#rating-a

[hardworkandguts]

Ruri Rocks

瑠璃の宝石

(Anime)

Hobby / slice of life by Keiichirou Shibuya

Era: 2020s

Rating: A

Plot: Ruri Tanigawa is a high school girl who loves crystals. After getting her request for an allowance advance to buy one denied, she hears her grandfather used to pick up shiny rocks from the nearby mountains. There, she meets Nagi Arato, a mineralogy student who properly introduces her to this world.

Length: 13 episodes (covered from #13 to #25)

Thoughts: By now you probably noticed I like picking one hobby anime per season if it's something that interest me, and while I'm really far far away from my rock picking days (and it's not like this area is geologically interesting), a show called Introduction to Mineralogy seemed something I'd enjoy, and... yes. As an hobby anime, particularly one devoted to sciences, Ruri Rocks does a very good job at showing how the impatient Ruri slowly learns the importance of being methodological, particularly during the sapphire arc (kind of weird to call that "arc" but go with it) where the girl who started begging her mother money to buy a shiny crystal is now carefully combing sand, and taking detailed field and research notes, as Nagi acts like her tutor without sounding condescending - she reins in her endless enthusiasm just enough to point her in a direction it is used in a productive and sustainable way, as something that demands a lot of time and patience to get results definitively requires, with Nagi's work colleague Youko also showing her the value of preparation and location research. This also works in making what could come as a bratty, unbearable character a more rounded one, as sure, Ruri surely has her moments where she'd rather things just appeared, but over time it becomes more of a "why do things have to require so much work" rather than "I want things NOW". Also taking part in this, her classmate Shouko, who also has an interest in mineralogy and had been disillusioned after overhearing her parents say they's rather not she made a career out of it, but running into Ruri, Nagi and particularly Youko makes her realise her dream is not dead, a contrast between her much more science-based interest, and the girl who just likes shiny crystals, and while it is mostly an episodic show, there is an overarching plot where Ruri realises that sure, she might have started because she wanted to find those shiny crystals, but through Nagi and Youko's guidance, she learns that her enthusiasm is not less valid and she's no less smart after putting in the work, that's a pretty positive outlook on sciences that is often lacking in the discourse. Ending the show with a shot of a landscape shot of older Ruri lookin at a huge vein on the side of a mountain is the perfect shot this show could have ended in.

Another the bigger draw for the show is how good looking it is. It starts as just some bits of extra detailed animation here and there that they probably didn't need to but did it anyway, and really culminated in episode 9, which unquestionably has movie-like quality in both animation and details. Was it picked because it had a scene with maid Nagi? Maybe, maybe not, but it is hard to overstate how incredible that episode looks. It can't be compared with City, who pretty much just eschews modern conventions, but if you compare it to other episodes that follow this trend of almost photorealistic backgrounds, very detailed shading and highlights with bloom etc, I doubt you'd find anything as good as this episode, and a lot more scenes in the later third of the season, where it feels they had extra budget to do things better. Character design and animation are also pretty good, and there's something to be said about how the show isn't shy of Nagi's uh, considerable assets, but it never feels exploitative or something the show loses a lot of time focusing on.

While it is not essential viewing, it is certainly a good one as far as hobby shows go - it fully focuses on the subject matter from both a scientific / eductional and an entertainment perspective. It is generally good looking, almost every episode there's a scene or two where Ruri's reactions are lovingly animated, and even if you think you can't see a full show about a girl finding discovering a passion for mineralogy, at least watch episode 9 for one of the better directed and animated TV episodes you'll see. And Maid Nagi (gets sprayed with water) ow.

Recommended to: Hobby show enthusiasts.

Plus:

Character animation can be quite something at times, someone in the staff must have been asking "pleeeeease let me do something extra in this animation".

A very good arc for an hobby show where Ruri starts as someone who goes into the mountains in sandals trying to find shiny crystals, and ends up as someone ready to follow mineralogy as a profession.

Minus:

By comparison with itself, some scenes can look a bit stiff.

The show is very, very focused on mineralogy, and if it's something you don't have any interest on, Ruri's slow progression isn't going to be enough to hold your attention

[hardworkandguts]

Sakura Wars

サクラ大戦

1996 Visual novel/ dating sim/ Tactical RPG by Sega from the Sakura Wars series. Version used: Sega Saturn (also available on Windows, DC, PSP), English translation Language notes: extremely text heavy, full english translation available with just a few non-important bits left out.

Rating: A

Thoughts: After a game that was one of the pioneers of the translation scene, what about a translation that was over 20 years in waiting? Surely not for a lack of interest, but because due to the system's complexity, Saturn emulation was lagging behind immensely, and if you could buy some of the later PlayStation releases as they came out and complete them on your PC, the Saturn was a tougher nut to crack, and still remember running Die Hard Arcade on a very incomplete emulator for the STV (the arcade board based on the Saturn) and thinking "well, maybe one day", and it took until the mid to late 2010s to see good Saturn emulation, which made projects like this viable, and like Sailor Moon RPG, it is also a labor of love, as this is also a very text heavy game, and even the full motion clips have subtitles hardcoded in. When I looked at the OVA I mentioned that the reason Sega likely didn't consider it releasing it on the west as sort of a last ditch attempt to rescue the system was because how costly it would be, for a game that touches many genres that were not that common in the west - sure, they could see a tactical RPG being successful, after all UFO: Enemy Unknown was a hit just two years prior (and even had some light manga-inspired stylings and what is power armor with a +90 psionic skill+power soldier inside but a Koubu), but visual novels never quite stuck here, even if they are quite similar to interactive fiction and text/graphical adventures, and the dating sim part would be completely baffling to the average mid 90s player, even coding out the lolicon option. After all, if something like 1993 Cryo's Dune can be seen as operating from some of the same design principles (it's an adventure game where you generally interact with characters on specific locations, not objects, to advance the story, on top of a very simplified grand strategy game and the music is maybe it's biggest legacy), that game is still considered "odd" or "weird" in it's mixture of light adventure and light strategy, or putting it in another way, "french" in the same way Sakura Wars is "japanese", even with it's setting based on one of the best selling sci-fi books of all-time, a game built around a genre native to the PC98 series of computers, with a story around steampunk Taisho-era Japan would be a complete oddity, and the ending itself would be a bit of an headscratcher. And so, as the franchise became one of he best selling in the Saturn, one of the few highlights for the company in the late 90s, a true multimedia franchise (after all, I'm talking about it on an anime/manga tumblr), in the West, as I often mention it, it is more of a trivia trick question for Saturn sales.

So, what we have here, almost 30 years after the game came out? The story is pretty simple, where Ichiro Ogami is transfered from the Navy to the Imperial Combat Revue, Flower Division, but what he expected to be an elite undercover unit turned out to be three young women putting on plays at the new Grand Imperial Theatre in Ginza: also recent transfer Sakura Shinguji, daughter of an industrialist and an actress Sumire Kanzaki, veteran of the Russian Revolution Maria Tachibana, and a little french kid with powerful spiritual power in Iris Chateaubriand, later joined by Kohran Li, a chinese engineer and martial artist Kanna Kirishima. Thinking he was transferred by accident as he punches tickets in the theater lobby, that notion quickly disappears as he learns the true nature of the Flower Division, protect the capital from things like the Hive of Darkness, supernatural remnants of the Tokugawa regime who have took upon themselves to reverse westernisation during the Meiji period, picked according to their ability to control the Koubu, the large mechs they ride into battle. As mentioned, Sakura Wars is a mixture of three genres, each of the 10 chapters, written to resemble an anime episode, even with a preview of the next episode, usually features many visual novel sequences where the story develops, the player occasionally given a prompt to select an action or answer with a narrow margin of time (arguably a precursor to Shenmue's Quick Time Events that would plague most of the 2000s and give failed french movie directors a career making """games""") that will affect the mood of the rest of the Flower division, a nice detail being that you can't instinctively select the top for the "good" answer. The player often does not have much control who to talk to or where to go, outside a few opportunities to roam the theatre, and occasionally, particularly on the last chapter, it can feel a bit of a Kojima-esque hitting the button to advance for two hours straight. There's also some mini-games, like rescuing Sumire who got cramps in the pool in a button mashing event while also navigating through exploding buoys, playing a card game with Kohran, helping Maria prepare borscht or playing a target carnival game. Each chapter ends usually shortly after a deployment, seen through a isometric view with pre-rendered graphics for the Koubu and enemies and wonderfully detailed landscapes. The tactical RPG element is quite simple, the player can do two actions between moving, attacking (regular or a special attack) or defending (including healing and recovering the special move gauge), but just one of each. Ogami can also protect from damage one of the Flower Division members up to 8 times, or do an incredibly devastating area combo when he's next to another. As movement range and attack/defense are influenced by their mood, a battle might be won or lost due to the options selected in the previous events, so it's wise to keep a savegame at the start of the chapter (or when things went well at the end of the section). I felt for the most part these are less strategy (there are no things such as misses, or reaction mechanics, only sometimes an attack does a second move with additional damage) and more of a puzzle, there's often a more obvious solution to what you must do, but then again, what are strategy games but puzzles you must find solutions for?

Visually, it has less in common with the traditional ultra-clean aesthetic of higher res PC98 visual novels, and a more deliberately hand-drawn look, but this helps keeping it consistent between the grainy animation sequences and the rest of the game; yes, backgrounds could maybe look better, but other than some pre-rendered 3D scenes, everything feels always like it belongs together, a visual novel scene could jump into a video clip and then then back into the stills and the large character portraits, and it feels mostly seamless. The character design is very mid 90s, courtesy of Kosuke Fujishima (of You're Under Arrest and Oh My Goddess!) and there's a wide variety of quality character portraits. Really gotta love the "annoyed" and "surprised" faces, peak 90s. While it does not have a complete voice track, most of the plot related bits do, and if Chisa Yokohama could well change her legal name to Sakura Shinguji at this point, this is the cast that would follow her to the animated shows and even some of the stage productions, so you can expect quality.

It's not hard to see why this and the second game (future post, surely) sold together close to 1M units (as mentioned before, making it one of the best selling series in the system worldwide), it's an engaging story with great characters and a lot of fun details, but it is equally easy to understand why Sega was reluctant to do anything with it outside Japan, even more at a time before Final Fantasy VII broke many barriers between Japanese and Western markets when it came to games that weren't either arcade, action or sports titles.

Plus:

A great story, ready for being adapted into stage plays and anime

A very ambitious title for 1996, combining different genres, incorporating full motion video and spoken character lines.

Very good visually, with terrific character design and very good looking battle scenes.

Minus:

Can feel a bit on-rails and Kojima-esque at times

Strategy sections feel more of a puzzle to be solved that actual strategy

[hardworkandguts]

Cells at Work!

はたらく細胞

(Anime)

Educational comedy by Akane Shimizu

Era: 2010s, 2020s

Rating: A

Plot: An educational show centered around AE3803, a scatterbrained red blood cell and a neutrophil white blood cell called U-1146.

Length: 21 + 1 episodes

Thoughts: Another of those cases where YouTube suggests something to me with a few years on, I look at the thumbnail, think it's interesting, and sure, another one for the list, in this case something about anthropomorphic human body cells... at work. I mostly decided to watch it, because if you are an European born between the late 70s and late 80s, you'll probably remember an educational TV animated show called Once Upon a Time… Life, part of a series that approached other subjects such as the history of mankind and space. It originated in France, although it may have been dubbed to your native language, and like many European productions, it was also animated in Japan, by Eiken, so technically an anime? Anyway, I was curious enough to see what 30 years would do that concept.

It does the clever thing of assigning what goes on the human body as one you'd expect in a society - red blood cells are delivery workers, constantly moving oxygen and carbon dioxide (in the shape of boxes with canisters) or nutrients (picnic baskets), their cap resembling a red blood cell from the top, white blood cells are the security popping up to deal with pathogens, T-cells are the meatheaded SWAT team of white cells, platelets, being the smaller, are kindergartners constantly doing repair work, macrophages are busty maids (as the cells who do cleanup) with buster swords and giant mallets and so on. So, it does the "teach basic biology concepts" things neatly, but how does it hold off as something you'd watch for fun? Ah, pretty well, I guess. AE3803 is the newbie airhead struggling with Ryoga syndrome on her way making deliveries, often coming across U-1146, a rookie neutrophil who is very polite but like all of them is a complete knife maniac who scares other cells, popping up from above, the sewers or the narrowest of places. They come across other types of white blood cells and micro-organisms, and very often of pathogens, a mix of monsters that look like Pokémon or a villain of the week in Sailor Moon.

If anything, this show is very creative in how it explains human biology concepts. The episode about allergies being about the defense mechanism cells collectively overreacting to something that should be harmless and ends up with a steroid terminator (not Arnie) wrecking havoc until everything goes back to normal is a delight. The cancer cell episode starts with the red blood cells sending suspiciously large amounts of oxygen and nutrients, has a large battle between him and the various white cells, and a threat it will return. Visually, it's a very well animated modern show, and beyond the incredible work in character design, they have a solid range of expressions, and their animation keeps up with the slapstick comedy it delights itself into. There's also a surprising amount of blood. Well, yeah, the cells themselves but the way the white blood cells deal with pathogens is with knives, and end up most of their battles covered in blood. Don't ask me how that works.

If the Once Upon a Time... series were formative for a lot of people, I can't see why Cells at Work! also wouldn't be. Owing to the comedic tone and creativity in display, no surprise the manga has a dozen spinoffs, including Code Black, about cells in a body ravaged by poor lifestyle choices, also getting an adaptation which will be it's own post.

Recommended to: Your biology class is here.

Plus:

It's easily one of the most creative shows out there

Pretty good character animation

Minus:

The shorter second season gives it a try at a multiple episode arc, but doesn't fully feel like a match.

[hardworkandguts]

Lucky☆Star

らき☆すた

(Anime)

Slice of life by Kagami Yoshimizu

Era: 2000s

Rating: A

Plot: Four high school girls debate the hot topics of the day.

Length: 24 episodes + 1 OVA (~50 minutes)

Thoughts: So, I've seen plenty of originals, straight adaptations with varying levels of fidelity and filler, "you do you" adaptations like Excel Saga, variations over the original material like 16-Bit Sensation, "this is a fighting game so here's two pages outlining the characters" like Virtua Fighter, but I *think* this is the first time I saw something that was based on a four panel comic. The result are mostly complete scatterbrained mini-stories (the OVA does a bit more structured stories) that only get more bizarre the longer they get, as the girls discuss important topics such as the proper way to eat a chocolate cornet, the effect going to the beach has on hair, dipping into your dad's eroge games collection, how extra innings in baseball and election coverage impact airing times of anime, the semantics of tsundere, going to Comiket, Gu***m, American sports team calling themselves "World Champions", and a varied assortment of shower thoughts the cast goes through in very weird ways, depending on the combination of characters present.

Speaking of, we have Konata Izumi, the blue-haired otaku, the Hiiragi twins, Tsukasa, the lazy ditz who's always catching strays and Kagami, the serious and smart one and finally Miyuki Takara, the moe type of the group. In addition there's also Nanako Kuroi, homeroom teacher of the girls (except Kagami) who spends most of her time playing the same online game as Konata, Yui Narumi, Konata's older cousin who for everyone's surprise manages to hold her to her job as a traffic warden, and Konata's father Soujirou, a writer who may have influenced her otaku ways and uh, has a type. Then there's also Akira Kogami, a 14 year old idol who cheerfully presents the final segments of the show, Lucky Channel... until something that presents a threat to her position (usually from Minoru, her cohost she constantly threatens over what she sees as getting a bit too big for his britches) emerges. In the end stretch freshmen Yutaka (Konata's younger sister) and her friend Minami join to add additional "just what am I watching" moments to it.

Yeah, look, it's fun. That's around as much as you need to know. In a way, the constant references to anime and the kind of enjoyment you get from Konata's references reminds me of Excel Saga, although infinitely much less hyper and in a more Seinfeldian way. Is this an anime about nothing? Yeah, maybe. Since it's based on a 4 panel manga, there isn't anything resembling a plot or coherent stories, it's just a chain of random thoughts going through the characters' heads. So, is it an unscripted comedy podcast living on riffs they get tired of in 5 minutes? You know what? Yes.

Recommended to: fans of fast paced references

Plus:

It can be legitimately funny on how a random topic can come up, and then turn into a bizarre train of thought by one or two of the characters.

Timoteeeeei

Minus:

It can vary on quality, but since a bit you don't get might last anything from thirty seconds to two minutes, it's not a great deal.

[hardworkandguts]

Mayonaka Punch

真夜中ぱんチ

(Anime)

Comedy by PA Works

Era: 2020s

Rating: A

Plot: At the same time Masaki, a vlogger with self control problems assaults one of her friends and collaborators live on air (twice) and is excluded from the group, Live, a vampire wakes up from a 20 year slumber with one thing on her mind - find the girl she saw in her dreams, who just happens to look suspiciously like Masaki. After meeting by chance in an abandoned hospital where Masaki was desperately trying to recapture her old streamer magic and Live was searching for blood packs Fallout style, she proposes letting Live feed on her if she and her vampire friends help her reach 1 million subscribers.

Length: 12 episodes

Thoughts: The single cour, 12 episode show trend is creating many problems in killing the potential of many shows, as any writer is in a "pick 2" position with character development, story development and preparing for the ending. While many shows suffer from that dillemma, Mayonaka Punch proved it is perfectly manageable. While it doesn't exactly stand out from the many "girls do stuff" shows other than the twist! most of them are vampires and the chaotic energy Live and Tokage bring to the table, it paces the story evenly in two halves, the first where we are introduced to and establishes the characters (Tokage is the last to join on episode 3, and she presents herself with her trademark subtlety), and the second part leading to finale, evenly split between the back 6 and front 6 episodes. The ending is absolute perfection on how it subverts the heightened stakes "they split up" trope in the most ridiculous way and unveils the cute reason Live obsesses over Masaki in just the final minutes.

Moving away from the "12 episode rant", this is a show that is driven mostly through Masaki's insecurities - it's implied she was a bit too controlling even before throwing a fist on air, she's even going as far as allowing a vampire to feed on her to beat her former partners, is easily overwhelmed by negative online comments (while being a hate magnet at this point, I guess that's not a fun combo), and almost ruining their videos by over-editing and hiding the chemistry the Banpai Manor inhabitants have together. Over time she does some self-reflection, particularly during her homecoming episode (one of the best, in part because Live goes feral in this one) when she has being a kinda shitty older sister thrown at her face at every opportunity. She's not a person you'd probably like to be friends with - the show makes it clear her friends had good reasons to kick her out - but little by little seems to be grasping her drive to create content slop is a detriment on her relationships. As for the vampires, we have the two gremlins, Live who is completely obsessed with Masaki, to the point of, worth repeating, going feral with the prospect of being in the house she grew up in (it isn't, but try telling her that) when she visits her at her mother's home after a couple of days apart and Tokage, the loud, degenerate gambler (I don't know how well these characters - I love - will age as we're entering the age of people losing their paycheck to a "can't lose" 3 way bet) of the group who for all that matters is the one who started to unlock the potential their potential as NewTubers so that she has more money for pachinko. Ichiko is more or less Live's personal assistant and who ends up doing most housekeeping (if not all, considering the others) and is heavily in debt for bad stock investments likely because nobody was there to say to someone who can't read kanji to not get into stocks, driving her interest on having a successful channel and Fu is the quiet one, and we get a really sweet story of forbidden love and dreams out of her past. Appearing frequently due to their antics is Yuki, who's the primary foil as she's in charge of keeping those four from revealing they're vampires.

While it has wrapped up pretty nearly, It has a way forward to a new season, with Masaki and Yuki joining the on-camera madness, so I'm curious if it's getting a second season down the line.

Recommended to: do you like cute gremlins doing stuff?

Plus:

Perfectly paced.

On-par gremlin behaviour by everyone involved, even more when garlic is involved.

Looks quite good, very solid on the character design.

Minus:

Nothing to speak of unless we're really done with just 12 episodes.

[hardworkandguts]

CITY THE ANIMATION

(Anime)

sketch comedy by Keiichi Arawi

Era: 2020s

Rating: A

Plot: The odd daily lives of those living in a very odd City.

Length: 13 episodes (covered from #13 to #25)

Thoughts: Nichijou is a show I think of quite a bit, mostly for it's surreal tone and incredible animation, but poor ratings and physical sales mostly meant it tanked pretty hard, so it was a surprise to hear a few months ago Arawi's follow-up City would be getting an adaptation, and even more, it looked absolutely incredible just from the tiny teaser. And that's where you have to start, visually it's proof you don't need to overwork your staff to make background art with hundreds of layers. No, you overwork them to make backgrounds with very clear lines, then fill them with vibrant colours with no or very limited use of shading. It is very reminiscing of the Ligne Claire European style of comics, and at a time most shows really go for broke in the background art and details like light bloom and reflections (Ruri Rocks ran at the same time, and it is excellent in it's own way), it's safe to say there isn't much like it. It really picks up the dynamic style of the manga and kicks it up a notch, and if the disastrous Uzumaki is what happens when you try to bring to life the pages of a manga and utterly fail, City is what happens when you clinch that assignment and could easily use screencaps to do an high quality anime komikku version of it.

The source material should be familiar to anyone who read Nichijou - it features some of the same dynamism and joke construction, where a mundane event often turns into bizarre situations, very often by compounding them on top of each other. It was set from the start this would be a single season 13 episode show that would cover all on the story, and so some stories, such as the goal that escalated into one of those bizarre sequences of events were cut short (or squeezed in the outstanding episode 5), while others that could probably be well adapted into animation, like the tantrum contest, Kamaboko's Jumping Girl manga, Niikura teasing Nagumo with ghost stories, or the complete election arc (likely because it uses characters the shortened adaptation didn't have time to develop) were completely cut. At some points it changes order of chapters, like Nagumo walking in on Niikura filming her morning routine as the real start of their YouTube channel, before the Mambo no. 5 sequence, which works much, much better, and I if I still think Ecchan saying her goodbyes to the city and to Matsuri would have been a perfect ending for it, the last episode where they meet in the airport, followed by an incredible musical number really proved me wrong . As some stories are harder to imagine animated, don't know if there would be enough for more 9 episodes, but I've felt a few jokes felt a bit flatter because they include a callback or are in a way part of the punchline to a joke that was not adapted.

But for all this to work, you need to have characters, and if in Nichijou you were limited to the school and the Shinonome Lab, a larger and more varied cast allows for different stories to be told, from the Mont Blanc College room mates, with Nagumo and Niikura often picking on each other, Niikura frustrated the girl who made her mission to beat every club in high school at their own game and she fell for now mostly lazes around, aimlessly waiting for horse race results, until she sets her eyes on something (usually some make-money-quick opportunity) and stops at nothing. Meanwhile, Wako is smiling happily, her head lost in some cloud. After that, there's maybe my favourite sketches in every episode, Matsuri and Ecchan, two middle-schoolers who are able to yes, and... from any strange place their ideas go, including the later's reluctance in saying to her friend she and her family are leaving, Wako's sister Izumi, who's permanently falling asleep (after spending all night tinkering with some invention) and makes the whole city fall for her anytime she wakes up and smiles at them. There's also Tanabe, their rich heiress who worked as a policewoman until she broke her leg and now goes to large extents to rewards those she sees as doing good for the community, whether they want it or now, and created the race as an excuse to ask Tatsuta Adatara out, the mostly tragic adventures of mangaka Kamaboko Oni, struggling with deadlines and lack of ideas, dragging his fan and long suffering editor Todoroki, split between sticking to him, getting Wako published and also having all-star BL author Daisuke Naganohara (heavily implied to be Mio from Nichijou) on board. The show really has a large cast, and because they're not all girls in sailor suits, it really feels that way, and also because it avoids forcing every character to interact, each has their own bubble and if they have no reason to interact (some chapters transition from two characters coming across the street)... they won't.

So, it is an extremely good looking and well animated show, with a large cast of endearing characters that are well contained inside their own stories and yet... I kinda feel something is missing. Might be some sketches dragging a joke a bit too long or some weren't that good, but there were some parts of the show I didn't felt like I was having fun, and while it may have not outranked Nichijou, It's certainly going down as one of the best adaptations of this era. At least visually,

Recommended to: Probably going to be one of the most cited anime of this decade, so you are likely to see it sooner or later.

Plus:

It looks absolutely incredible

Great cast of characters, in the true sense of the word.

Minus:

Some chapters can run too long and become a bit dull, and some jokes on the adaptation don't land as well

Very much like Nichijou, it can become very hit or miss depending on much you like this sort of humor.

[hardworkandguts]

See You Tomorrow at the Food Court

フードコートで、また明日。

(Anime + manga)

Comedy by Shinichirou Nariie

Era: 2020s

Rating: A

Plot: Wada struggles to make friends at her school because she's seen as the teacher's pet. Yamamoto classmates don't talk to her because they're intimidated by her gyaru looks. Both meet at the food court where Wada airs her many, many grievances to Yamamoto.

Length: 6 episodes (covered from #14 to #19), 25 chapters

Thoughts: One of those shows I ended up picking almost at random, mostly from the title that "sounds like a 2010s comedy", it quickly became one my favourite shows not only from the 2025 Summer season, but also very likely of the year, a mean feat for a show that runs for only six episodes. Why? While it is mostly a show about nothing - each sketch is usually initiated by some thought that crosses Wada's mind, both her and Yamamoto feel grounded to reality in a way you don'y see very often. The things they talk about - Wada's classmates, the gacha game she's constantly playing (even things like lamenting throwing away money on a game that one day will stop being supported, which happens by the end of the story), Yamamoto studying English because she wants to move there or her interest in the supernatural aren't quirky in themselves, they are the bullshit discussions you might have with your friends, most of the humor comes from Wada having her own brand of weird, being a proficient hater gremlin, and I really like that energy. When you have a method to make people leave you alone after getting too much heat? That's a lot of hating, a seasoned pro, someone who was the main character on that site a few too many times. While there are a few recurring characters - by "recurring" I mean "appearing maybe twice" - like Saitou, the "gorilla-faced" classmate of Wada who she discovers is the author of the self-insert romantic fanfiction she loves, her old skirt-flipping classmate and his current Wada look-alike girlfriend, episodes are really just about Wada and Yamamoto talking about random topics.

There's also a subversion on how they look that comes up on occasion - Yamamoto is seen as a scary delinquent because of her looks and being mostly aloof, even as she has good grades, is very level headed and even has a part-time job (and struggled to get it because employers didn't get past a first impression of her), but struggles somewhat with her figure, as japanese society has an obsession with thinness, while Wada looks like the typical teacher's pet, but her grades aren't that good and as established is very petty and lazy. While very different, their relationship is very good - Wada can just be herself, take off and never stop, while Yamamoto is just happy to hear her talk and act like a big sister to her.

The adaptation does a very solid work of capturing the stories in the manga, and slightly padding the moments in the story where it's just a series of speech balloons with extra animation. It is one of those cases where both are short enough you should have fun with both.

An incredible surprise on the Summer 2025 lineup, and proof that if you have a solid story with solid characters, but it's too short for 12 episodes... do it with 6.

Recommended to:

Plus:

A great addition to the "animes about nothing" canon

Wada goes straight into my favourite characters list

Their relationship plays off very naturally, even the fight.

Minus:

It's really short, which sucks when you really like the characters.