Episode 4 of Tonari no Youkai-san. We finally meet the car-headed fellow from the opening credits. He's a tsukumogami, meaning a beloved object that acquires a soul. In this case, Wagen-kun was a VW Golf expy beloved by his owner for 40 years. But get this, he's showing up at the driving school because he needs a license to drive himself, and before that, since he was a German car, he had to acquire Japanese citizenship.

<facepalm>

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So I was a little surprised by the turn of the plot with the four girls on the train. I assumed with the bulge in the back of her skirt that Akira was starting her village's animal transformation a little early. I was not expecting secret mushrooms. I was not expecting them to work from that end either, but I guess if it was possible in The Puppet Masters, it's possible here.

I wonder if anyone connected that segment to the old Japanese horror movie, starring the lovely Kumi Mizuno, Matango: Attack of the Mushroom People.

This also answered the question of how they'd take up the surplus of stations, some of them were just not safe to stop at.

Now the LAST thing I expected was two of the girls subjected to lilliputian bondage to the rotor blades of a tiny Chinook. That can't be good for them - the rotors, I mean.

Forgot I need pictures the engage people apparently... *grin*

Posted by: J Greely at April 25, 2024 11:03 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at April 25, 2024 03:33 PM (nk1Z+)

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I never made it through all 99 episodes of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro, although I should at some point. But the main theme was that despite all of Kitaro's efforts, interactions between humans and the Yokai world are rarely very healthy for the humans.

And while the people in the village Jiro protects get along pretty well with their resident Yokai, there is plenty of danger from the transients. This is not quite the idyllic life sort of Anime one might have thought it was.

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Re:Monster Ep 3. Our hero gets laid, 7 times, and does not freak out about it.

Posted by: Mauser at April 19, 2024 04:28 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at April 19, 2024 04:29 PM (nk1Z+)

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Kaiju 8-gou - Kaiju #8 Is Gou the counter-word for monsters?

If you look at it sideways, there's definitely a Pacific Rim influence when it comes to monster disposal, although so far there's been no indication of a black market for monster bits. Although they do preserve samples for a laboratory.

The characters have been in a world beset by monsters since they were children, so this is normal to them. Nobody is freaking out because there are monsters. Of course they run for their lives, but when the monsters are remote, they watch with curiosity and cheer on the Monster Defense forces. Nobody cheers for the clean-up squad though.

It's dirty, nasty work, especially when you get assigned to the intestines.... Kafka Hibino is our main character. As a child, he and his neighbor, Mina Ashiro, swore they would one day join the Defense Force after a Kaiju destroyed their homes. He, however, failed the test while Mina rose through the ranks to become one of the youngest captains, at 27, and a rising star in the force. Kafka, on the other hand, gave up after his rejection, and stayed on Clean-up duty. One day Newbie Reno Ichikawa shows up, and he's assigned to Kafka for training. He's ambitious, and wants to get to the Defense Forces, and looks down on Kafka for giving up. But after the first grueling day, he actually thanks Kafka for getting him through it, and points out that the age limit for joining the defense forces has been raised. He has a bit of that Tsundere attitude, "Not that I care whether you go for it or not."

Apparently there's a danger of minor monsters showing up at the site of a clean-up, what they called a Yoju. Kafka and Ishikawa are the last ones off the site when one strikes and nearly chows down on Ishikawa, but for Kafka tackling him. Kafka tells Ishikawa to run and call the monster in while he distracts it. Kafka lures the monster away until one of the monster's swipes at him connects and sends him flying, breaking his leg. The monster is about to eat him when Ishikawa reappears and strikes the thing in the head, returning the favor. They are both apparently doomed though, but Ishikawa DID get a phone call in, and Mina's squad shows up in the nick of time and destroys the thing in seconds.

The two end up in a local hospital. And in a scene that was in every preview video, a small flying monster appears in Kafka's room and shoves itself down his throat, converting him into a humanoid monster. They decide they'd better leave when an old man in the hallway starts calling in a monster report.

And at the end, we see Mina remembering the past like Kafka was. So she DOES remember him, even though she showed no recognition any earlier. She holds it against him that he didn't get into the forces with her. Then she gets the call about a monster in the hospital....

This is impressively animated. I'm sure there's plenty of CGI, but it doesn't look like it. Kafka's character design is a bit off the mainstream for anime. But it's cool and flexible, and good for comedic effect. It's not strictly a comedy, in fact, it's mainly serious, but it has its moments to lighten the mood.

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While that's it for new shows, there are two returning shows, and I guess I'll be getting to them in a bit.

Tonari no yokai episode 2 surprised me, when in addition to all the historic monsters, Hanako-chan, the ghost of the third stall in the girl's restroom appears.

And fortunately, from an obscure webcomic I read called Erma, I wasn't surprised when the teacher's neck extended far enough to cross the classroom when the Kappa girl fell over for lack of water.

Posted by: J Greely at April 13, 2024 09:50 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at April 21, 2024 12:01 AM (nk1Z+)

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Anime Russian Roulette - Sometimes you lose.

In this case, Lv2 kara Cheat datta Motoyuusha Kouho no Mattari Isekai Life - Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers.

Interesting bit: The hero is summoned from another fantasy world instead of ours.

I had a whole write up for this attached to the previous post, but lost the edit. Somehow I closed the tab, but Ctrl-W doesn't seem to be working in Firefox, so I'm not sure what I did.

The initial fantasy world had some problems, and I wasted more time writing about them than when they were on screen. Mostly it was about really inconsistent costume design.

Our Hero is the 198th innocent snatched out of his world the fight the "Dark Army", but unfortunately he has no special stats, and they can't tell what "Divine Gift" he was given as a power. They totally forget about him because a guy with blonde hair, a smirk, and solid 999 stats appears on the next circle. They pay so much attention to the obviously bad hero that they forget to send our guy back, and he's stuck there when the gate closed.

Then the King grants him a place to stay in a forest on the edge of the kingdom (Which is full of toxic demon gas, as we find out later), and has him thrown on a wagon and dragged out there on a 20 day trip. They did supply him with a bag of holding with some crap and some useful stuff (100,000 gold in various coins, I noticed, which is important later). But the bag had a crap sword in it, and apparently an attract monster curse. Still, he managed to kill the three slimes that attacked him, and he leveled up, and all his stats went to infinity, a symbol he'd never seen before and didn't understand.

The status screens and menus come with a voice mode, and make suggestions to him. It stops him from going into the polluted wood, suggests a purification spell, which he casually casts (Turns out it's one of the biggest holy spells ever.), but then he decides he actually wants to go back to town, where he's been banned. Presto, transformation spell. For a moment he chooses to edit his character to female, but changes back with a different look. then Teleports back to the capitol.

Upon arriving at the capitol, he decides to see if there's a guild, because he needs money....

It was at this point, if this were a book, I'd have thrown it at the wall. He had boatloads of money, enough to last years. But he left that bag of holding in the woods. WTeverlovingF?

I  should unpause and continue....

So, he goes to the Adventurers' Guild because he just ASSUMES he can't join the Merchants' Guild without knowing somebody. And look, busty elf guild receptionists. And E through A ranks. "Works just like the guilds at home." Not much of an Isekai if you STARTED in an Isekai world....

At the guild, instead of taking a job off the board, he decides to help this broke little elf urchin who wants to go to the forest he just left. And he mistakenly brags he can teleport her. Which freaks everyone in the guild hall. He then gets an intervention from a female member of the Royal Knights who thinks he's up to no good, (with her three friends, a mage, barbarienne, and an archer (who is NOT an elf, but kitted out like one), also destined to be in the harem I wager.). To allay their suspicions, he offers to take them with.

Pulling it off convinces them he's the most exalted of wizards or something, and there's profuse apologizing and bowing and kneeling.

The little girl is surprised the forest isn't full of the poison gas. And our hero is about to blurt out that he used the purification spell when his status screen warns him that it's dangerous to tell a demon (whups, not an elf) that you can use purification. Considering that Teleportation is a trivial spell for him and it blows everyone away, the fact that you used purification which used a third of your mana pool should be a pretty big giveaway, but mister natural skill at math totally misses this.

Then the future harem step up to attack the little girl, whom they know is a demon now, and demand to see her true form. Be careful what you wish for... she transforms into a giant wolf-beast, and announces her particularly high status amongst the demons. Then she emits the poison gas which incapacitates everyone but our hero. He teleports all the girls back to town but stays behind to fight, with no idea what to do. He's just gonna spam all of his spells. Cliffhanger ending.

Clues from the end credits and the preview, the little girl form is a disguise, she's actually an adult. And he apparently domesticates her as his first haremette. Yay.

Of every Isekai I've seen, this has to be the laziest, and has the biggest plot holes, in spite of taking the easiest route ever. But the girls are cute, if also kind of standard issue.

If you're bored, I guess you can watch it.

Posted by: J Greely at April 10, 2024 07:56 PM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at April 11, 2024 03:37 AM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: J Greely at April 11, 2024 04:58 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at April 11, 2024 06:20 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: Mauser at April 12, 2024 05:32 PM (nk1Z+)

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That was getting a little unwieldy to edit. And with how iffy this editor is.... well, better safe than sorry.

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Tonari no Youkai-san (or Yokai) Spirits of the Neighborhood (I guess).

One might think this is a slow-paced or healing Anime, but there's a hit of something a little dark too by the end of the first episode.

In the rural Japanese town of Fuchigamori, three friends are discussing how Takumi's cat Buchio has transformed into a Nekomata. After 20 years as the beloved family pet, he has been reborn as a twin-tailed cat, and he's a bit shy about it. The poor fellow has a long road ahead of him filling out registration paperwork and health insurance forms....

On the way home, the young girl in the trio, Mu-chan, runs into Jiro at the bus stop. Jiro is a humanoid crow spirit who watches over their valley. (His father Tazenbo is a Tengu). She tells him about the new arrival but he seems to know already.

Takumi asks Buchio if he can use any Yokai powers yet, but he has no idea. It's suggested that he go and talk to Jiro and his dad. Later, after visiting them, Jiro introduces him to Yuri Tachibana, a bakegitsune. When they first meet, she's a redheaded woman with a scowl the strikes fear into Buchio's heart. Jiro hasn't told him why he's brought him there, so she demonstrates by first manifesting fox ears, then transforming into a fox-woman. Nekomata are also natural transformers, and Jiro has brought him to her so she can tutor him. It's subtle at first. She has him cutting the stems of flowers with a pair of scissors and points out how subconsciously he's transformed his paw to the point he can use them, but that the real lesson is to consciously transform his hand into a human one. By the end of the day, he can do both hands.

Mu-chan also visits Jiro as he's making Inari sushi and they talk about some upcoming religious festivals. Watch carefully when Jiro makes an offering on the family shrine....

The lantern festival has Mu-chan's family waiting by a small fire on their doorstep to greet the spirit of their grandfather. At one point Mu-chan wishes the Oshoro she made to bring back her grandfather would have also brought back her dad. (The Oshoro is a little horse model she made out of vegetables and in the spirit world it turned into a horse.) Her grandfather's spirit lays a hand on her shoulder and tells her her father wouldn't like her to think of him as dead.

Later, her mother is taking a phone call from the police. Her husband has been missing and the detectives think he has been sucked into the void between the living and spiritual realms. She hasn't told Mu-chan, but after discussing it with Jiro and Tazenbo, the two of them discuss how Mu-chan can see it. And in the final scene, she is seeing it as a black fog collecting behind the trees at the side of the road.

If you like a contemporary view of Japanese mythology, this show should be right up your alley.

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Sentai Daishikkaku - Go Go Loser Ranger

So apparently this show was made for Hulu, and you can tell by the animation it has some budget behind it. The concept has been summarized out there. Basically when the bad guys appeared with their floating fortress over the city 13 years ago, the Dragon Rangers basically killed all their bosses the first day. The only fighters left were their mooks, the Dusters, who are effectively immortal because they get blasted to dust and eventually re-form themselves. None of them are leadership material (And I guess there are 26 of them, since they're lettered A-Z, although it's hinted some may have left already). Apparently that first day they worked out a treaty that they would stage fights every week, and lose every week. Every week the Dusters have to come up with a new Monster, and one of them transforms into this false boss (since, being made of dust, they can effectively transform into anything). They're running out of ideas however.

D, though, has gotten pretty sick of the whole business. And even though he's off shift that Sunday, he goes down anyway, first impersonating a spectator, then joining the battle and refusing to get blown away by the ultimate weapon, and when he attacks, the Red Keeper tells him to mind his place before cutting him harmlessly in half.

D re-forms on the roof of the complex in his human shape, where he again meets the girl he met before the battle. She and her partner are recruiters for a sort of Dragon Keeper's auxiliary, who maintain security to keep the battle from harming the spectators. When they first met, they tried to recruit him, but he turned them down. Up on the roof he decides that he will join up after all. He wants to be on the side of the power, of the winners, so that he can then bring them down.

---

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I'll edit this post as I get first episodes.

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Re:Monster has started with one of the nastiest Isekaiings ever. Our poor protagonist is getting stabbed to death and then some by a crazy girlfriend with a sci-fi knife. OP promises lots of monster girls, but mute it because it has a horrible rap theme song, with a lot of bad English. One advantage apparently about being born a goblin is that he goes from baby to youth in about three days, so that dispenses with one of the more tedious parts of a "Reborn into a new world" type Isekai - childhood.

Yeah, there are messages when he achieves something, but no hovering status screens, and no divine spirit involved. Apparently this is some carryover from an ESP power he had in the previous world, which is NOT our world, for once. He already has the power of Absorption, where he gains traits from whatever he eats, even metals and poisons. However, anything he had acquired in his previous life has been lost.

It's a unique set-up at least.

And at 6 days old, he's got a goblin girl hitting on him....

Okay, you can tap your head for a status screen, and evolve at 100 points, and he's already up to 86. He'd better evolve quickly though, Goblin lifespans are only about 20 years. So of course he sets a speed record for evolving into a Hobgoblin, and with every new creature he kills (With his two companions) the list of skills inflates incredibly. And soon, he's running the entire cohort he was born in.

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Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku - Train To The End Of The World. Cute girls ride an antique (but I imagine highly fetishized by Japanese Railfans) 2000 series electric train from their home town of Agano to Ikebukuro.

It seems someone invented 7G networking but didn't realize that it threatened the laws of physics. If you thought Flip Flappers was psychedelic, you should see what happened when they turned it on....

Two years later people are living with the consequences, which are different all over. In Agano, it means anyone over 21 years and 3 months old turns into a random animal. Some places everyone turned into trees. The distances between places have expanded enormously. Shizuru and her three friends haven't changed yet (they may still, no matter where they go). Shizuro is determined to find her friend Yoka with whom she had a falling out shortly before the 7G disaster. A chance bit of newspaper has a picture of Yoka, placing her in Ikebukuro only a month prior. And so, after a crash course in how to operate a 2000 Series engine, the journey begins.

Which includes a count of the number of intervening stops, so I imagine each place will be a different surreal adventure. Although there are more than there are episodes, so they'd better get a move on.

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Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii? An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride (Short title: Midome). It's a mistake to call the sorcerer with no social skills an Incel, since he's quite fine with that state of affairs. At least until he get a chance to buy an enslaved Elf at auction.

Now, while I'm all in favor of white haired elf characters, especially with collars, even if they're not dark skinned, for some reason my initial impression of her reminds me of Carla from Kono Healer Mendodkusai, and she hasn't spoken a word yet.

Zagan (the sorcerer) Rolls a 1 for Initiative and Nephelia (Nephy) totally drives their initial conversation by asking questions about how horrible he is going to be to her. Despite his denials, she keeps on asking how she is to be tortured and killed. I started getting the feeling she actually wanted it, the way she kept volunteering. Either that or she was playing 4-D Chess. In any case, in classic sorcerer style, he takes the fair maiden up to a tower room and locks her away gives her free rein to do with it as she likes. It's a "Master has given Dobby clothing!" moment.

The first episode felt really short, even though it was full length. Guess that's why they debuted with two. Before I delve into the second, I predict that all the comedy will center around her unspoken assumptions putting him on the spot and leaving him unable to communicate either.

And the opening of episode 2 is exactly that. He can't even figure out how to answer "Good morning, Master." Considering he grew up in the streets of the city, he shouldn't be THAT clueless about human social etiquette.

But he is.

The show takes a turn for the strikingly mundane as he discovers that people can actually appreciate a sorcerer who isn't doing evil shit to them. After he fights off some bandits attacking a Caravan, and the sorcerer behind them, ostensibly to impress Nephy that he will protect her, The cart owner pays him a huge bag of silver (Which the bandits were about to take) to ride with them for security. This solves the plot hole where they couldn't afford to pay for a ride, but were heading into town for shopping. He decides to get stuff for his elf girl, and the clothing shop is clearly a Flag event, since the Harpy proprietor Manuela appears in the OP, and somehow she floats around the shop without flapping her wings.

Hmmm, Manuela appeared to be shocked by Nephy's collar, but then the first outfit she produced for her is a barely-there strappy number that embarrasses both of them. But her enthusiasm for that outfit and the other ideas she has makes it seem like she's really into that herself. Fortunately that enthusiasm forces Nephy to finally express an opinion for herself and she decides that she's happy with the Maid outfit she was dressed in second, before a worse third outfit could have been offered.

I do hope an actual plot kicks in at some point, but the rest of the episode is filled with domestic cuteness.

Flag #2 the story cuts away from our awkward couple to a redheaded knight who also appears in the opening credits. She was actually in the very first scene of the first episode, but unarmored, and unconscious for most of it. But that scene established that there's a religious order opposed to sorcerers, and this one establishes that she's a knight of that order, and conflicted because she was rescued by a sorcerer.

I shouldn't have wished for plot. The backstory for the first scene gets recalled. She had a force of Angelic Knights that were wiped out by the cult of "Face Stealer" sorcerers who had been kidnapping young women in the area. The last of whom was the fellow Zagan had rescued her from. So, we get the standard "Corrupt church leader" who lies to her and says that a search of the Face Stealer's lair implicates Zagan as the mastermind, and he orders her after him, saying that even if that IS a mistake, he's still an evil sorcerer and must be wiped out. And we get her name, which really just rolls off the tongue, even less so in Japanese: Chastille Lillqvist.

I'm following the Ember version. They like to stick a manga panel at the last frame. In this case, we see that yeah, that third, or even fourth outfit would have been FAR worse....

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Posted by: J Greely at April 05, 2024 04:55 AM (oJgNG)

Posted by: Mauser at April 05, 2024 06:08 PM (nk1Z+)

Posted by: mikeski at April 06, 2024 11:59 PM (DgGvY)

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