#finished 2022

God, this is such a good show. The second cour was just about as good as the first, though there were some parts of it that I didn't end up liking as much. To be honest, anytime that we go a significant amount of time without Anya around seems to be the parts that seem to lull. Like, sure, I like the spy stuff well enough, but the tennis arc was likely my least favorite part of the season, even if I do like Fiona.

The characters added in this part of the season were all great and welcome additions to the cast that open up some nice avenues to do fun things in the future. However, that doesn't mean I still love all the characters in the show. I understand the purpose of Yor's brother, Yuri, but that doesn't mean that I have to like the trope of a brother being in love with his sister. I get that it's played for laughs and never taken seriously, but something like Fiona's dynamic with Loid and the family is just better to me because it doesn't have the gross sibling angle going on.

Speaking of Yor, I have to admit that this part of the season still disappointed me with her. She doesn't get a whole lot to do outside of fretting if she's good enough for the family and making strides to do better in that regard. Granted, that content is still interesting and I like getting to know her better in that part of her life, but the fact that her assassin work keeps feeling incidental to her character despite being a big part of the premise of the show is a drawback. However, as a manga reader, I take comfort in knowing that that content is coming and will likely be in the recently announced second season.

What I found really interesting, though, is the way that this show handled slotting filler in. There are a lot of plot points that don't quite fill out an episode enough or would be strange to cut in half across two episodes, so the show dances around this by having little filler moments to fill out the episodes properly and adjust to make the pacing of the canon moments feel more consistant. And the things is... it's really good filler. Most of it was indistinguishable if you didn't know otherwise, which just goes to show how much love has been put into this show and how much the staff understands the content that they're working with.

So, I have read all of part 1 of this manga and I have to say that while I understand why some people are so crazy into it, I don't think it hits me quite the same way. I've seen this show get hyped to hell and back in the actual leadup to it's premier and as a result, I can totally understand why someone might feel that it doesn't live up to that hype. Honestly, even when it was just the manga being hyped, it didn't quite live up to that for me.

Perhaps that's because the fights and the big plot twists aren't what appeal to me about this series. I prefer some of the smaller elements, like the dynamic of Denji, Power, and Aki all living together, the relationship between Aki and Himeno, the relationship between Power and her cat, and just in general the way that this is fundamentally a series about a whole bunch of messed up people just kind of trying their best with both the hand they have been dealt and the situation that they're in. That appealed far more to me than any of the chainsaws or fights or sprays of blood. Obviously it's nice to have a plot driving forward for the elements I like to play against, but the plot isn't what has really kept me watching or reading. I cared more for moments like Aki bribing Denji and Power with gum than any action scene.

Speaking of Denji... I have to admit that I don't like him as a main character very much early in the show. On one hand, Denji is an interesting case in that a lack of human connection in his youth has led to him seeking it out now that he has a chance. However, being a teenage boy influenced by others and the culture around him, he has assumed that means that he wants sex, kissing, touching boobs, ect, when what he really wants is intimacy, but doesn't have the understanding or vocabulary to really process that, which is an interesting look at the "pervert protagonist". That all being said, on a surface level it does come across as the guy just wanting to cop a feel a lot of the time and this element does take up a decent amount of screentime. Even with my understanding of the character, I still find it kind of annoying as that's not a type of character I particularly enjoy. Though I must concede that he has a better understanding of consent than some other anime characters.

There's also moments in the series that end up coming off like they're in there just for somewhat cheap shock value comedy, like what happens when Denji does get his first kiss. It's just not something I entirely enjoy, even if in some cases I can understand their place in the story. It's little moments that end up reminding me, "oh yeah, this is a shonen story made for teenage boys"...

I expect that I will end up liking the somewhat inevitable season two and beyond more. I've actually found that a lot of shonen action these days doesn't seem to grab me in the first season of adaptation, but this one did hold my interest better than most do in that regard.

I'll be honest, this was a show that I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to stick with at the start of the season. The way it starts is pretty slow and even as someone who can sometimes relate to the catastrophizing that Bocchi does, I was really worried that the gag of her not being able to handle human interaction was going to wear thin really fast. But then... something interesting happened.

Bocchi began to grow.

It wasn't a big thing, just little steps here and there, but it was clear that even with how much the show liked to joke around about her, it was also allowing her to make tiny steps of progress over time. I really really appreciated that. Gag shows like to keep their characters static, but by giving her those steps, this had progressed just past gags for me and into something that ended up becoming genuinely compelling to experience. 

The cast is a big part of that. Bocchi is fun and all, but the people who are around her are not only varied but have their own things going on that I really love. It's not a show just about how everyone relates to Bocchi, but so many other characters have their own web of relationships to one another. They also each represent different levels of extroversion and introversion and social struggles, making it clear that Bocchi is not alone in not having it all figured out quite yet.

Of the handful of shojo shows that we got over the season, this one was definitely my favorite, even if I am not very well versed in the ins and outs of chinese court dramas. This might have gotten me in the mood to check out a few more, though. Granted, this was little less about the courtly intrigue and plots and more about a supernatural undercurrent running through it all and the ghosts of the palace, but it was all still really engaging.

The mythology did take a little bit to get into, but once we had the full background of everything laid out, a lot of the pieces of why things were set up the way they are started to fall into place, which was really great to see. In particular, I was really happy to see a different style of animation used for the flashbacks. It made them both visually distinct and far more memorable. It was a really creative touch that made the show stand out a little more from others of its kind.

While I would have been fine with the story staying fairly episodic and just tackling the many many ghost that are around the inner palace, I was glad to see it move into tackling a little bit more to give things stakes. While it was fun to see our lead deal with these supernatural matters, at the same time, there needed to be some stakes that were more personal to her and the series definitely began to deliver on that in the back half. I'm also pretty fond of the romance that's starting to happen here, so I'm crossing my fingers.

The only really big problem that I have with the series is the fact that it's not really a complete story. By the end of all thirteen episodes, there are some questions that are still left unanswered and the final episode had a decent helping of teasing for a potential season two. It looks like there's seven volumes to the series but from what I saw from someone who had read them, the show didn't even fully get through volume three, so there might be plenty of content to continue on with. If they do, I'm highly looking forward to it.

This one was just very sweet, the kind of thing that I was looking to get out of a shojo romance with this color palette and character design. Eli looks like a cupcake a lot of the time and the mood she gives off is just as sweet. It's not perfect, but it's fine for what it is.

One of the bigger flaws is that a lot of the events that happen over the course of the series can feel a little disconnected, but from what I was able to find out, this may be because the show chose to not adapt full novels, but instead parts of them, skipping over other parts. I haven't read them myself, but I have to wonder if a more full adaptation would have smoothed things over a little bit more. The first few episodes were pretty solid, but after that things started to get shaky, particularly in the middle of the season. I would say that the first and final arc are the strongest, but that's not even on the plot but more on the character interactions and relationships that we get to see put on display at those parts of the story.

The bigger problem is that Eli is not only our protagonist, but our point of view character. Now, there's nothing really wrong with Eli. I think she's a fine enough character and there are some really fun moments with her. The problem is that she doesn't really actively do much in the plot. I don't think she's a completely passive waif or anything, but often the plot propels her rather than her propelling the plot. She'll have moments of conflict, sure, but there aren't a whole lot of them.

The biggest reason for this problem is the timeskip that happens early in the series. It makes sense because it's only after four years of engagement to the prince that things start really getting put into motion, after all, but there is so much that we are TOLD she did during those four years that made her into an influence, both socially and politically, but we never get to see those, just the results that came some time later, so it can feel like the show is just pulling things out of a hat at times and using what we have not seen in the timeskip to justify it. There's also the fact that Christopher often is off doing his own thing, so we only get to hear about it later when it impacts the plot. I hear that the books go on to just get more and more political in nature, so I can only hope that a potential second season gives her a little more to do.

Ah, yes, the resident cute girls doing cute things with comradery show this season. This one is just a slice of wholesomeness that was served up every week and I am certainly not upset about that in the slightest. It can sometimes be a little hard to sort out the best of the best when it comes to these shows because, let's be honest, there are a lot of cases where it's the same show in a different font. I may not think this is the best of the genre, but for what is here, I had a good time.

The activity in question this time is DIY projects, which I am sure that you could guess from the title. I was a little worried when starting out that it was just going to be more fluffy little things, but no, these girls were breaking out the power tools in the first episode, which I really appreciated. They were collecting their own materials, making blueprints, and everything. They made some jewelry, sure, but they also made stained glass and built a bench out of the materials they had on hand. As someone who has done shopwork before, it was good to see girls with drills.

The one weakness to this, though, is that not a ton of time was actually spent on the projects themselves. There were a few times where the work that went into a project was explained in more detail, but many times the work that each of them was doing was just montaged over. On one hand, I understand the need for this for the sake of giving time to character relationships, but on the other, it could make their projects feel a little incidental at times, like you could have replaced them with anything, aside from the final project which they spend near half the season building up to.

If you had told me at the beginning of the year that an anime about maid cafes would be in the running to be my anime of the year, I don't think I would have believed you. After all, I'm not someone who entirely 'gets' the whole maid café thing. I understand it as an occasional novelty, sure, but I can't understand the idea of going to one over and over again. There was also a spot in the middle of the year that had like three shows that all featured girls in a café in some form and I just felt like the idea was overdone. So, what did Maid War do to make it interesting again? It turned it into a yakuza movie... obviously.

Akiba Maid War is set on the backdrop of the maid café boom of the 90's, where supply is clearly outpacing demand so the maids are turning to violence to make sure their turf is staked out and the money keeps flowing through their doors. It imagines a whole seedy underbelly hidden away under cutesy layers just barely out of the eye of the public. I wasn't sure at first, but it really grabbed me by the end of the first episode when the brutal takedown of an enemy café was shown off like a choreographed dance complete with a backing track and all. It was wonderful, every act of violence done with a whirl of a petticoat.

There are some parodic elements here for sure, turning the whole thing up to levels that I don't think anyone would have expected the to take it to from the outset, with a sprinkling of dark humor laid over the top of the whole affair. However, what really astounded me and made it so special is that it was able to have these episodes that made me laugh out loud, but also deliver episodes that were honestly heartbreaking to watch and moments that hit with all the weight and drama of a more serious mobster flick. That is an incredibly tough balancing act to pull off and Maid War does it excellently.

It also treats most of the characters with the seriousness that they deserve. Aside from a tiny handful of shots, the maid costumes aren't sexualized when the girls in the show are wearing them. They're treated like the battle armor that the characters treat them as. I really appreciated it. It would have been so easy to make this a sort of trashy late night fanservice vehicle, but they didn't and it was very much to the show's benefit.