THIS WEEK ON ANIWIRE...Summer 2023 Preview: Blue Eyes and Blood Rainbows
This week's installment of ANIWIRE is out! This one's a season preview of Summer 2023 anime, featuring Jujutsu Kaisen, Undead Murder Farce, Chinese donghua and...Ultraman?! Check it out here.
THIS WEEK ON ANIWIRE: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Gives Fans its Blessing
This week on ANIWIRE: the final, extra-long write-up on Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury is here. Enjoy! Plus, a round up of recent Anime Expo news, some cool recent pieces by other folks to check out, and (most importantly) the AMV of the week.
Thanks to those folks who have been reading along! It's been an honor to write about this show week to week.
Over on Cohost, I’ve been running a feature called RPG Maker Dungeon about RPG Maker games I think are interesting (plus titles made in other hobbyist engines.) This time I wrote about Final Fantasy ?/Hatena, a fangame that I find excellent in some respects and kinda boring in others. What does this game have to say about Final Fantasy as a whole? What is Final Fantasy, really? Check it out here.
THIS WEEK ON ANIWIRE: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Overwhelms Through Unrelenting Tenderness
this week on ANIWIRE, gundam the witch from mercury pulls out all the stops for the wildest giant robot duel we've seen on screen in quite a while. itano circuses! laser swords! haros...with guns?!
THIS WEEK ON ANIWIRE: Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury Rides a Broom Along The Woven Path
this week on ANIWIRE, the weekly anime newsletter blogging Witch From Mercury: the woven path! broomstick robots, miorine's feet, and whether or not it matters if mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury resolves its themes in a satisfying way (the answer: kinda)
Help I want to get into anime this summer but don’t know what to watch. What do I do??
So Crunchyroll did a pretty cool thing this summer, where they’ve made the first episode of every anime series airing this season available to watch. But where do you start, you might ask?? Here are some suggestions for where you may begin your anime journey*
Do you like:
Drama that tugs at the heartstrings?
Go check out Orange, based on a highly popular shoujo manga. On the same day that a boy transfers into Naho’s class, she receives a letter that claims to be from herself in the future. Her future self warns her that something will happen to the new transfer student if she doesn’t intervene, but can Naho conquer her own shyness and anxiety to be there for another person when they need it most? It’s a change from the intensity of Hiroshi Hamasaki’s other works, but so far the adaptation’s done an excellent job of adding a strong cinematic voice to the manga’s fan-favorite storyline.
If you want something lighter, Sweetness and Lightning is the story of a teacher and his (tooth-rottingly adorable) child who bond with a neighbor over delicious food. It’s a feel-good series that isn’t afraid to be bittersweet, but its sadder moments are buoyed by great character animation and the joys of human interaction. Plus as far as we know this isn’t Usagi Drop and the parent and his child won’t end up together, so bullet dodged.
An intense mafia thriller?
91 Days is heavily indebted to mafia films like The Godfather, and honestly doesn’t do anything its predecessors haven’t done first. But it is done stylishly, with confidence and a commitment to telling a story rooted more in classic revenge thrillers than your typical anime. It’s also quite polished visually for being the first original project of Shuka, a new studio founded by ex-Brains Base folks. Shows without prior source material are always a risk, but I figure it’s worth taking a chance on this one. Plus, TK of Ling Tosite Sigure did the OP!
Shit-kicking action?
Mob Psycho 100 brings together wunderkind director Yuzuru Tachikawa and genius animator Yoshimichi Kameda to adapt ONE’s popular manga to the screen. The first episode reads like their attempt to outdo every risk-taking action series made in the past few years, so if the show can keep up that level of quality we could be looking at an all-time classic? Anyway if you liked One Punch Man (or even if you didn’t) this is the easiest recommendation of the season so far for me.
Alternatively, Thunderbolt Fantasy is a bizarre collaboration between Gen Urobuchi (of Madoka Magica fame) and the famous Taiwanese puppet studio Pili. It is absolutely nuts, and if you are a fan of martial arts films or wuxia stuff--or anime like G Gundam that crib from the genre’s bag of tricks--get on this shit, stat. You will believe a puppet can fly.
Bananya
It’s a short anime about a cat that lives inside of a banana. What do you have to lose.
*funimation has some series as well, notably Love Live Sunshine! check that one out too if you’re into that kind of thing
It’s fall, the season of wishing for cooler weather only to drown in the swamp that is DC in September. This has been a fairly tricky year for anime, seeing multiple projects w/ big ambitions and cool ideas fall hard on their face. Will this fall follow suit, or are the sakuga lovers doomed to cry for another year? Or maybe investing yourself in the health of another medium is quite unhealthy and you’re better off going for a run, or something. The fall’s good weather for it. So it goes.
KEEP AN EYE ON THESE
Concrete Revolutio sees Fullmetal Alchemist director and scribe (Seiji Mizushima and Shou Aikawa respectively) collaborate on a project that is literally the kitchen sink and then some. Reportedly Aikawa’s take on Watchmen, the trailer shows heroes, magical girls, giant robots, and a very loud (but stylish!) aesthetic drawing liberally from pop art. Part of me’s a bit worried by Aikawa (who has some sketchy political beliefs) interpreting Watchmen of all things, but I’m in this for the spectacle if nothing else.
Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans is the most recent installment in the Gundam franchise, but it’s written by Mari Okada holy shit. More pertinently, it’s directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai, her collaborator on some of her best-loved work (including Toradora, the second season of Honey and Clover and AnoHana, though some people HATE that series.) Okada’s plotting can be sloppy, taking batshit twists and turns, but I admire how she always puts her characters and their relationships first. Definitely curious to see what she does w/ the Gundam toolbox: could either be a breath of fresh air or a hilarious disaster.
One Punch Man: It’s One Punch Man. The manga’s the kind of thing where you wonder if animating it would be to do it a disservice; people have already made gifs of individual panels with more attention to detail than most TV anime! The director of Space Dandy’s working on this one, bringing some of his animator buddies on board, so this stands a chance of being fairly incredible. Or not. Either way the source material’s good, I hope they don’t mess it up!
Subete ga F ni Naru: “Wait!” you might say. “Didn’t the guy who directed this also do Elfen Lied? And wasn’t that show terrible in retrospect??” This may be true, but he’s also worked on some of the weirder, slower eps of Cardcaptor Sakura and (more recently) cult favorite Sound of the Sky. Add the guy who did series composition for Gatchaman Crowds, character designs by Inio Asano (a comics artist you could charitably call a voice of his generation) and award-winning source material, and you’ve got a recent Noitamina series that could actually be good??
Garo (sorry: GARRRROOOOOOOOOO) is getting a second anime season!! I’ll definitely miss the director and writer from the previous season, but this one brings director Atsushi Wakabayashi to the project (a very experienced and talented director of shounen anime) as well as a writing team led by Shou Aikawa. So it could in fact be more polished than the rather inconsistent (if often good, and sometimes brilliant) first season. Either way I’m excited for more over the top battles and Romi Park is back this time around too it’s gonna be great.
IF YOU LIKE THIS KIND OF THING
We’re getting a sequel to K, which I am unusually hyped about. I predicted the first season would be a disaster, but it turned out to be a charming disaster w/ unexpected fidelity when it came to nailing smaller details most other anime rarely attempt (even if it botched the more important stuff!) GoHANDS has overreached before, and I dunno if I’m up for a super angsty, self-serious sequel season of K. But if we get more cleaning robots, Kuro and Neko cameos and giant floating planets, I AM UP FOR THIS. Think of all the Space Jam remixes that have been made since the first season
I have no idea what to expect from Osomatsu-san, except that former Gintama staff are reviving an old-school classic. That is really all I need to hear to sell me on this, at least for one episode. Also frequent Ikuhara collaborator Yukari Hashimoto is doing the soundtrack, wow!!
ALSO THERE’S SEQUELS
We’re getting a second season of Noragami this fall; ultimately I didn’t find the first to be too memorable, but it had a hip style I want to see more of. Monogatari appears to be wrapping up (or is it? To be continued!) Haikyuu’s getting a second season, which should make some of my fellow Twitter friends very happy! Ditto Aikatsu, which I’ve heard is pretty damn solid if you’re into that kind of thing. Then there’s Seraph of the End season 2 which is, yeah. World Trigger. Fafner. It’s weird. But that’s it! Maybe anime will be good. Either way, Legend of the Galactic Heroes exists.
It’s summer, the time of swimming in lakes, dying of humidity and staying inside w/ the blinds closed watching anime. Summer season’s infamous for being pretty thin on the ground, but in my experience it’s paid host to some of the riskiest shows of the year. I’m pretty behind on anime these days, but here’s a couple of shows that aired this week you just might like. No guarantees, though!
Gatchaman Crowds Insight: Gatchaman Crowds returns! The first season of this scrappy little reboot of Tatsunoko’s 1970s superhero drama aired in Summer 2013, and became famous/infamous for its bleeding edge revision of the superhero genre and optimistic lead character. While Crowds took an episode or two to really warm up, Insight starts out with a bang, throwing plenty of new ideas and technologies into the mix: alien diplomacy, the thoughts of everyone in town becoming visible, and what look to be the consequences of the Gatchaman becoming part of the System rather than outsiders. There are plenty who aren’t fond of the original, not to mention that its ideas come off as a bit too optimistic in a post-Gamergate world. But director Kenji Nakamura’s never been one to rest on his laurels, and I’m overjoyed to see these characters back again.
Ushio and Tora: Here’s an interesting one: Studio MAPPA, partnering with the reportedly new Studio Voln, are adapting a classic 90s shounen manga to the screen with the help of some Hajime no Ippo/Hunter X Hunter alumni. Ushio and Tora isn’t particularly well-loved in the US, represented only by a reportedly lackluster OVA. The manga was given a far better reception in Japan, winning not only the Shogakukan Award for Shounen but the Seiun Award for Best Comic in 1997. What I’ve read of the manga is a lot of fun, carrying an admittedly well-worn plotline with fantastic monster designs and kinetic action. The anime looks to be following suit, with lively character animation and a general vibe that’s faithful to its 90s origins. Hoping this one stays consistent!
Classroom Crisis: This show’s a gamble; the director previously worked on cult classic Gundam Build Fighters, and reportedly is working on this series at a new studio he founded with friends from that production. But there’s rumors of rushed production, and it already shows in the first episode with some stiff animation and evident shortcuts. That said, the premise is admirably weird--a class of experimental high school engineers, on Mars, dealing with behind-the-scenes corporate backstabbing!--and the character dynamics and worldbuilding are already promising. The writer of the series is the scribe of beloved visual novel White Album 2, so hopefully the script will carry the production through. Alternatively we’ll get something along the lines of Saekano, which is considerably less beloved than White Album 2. We’ll see!
Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers: At first glance this show looks to conform to the familiar light novel mold, with a typical “Chosen One” plot and hilariously overdesigned characters. Looking closer reveals something much more appealing, a well-done fantasy narrative with clever direction, some excellent action sequences and a cool aesthetic reminiscent of Aztec civilization. But it’s the author’s name which is the kicker: he’s the same person who wrote The Book of Bantorra, a very weird series of fantasy novels adapted by David Production in 2009. Bantorra had plenty of critics, but its fans praised the series for its tightly crafted plot and some great high-concept ideas. Similarly, the series synopsis of Rokka hints at darker undertones the first episode carefully avoids. Could this series be a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Curious to see how it turns out.
Other Stuff: Game of Laplace is another Seiji Kishi production, and while I’m not a big fan of the director even his critics are saying this is one of his better efforts. Similarly, I still need to see Gangsta, which looks to be a return to form by put-upon studio Manglobe (whose latest effort was anime classic Samurai Flamenco.) Quite a few people on my timeline are saying the first episode of Shimoneta is worth seeing, inappropriate as it may be. Still to air are Gakkou Gurashi, which looks to be another show about cute girls doing cute things*, and Prison School, which sees the director and writer of Shirobako adapting what can be described as a gifted mangaka’s middle finger to the collective niche readership of Japan. Look forward to it!
Akira Toriyama: You could fight him but why would you do that do him? Dragonball GT already happened and that was the biggest punch in kidneys to the guy, and anyways, he’s Akira goddamn Toriyama, he’s in the money so much that if you punched him, he’d forget about you in 4 seconds.
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