Summer mid-season anime impressions
Aug. 22nd, 2025 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchell posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
anime_manga(Crossposted from my journal.)
A bit late for first impressions, but I still feel the urge to get my thoughts out there.
Dekin no Mogura: The Earthbound Mole has ugly character designs and a ton of talking, and yet is a joy and a treasure and I can hardly wait for the next episode from week to week. This is an adaptation of a manga by Eguchi Natsumi, the author of Hozuki's Coolheadedness, and starts off with a similar mix of comedy and folklore geekery. But then it adds a lot more layers. First there's the giant supernatural cat antics, and then it turns out that Eguchi has been storing up a lot of thoughts about how girls and women are socialized to behave in contemporary society, and then there's the matter of the ongoing flashbacks to World War II.
Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show is great if you are well-versed in both the Cthulhu mythos and the anime death game genre, an overlap not likely to occur much outside Japan. The little problem with the subtitles in episode 1 has been ironed out and now my only complaint is that the new translator doesn't know how to spell Ticktockman. Because the show has borrowed him too, for some reason.
Sword of the Demon Hunter is getting into the big events of the late 1860s while shifting its tone ever further away from grimdark. It may be trying a little too hard at this point, particularly with a recent episode where it is implied that someone eventually reforms but we miss the most interesting part of their story.
Hanako-kun season 2 part 2 is still gorgeous to look at, but suffering badly from being watched the same day as Dekin no Mogura. It isn't dragging as badly as the previous cour, but it feels like it is ambling with unnecessary slowness toward an ending that can be seen a mile away.
I was all set to hate Ruri Rocks for the same reason the geology displays at some science museums annoy me. I hate when the exhibit is basically just "look at the pretty rocks" with no context for them. But this show actually wants to provide the geological context, so great! Plus it has really excellent character animation! Instead, it annoyed me by spending way too much time pointing at the camera at the chest and bottom of the adult lead, so I'm still not planning to watch a second episode.
Bullet/Bullet and Onmyo Kaiten Re: Birth Verse were okay for as far as I watched them (1 episode and 2 episodes respectively), I don't think I'd mind watching more, but I haven't gotten around to it, so clearly I didn't like them that much.
And nobody picked up the latest Cute High for streaming, so I don't know what I think of it.
A bit late for first impressions, but I still feel the urge to get my thoughts out there.
Dekin no Mogura: The Earthbound Mole has ugly character designs and a ton of talking, and yet is a joy and a treasure and I can hardly wait for the next episode from week to week. This is an adaptation of a manga by Eguchi Natsumi, the author of Hozuki's Coolheadedness, and starts off with a similar mix of comedy and folklore geekery. But then it adds a lot more layers. First there's the giant supernatural cat antics, and then it turns out that Eguchi has been storing up a lot of thoughts about how girls and women are socialized to behave in contemporary society, and then there's the matter of the ongoing flashbacks to World War II.
Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show is great if you are well-versed in both the Cthulhu mythos and the anime death game genre, an overlap not likely to occur much outside Japan. The little problem with the subtitles in episode 1 has been ironed out and now my only complaint is that the new translator doesn't know how to spell Ticktockman. Because the show has borrowed him too, for some reason.
Sword of the Demon Hunter is getting into the big events of the late 1860s while shifting its tone ever further away from grimdark. It may be trying a little too hard at this point, particularly with a recent episode where it is implied that someone eventually reforms but we miss the most interesting part of their story.
Hanako-kun season 2 part 2 is still gorgeous to look at, but suffering badly from being watched the same day as Dekin no Mogura. It isn't dragging as badly as the previous cour, but it feels like it is ambling with unnecessary slowness toward an ending that can be seen a mile away.
I was all set to hate Ruri Rocks for the same reason the geology displays at some science museums annoy me. I hate when the exhibit is basically just "look at the pretty rocks" with no context for them. But this show actually wants to provide the geological context, so great! Plus it has really excellent character animation! Instead, it annoyed me by spending way too much time pointing at the camera at the chest and bottom of the adult lead, so I'm still not planning to watch a second episode.
Bullet/Bullet and Onmyo Kaiten Re: Birth Verse were okay for as far as I watched them (1 episode and 2 episodes respectively), I don't think I'd mind watching more, but I haven't gotten around to it, so clearly I didn't like them that much.
And nobody picked up the latest Cute High for streaming, so I don't know what I think of it.
