjoyed something this much in a long time.

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Fruits Basket 2nd season

Not so long ago, I've watched Fruits Basket: 1st season. To say I loved it would be an understatement. Thankfully, I managed to get the second season going this month. 

Fruits Basket 2nd season was a bit of a disappointment though...

It started out incredibly strong - the first half of the anime was filled with drama! Each episode, we got a deeper dive into most of the characters from 1st season. We met new characters too, our Zodiac collection was complete, some of the family members made appearance too.

Story-wise, it wasn't great though. We did not get a story. Backstories aside, all this season did was tell us what the curse is and that breaking it might just be impossible. It was a letdown, honestly. 

My beloved Ritsu appeared in one (1) scene, which broke my heart and the relationships were extremely confusing. Expecting answers, I got more to think about, more to doubt and less to understand. 

My tier list did change a bit after this season, so you can take a look here:

For more details, do visit my Fruits Basket review, now updates with 2nd season - and I will be hoping for a satisfying conclusion in the last season. 

This time around, my rating is 8/10 which is a drop. I just... my time was wasted, but at the same time, it wasn't. It sounds confusing, but it makes perfect sense to me... 😂

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Isshuukan Friends. (One Week Friends)

Some of you might know Isshuukan Friends. I believe there is a Live Action adaptation too. Well, anyway, One Week Friends is extremely cute anime about friendship and love. It's easygoing and it's not complex, but it still hits the right place.

Let's start with some screenshots:

    [me @ PE]

[Why is his mouth so low on his face???]

[Foreshadowing...]

    

[This is a MOTHER!]

    

[They are so adorable....]

    

[Me]

[I smiled so hard]

And now some commentary: What I realized right away was how naturally funny this anime was. It's not supposed to be comedy, but it does make you giggle a lot. For example, Kaori has memory problems, but Hase immediately hits her with "You have an awesome memory!". 

The whole show was just a collection of cute and sweet friendships, it was very innocent - even though there were signs of love blooming, the focus was on being friends.

When I chatted with people online, they said they didn't like Saki's character. But I think she fit in the story perfectly. Her being so forgetful was a great match for insecure Kaori and her airheadness made up for very funny moments and situations. Besides, I liked her relationship with Kiryuu.

She managed to "confess" and then it got awkward... until they talked and I felt like they got together in that exact moment. It was adorable!

I was relieved when Kaori managed to make friends in class and even more relieved when the drama turned to Slice of Life. They did homework together, went to karaoke, had crêpes...

Things took a turn when Hajime came to their class. As it turns out, Hajime was in elementary school with Kaori. When he talks to her, Kaori collapses and all the progress she had made was lost.

It wasn't all that bad, since we finally learn why got Kaori's memories wiped. It was rough, and what was worse, Hase began to distance himself from Kaori. Which... I have no idea what he was thinking and why he thought it would help him... But, oh well. Important was, that they managed to patch things up together and we find out that Hase begins to write a diary too - and by the looks of it, they are exchanging the diaries between each other.

If you liked this story, definitely check out '50 first dates' with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. For me, this show was a 7/10. 

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Jashin-chan Dropkick (Dropkick on My Devil!)

After this, a big disappointment came. I'm talking about Jashin-chan Dropkick. I was a bit nervous about watching this... But I tried to keep an open mind. At first, I was really entertained - the anime broke the 4th wall immediately and I was entertained! For the first 15 minutes...

Then it all went to hell.

We didn't get any character introduction which a lot people judged really hard. But halfway in the show, we see Jashin-chan commenting a poster like "oh! did you know we're anime now?" and that kind of explained it.

The anime isn't just an adaptation. They actually treated it as an adaptation, and so we didn't need an introduction - we just moved from manga to anime.

Most of the characters had their unique catchphrases - which is always fun. I didn't like that they weren't consistent though. They should keep it a running joke instead of only using it sometimes.

As strange as I felt about the max gore scenes, I appreciated the SFW humor. Like Medusa wearing a paper bag over her face. (If you don't understand this joke, go read up on some mythology!) Jashin-chan eating an angel's halo was another one of those.

But then again... does Yurine not count as a human? Is she really a witch? So she can look at her??

[This was a cute detail. Her wardrobe consists of only that one dress.]

As for other characters, I liked Yusa and Kouji (the frosty sisters) but I disliked most of them. Jashin-chan, the cop (that was prettyy messed up for a character of such little value), both angels...

All that is left to say is, that it didn't leave an impression. But it has that quality of always pulling you in. (then it makes you weirded out, then pulls you in again...) so even though you want to drop it, somehow you keep thinking it's actually pretty fun...

Besides. It ends on a note that really shows that this is not the end and there is so much more to see!
I doubt I will pick this up and continue. But having a blog is a great chance to track how much my opinion will change over the time.

3/10 for me.

Bonus screenshots:

[This predictability was it's doom.]

[Who really was this character?? Because to me they seemed redundant almost...]

[That's her face in the air...]

[I won't let them forget this gem.]

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Kimi ni Todoke 2ND Season (From me to you)

+ Kataomoi/A Crush (Unrequited Love)

I was very very pumped for this series. But... I was let down big time. 7/10 which is a huge jump from last season that got 10/10. Spoilers incoming.

Now, why. This season's focus was on getting Sawako and Kazehaya together. Out of all possible options, they chose the worst one. 
A new school year begins and our characters change classes, which means new classmates. One of those is Kento Miura - a blonde haired guy that is mesmerized by Sawako. And you probably know where I'm going with this - he starts to mess with both Sawako and Kazehaya, which results in the most stupid trope in romance - confession gone wrong.

Sawako thinks Kazehaya only gives her special treatment and Kazehaya thinks she doesn't love him.

I'm glad that the season focused on them getting together, rather than blueballing us another season. Still, the way they did it did not seem right. Whatever I said about the first season does not count now. 

I was surprised with Kurumi - that was the key person to resolve the situation and push Sawako on the right track again. I think she grew as a person...a little.

One little detail - in the intro, everyone gets to share the screen with their match/partner/crush. Why did Ayane share the screen with their homeroom teacher and why did she blush?!

After second season of Fruits Basket, this did not come as a huge disappointment, but it was a disappointment nevertheless. 

"What's with this sparkly background? Shoo shoo!"

Bonus from this season:

    

[ What is he plotting..? ]

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Itai no wa Iya nano de Bougyoryoku ni Kyokufuri Shitai to Omoimasu.

(BOFURI: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense.)

I finally finished the first season of BOFURI and I regret to say I ended up disliking it. 

At first, BOFURI seemed to be great, fresh and incredibly fun. Maple (our main character) seemed to be funny-dumb in all the right way: despite wanting to move faster she kept putting her points into defense, she ate enemies and got the most random skills ever (which, way to go, game - for being prepared for these random ass choices she was making). This got pretty old soon... I thought that if she made a joke out of it and went with "well since I already put this much into defence, let's just keep going" but instead she went with the dumb "I don't want to get hurt!!".

But maybe I don't understand the game world - since it looks like they can really taste food and drinks in the game.

I noticed a small mistake in episode two = when Sally picked her up, Maple never collected her shield or her finishing rod, but still had them later on.
Sally was my number one, but right behind her were the adorable twins girl with streaks in their hair. And then the animal sidekicks! That was cute. On the opposite spectrum were deus-ex-machina bunnies at the end of some episodes and the text messages (which I still don't know who that was).

You know I love puns. So Maple naming her turtle Syrup and her guild base Maple tree made me incredibly happy. Again, on the opposite spectrum was Sally not being her own person. She turned to Maple for her opinion on everything, never tried to suggest anything. To everything she nodded.

Do you know what BOFURI and TPN Season 2 have in common? "Omg I don't want to animate it so I will give you a PowerPoint presentation with cute song."

After this I kind of gave up on tracking the series and just watched it with one eye closed. Maple got way too overpowered, it stopped being fun and with the new guild coming to picture (and fighting Maple) I got so disappointed, my excitement died completely. Such a wasted potential! 7/10.

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Watashi ni Tenshi ga Maiorita!
(WATATEN!: an Angel Flew Down to Me)

Now this... this could be soo good if it wasn't awful at times.

I love Iyashikei and I love watching people having the time of their life. If this anime was just about the girls, it would be much much better. Just a soft slice of life anime. The character of Miyako was so so awful. 
She was totally getting hard over Hana - an 11 year old! Presenting herself as a NEET, she is wearing the same clothes all the time. Falling into clichés, she starts to ignore her own sister Hinata because of the kid's friends, while Hinata was just saying how much she loves Miyako.

The art was cute, the characters had unique personalities.

Halfway through a new character Koko was introduces and Miyako finally tasted her own medicine. She was creepy, she was awful... but at least she focused on her own age group, rather than SMALL KIDS. (Okay, maybe she didn't have to name her dog Miyako.😂)

The last episode of WATATEN had no business being so heart-wrenching, gut-punching but I rewatched it like five times.

The slightly lesbian vibe at times was fun (if Nao and Hinata weren't kids, I would be cheering on them) but the pedo stuff was crossing a line. Which is the only reason I'm taking points off. What could be a 10/10 is now 7/10 and I hope the movie will be more easy-going. (For more info and more screenshot, visit my WATATEN review.)

[ Biggest surprise ]

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Ao Oni: The Animation

(Aooni The Blue Monster)

Last one is Ao Oni - which is a parody of the original light novel/video game. In this 3 minute short episodes, we get weird-ass stories that usually end up in a gore way (with everyone dying over the stupidest stuff).

I played HetaOni - a Hetalia parody game with that same monster. I loved it, even though the game itself was never finished.
If we talk recommendations - go play the games, both of them. They're much more fun than this was. This should not exist...
1/10 and with that, Anime Wrap-Up number 6 is finished! Few!

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(Next time we see each other might be the end of May, so until then watch out for different posts!)