There’s something I find really funny about the current state of shounen anime and manga fandom.
On the one hand, you have an online fandom that loves battles and action scenes. “Who comes out on top in a 1v1?” is a perennially popular question, and I understand the appeal. You have all these powerful warriors around, be they awe-inspiring heroes or dreadful villains or something in between, and you want to either support your favorites or genuinely think through the question of who’s superior. Beyond the immediate domain of Shounen battle manga, there’s an entire cottage nerd industry built around exploring this idea: Who would win a Death Battle?
On the one hand, a lot of the big series in recent years, particularly the ones that have been finishing up, have emphasized themes surrounding group effort. While “the power of friendship and teamwork” is a longstanding staple of shounen anime and manga, titles like Demon Slayerand My Hero Academiafeel more about collective action and understanding that even if you’re not the strongest, your contributions matter. What makes someone the greatest isn’t how hard they hit or how many foes they can take down single-handedly, but conviction and a desire to help.
You end up having this combination of fans who care a lot about who’s the biggest badass around trying to mine stories where that’s of diminished importance. It would sometimes make more sense to ask who wins in a 1v1 between romance manga heroines. Certainly not all shounen fans think this way, and even those who love the big fights aren’t necessarily obsessed with ranking characters in a tier list. But just the fact that these two aspects exist, and they are almost in direct conflict with each other, both amuses and frustrates me.
PS: Who wins in a fight between Sawako from Kimi ni Todoke and Hachi from Nana?
I feel like all my hobbies have been very enjoyable lately. Great shows are airing, cool streams are happening, and creativity in all its forms needs to be cherished and fostered. At the same time, I feel like the world is falling apart, or at the very least revealed to be a house of cards encouraged to collapse at the whims and mania of the powerful. I think I have to remember that the arts alone do not change the world, but they can empower and inspire people to imagine a better world that we can all strive towards.
I feel incredibly proud of all the regular people who refuse to be bullied by people with the frailest egos imaginable.
On to the blog-specific things!
Thank you to my Patreon members, and a particularly big thanks to the folks below:
Kio responding to a person who considers Haraguchi from Genshiken their “#1 oshi,” and asks whether the character has a full name. Kio’s answer: He never came up with one.
Precure has been the juggernaut of girls’ anime for the past 20+ years, and the most common way for others to compete has been by making shows focused on music idols. So when You and Idol Precure was announced as the first entry to also incorporate this popular motif, I wondered how it might try to differentiate itself from the rest of the pack.
You and Idol Precure is a return to the beams-and-brawls style that had long defined the franchise but was minimized in the most recent predecessor, Wonderful Precure! In this way, You and Idol Precure is also a series that speaks to the legacy of both “magical girl as idol” (Creamy Mami, Looking for the Full Moon) and “magical girl as fighter” (Cutie Honey, Sailor Moon). I had high hopes that this season could combine the two sides in an interesting fashion, and while I think it overall turned out decently, I can’t help but feel that there was some wasted potential.
The building blocks are excellent: The premise of bringing joy and defeating doubt as idol magical girls is fun. The heroines are vivid and memorable in terms of personality and presentation. The animation, while at times inconsistent, can really shine, such as during big battles and transformation sequences. Side characters, be they allies or enemies, have a nice balance between seriousness and silliness. And the show tries to basically say that people have both light and darkness in them, and celebrating the former shouldn’t mean denying the presence of the latter.
But the series falters for me in two ways. The first is that its approach to the idol side feels both a little too conventional, and like it doesn’t lean into that side enough. The second is that the show doesn’t give its more interesting stories and themes enough room to really breathe and develop.
In regard to point #1, part of me hoped that the series would be them going around and having to live their careers as idols while taking down the bad guys. While this is not far off from what actually happens, I really think it could be more exciting. Similarly, every heroine in the series does a special song and dance as their finishing move highlighting their unique qualities: Cure Idol loves to sing, Cure Wink has a classic western music background, and Cure Kyunkyun is a dancer. Naturally, they eventually get group performances as combination attacks, but it ends up being the same ones on repeat, and the emphasis on what makes each Precure special falls to the wayside. If they had changed up the center based on who is the focus in an episode, they could have maintained this aspect.
As for point #2, there are a number of characters introduced that help give some depth and dimension to the world. There are narratives that involve dealing with sacrificing your greatest desires to help save the ones you love, ones about getting consumed by negative emotions, and even ones about guilt over succeeding where your friends and peers have failed. All of these have the potential to guide plotlines in ways that reward viewers over a longer period, but they are almost all resolved in one or two episodes. One story—involving a famous male idol who befriends the main heroine Uta and his desire to reconcile with an old friend—is probably the best executed of them, but I would have liked to see even more in that vein.
I know I’m not the target audience in most ways. I’m not a little girl or even much of an idol fan (despite my ever-growing interest in VTubers). In fact, seeing as I’ve now been watching Precure for over two decades, the gulf only gets wider with time. I’m aware of all this, and understand that what I want out of an anime is not necessarily what a 9-year-old wants.
But I’ve seen when Precure can make something for its core audience and still present something with greater substance. I don’t think this is a case of Precure failing to respect the intelligence of its young audience, as I really believe it’s trying to help them understand and process complex and conflicting emotions while providing great role models to admire and emulate. Rather, I believe You and Idol Precure could have been a more cohesive work that more deftly sews together all its best qualities to create something truly fantastic.
I recently took the opportunity to see the theatrical 4K screening of the feature-length Gundam Wing:Endless Waltz Special Edition in theaters. It was preceded by two short works from the world of Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans, and those are what I’ll be focusing on.
First up was Mobile Suit Gundam Iron-Blooded Orphans Urdr-Hunt Special Edition: The Path of the Little Challenger. The title is a real mouthful, and that’s because it’s a compilation work consisting of animated shorts from the Urdr-Hunt mobile game, which is set in the Iron-Blooded Orphans universe. It centers around a boy from Venus named Wistario Afam, who enters a mysterious stellar scavenger hunt called the Urdr-Hunt.
The conceit of the story is clearly derived from the source material’s game-esque elements, and the shorts themselves are a little disjointed, with the in-game elements meant to glue them together seemingly replaced by narration and possibly other bits of animation. The main cast of Urdr-Hunt does not include any established characters from the anime, but a number of side characters do make appearances. Given that the presentation is inherently flawed—it feels less like it’s about creating a cohesive work, and more about having an established version of the animations in a format that doesn’t require you to play a game that is no longer available—I ultimately don’t begrudge it being a bit of a slog to watch.
My main takeaways come in two parts: First, I enjoyed the way it expands on the woefully under-explored setting of Iron-Blooded Orphans, such as the appearance of more of the Mobile Armors from the “Calamity War” that is so essential to the backstory. Second, as the only Gundam series explicitly in favor of polyamory, I could tell that this element was still very much present in the main “love triangle.” Nothing is conclusive or happens outright, but it isn’t fooling anyone.
Following Urdr-Hunt was the Iron-Blooded Orphans 10th anniversary short, Wedge of Interposition. It takes place between seasons 1 and 2, and shows the Tekkadan crew transitioning to a new stage in their lives now that they have some real notoriety, with particular focus on Orga as the leader having to learn how to interact with more “civilized” bigwigs by doing things like “learning to read and write.” I found the short to be a brief yet heartwarming look at the group’s camaraderie, which I realize is quite rare among Gundam entries. Sure, there are plenty of stories about people being brought together in war, but any sense of unity usually comes from severe growing pains.
And then the ending credits are filled with shirtless pictures of Orga, Mikazuki, and the rest. Truly, they know their audience.
The conclusion I came to in watching both of these is that I certainly wouldn’t mind a prequel or sequel to Iron-Blooded Orphans. While I really like the animeoverall, one of the more disappointing things in the end was not getting to see more of the worldbuilding. What we have with these two short pieces is decent, but I think there’s plenty more stories to tell.
Apocalypse Hotel reminds me why I fell in love with anime.
Its story centers around the cutting-edge Gingarou Hotel, which is run entirely by advanced robots. Ever since a global pandemic forced the entirety of humanity off the planet, Acting Acting Manager Yachiyo and the rest of her fellow mechanized staff have been taking care of the hotel every day waiting for everyone to return. While they’re accustomed to getting zero visitors day in and day out, a guest of extraterrestrial origins suddenly arrives one day, setting the Gingarou Hotel on a long and path full of surprises.
Across 12 episodes, Apocalypse Hotel sets the bright and courteous spirit of hospitality against the darkness of its post-apocalyptic setting, drawing a sublime contrast that accentuates both growing hope and deep despair. Instead of going with a more self-contained format or taking a more serialized approach, Apocalypse Hotel treats each episode like a vignette along an enormously vast timeline. Some things remain the same, other elements reflect the fact that decades can pass between each episode, and the interplay between these two elements tells the story just as much as what’s happening on screen. I already love stories that appear episodic but are actually telling a greater narrative overall, and this series greatly succeeds at this approach.
The clever format is further supported by a gorgeous aesthetic and superb animation that’s both charming and moody. Whether it’s a festive dance number of an opening, characters maintaining the hotel daily, or even the occasional action scene, everything is depicted beautifully.
I think Apocalypse Hotel ends up being a great companion work to something like Frieren: From Journey’s End, which also similarly focuses on the long passage of time from the perspective of the long-lived. Whereas Frieren often looks at a past so full of history that half of it has been forgotten, Apocalypse Hotel peers into a future yet unknown and all its possibilities, all while focusing on the everyday of a surprisingly simple luxury establishment.
It took me a few years, but I finally got around to watching Season 2 of The Ancient Magus’ Bride, wherein the titular bride, Chise, attends a magic high school. I don’t believe I ever reviewed Season 1, but here we are anyway.
In other series, that might be the point where things fall into a comfortable routine and use the school setting to bring out the popular tropes. However, Ancient Magus’ Bride uses it as an opportunity for expanding the lore. Magic and sorcery are already portrayed in a fascinating and mysterious manner, and those qualities only grow stronger and deeper.
One of the most interesting things about this arc is the way it introduces peers for Chise. Until now, she has been surrounded by people significantly older than her, or beings far removed from humanity. But here we have teenagers close in age to Chise’s, each of whom have their own unique challenges but are shown as relatable for her. At the same time, the questions surrounding Chise’s own being only increase, and having your protagonist be a center of some of the enigmas makes for a compelling story.
I found the plot development engaging and hard to predict, and the ending made me appreciate the build-up even more. I’m ready for Season 3 with a renewed interest in The Ancient Magus’ Bride as a whole.
Shounen series are often built on their appealing characters. Many feature a large cast so that each fan can find their favorites, with each character having a different aesthetic, personality, and power set. But some titles will subordinate other aspects of storytelling to prioritize “rule of cool” above all else: If something serves to make a work more awesome and thrill fans, logic and consistency can take a backseat.
One title that immediately comes to mind is Bleach, while the biggest example in recent memory has to be Jujutsu Kaisen.
The ridiculous popularity of Jujutsu Kaisen is undeniable. Putting aside the 11 wins last year at the 2024 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, it both sells well and occupies a huge chunk of the current fandom mindshare. It also attracts fans of all genders, ages, and walks of life. When I look at the characters, it feels like each one is meant to be the coolest person in the world to a specific type of audience. This isn’t inherently bad, but it’s such a major aspect of JJK that I think it can detract from the series.
Examples:
Gojo Satoru is like half the characters in Naruto because he has special eyes. In many ways, he’s Hatake Kakashi x2: Gojo doesn’t just cover one eye but both. His power set is based on infinity and negative infinity or something, and it’s appealing to people who want a guy who can have his hands in his pockets while warping reality and minds. Combine that with his svelte figure, pale complexion, and of course beautiful eyes, and you have someone who is effortlessly stylish.
Fushiguro Toji takes a different angle. Rather than have the biggest, baddest power, he’s basically an amoral, barrel-chested Occult Batman with the demonic equivalent of a utility belt. For those who value being the supposed underdog and winning through sheer hard work and tactical prowess, Toji is the epitome of a character they can get behind.
Nanami Kento is a straitlaced guy in a business suit who looks like an office worker—because that’s what he used to be. He’s stoic but kind, and his powers invoke the concept of overtime to power him up while also using math ratios to create weak points. For those who see a caring and reliable individual as the truest example of greatness, Nanami fits the bill to a tee.
Okkotsu Yuta is basically Ikari Shinji from Evangelion if he became strong and determined (and is literally voiced by Ogata Megumi).
In these cases and more, nearly every character in Jujutsu Kaisen feels like what you get if you asked 100 people to each write their own power fantasy + ideal partner. There’s a real thrill to it all, but I think it can come at the expense of a coherent narrative, often feeling like too many things are tacked onto each character without any sense of moderation.
I often see people praising different aspects of Jujutsu Kaisen. They’ll talk up the action. They’ll praise the characters. But I almost never see anyone praise the plot or the storytelling. “Rule of cool” turns into “ruled by cool,” as if the series is a highlight reel. That’s sometimes all it takes for a shounen series to succeed, but I do end up wanting more.
The new year is upon us, and one of the most stacked anime seasons in recent memory is upon us, particularly when it comes to sequels. I’m still trying to catch up on shows from 2025, so I hope I can keep up with everything.
Speaking of being behind on things to watch, I’m going to finally watch KPop Demon Hunters. I literally saw kids dressed up as the characters for Halloween, not to mention knowing more than a few who adore the film. Will I be drawn into the Kpop vortex as well?
And once again, a huge shout-out to my patreon members, especially the names below. I hope the new year has good things in store for you.
I would dedicate a post just to my entry, Lamprey Man, but there are rules against posting it elsewhere, so all you’re getting is a link.
Long-time readers of the blog might recall that I’ve long been a huge Mega Man fan, and even posted some Robot Master art/designs in the past. Even if I don’t get picked, just getting to enter is reward enough.
OGIUE MANIAX 