A Record of Past Seasons
Something I’ve been considering almost since the start of Bocchi the Rock! is the central source of the show’s comedy and how that intersects with a compassionate understanding of mental health. Whenever you have a story that wants to mine a character’s struggles (in whatever form) for laughs, inevitably it raises the question of whether the humor is coming from a place of understanding or cruelty.
And thus, the question: Is Bocchi the Rock! mean to Bocchi?
A few months ago, I told a friend I was getting back into watching seasonal anime. Although it’s something that sounds a bit like a joke, I was serious. After about a year and a half away from the seasonal grind, I finally found the desire to watch things again—and how I was rewarded!
These are the best anime of the summer 2022 season.
A short post on the fun of enjoying the extremely awful main character of The Millionaire Detective Balance: Unlimited (Fugou Keiji).
“So,” she asks. “You said that you were going to try to do better about watching anime this year. How’s that coming along? After all, we haven’t seen a blog post since Weathering with You, and that’s not even a seasonal anime!”
Ordinarily, I think to myself, I’d be expecting to have to go on the defensive. But not this time. I’ve been watching anime, you know.
I don’t have as much time these days to watch anime, but the start of a new season is always so fresh with hope and excitement just at seeing new things we haven’t seen before, that I couldn’t resist checking out a few more shows than I actually expect to follow. So here’s a breakdown of what I watched, and what I thought!
Sometimes, the best thing you can say to a child is: “I love you.”
As is our custom around here, it’s time to take a look back at the shows of last season before the new one hits (actually, it’s already here but oh well).
A threshold has been crossed in Re:Creators.
I’d been noodling on the family dynamics in Alice to Zouroku for weeks when I suddenly realized, “Hey, there are actually a fair number of shows about family this season! And I’m watching, like, all of them!” Take from that what you like about my preferences, but this week for Crunchyroll I wrote about the interpretations of family in Alice to Zouroku, The Eccentric Family 2, and Sukasuka. It’s basically three mini-essays all rolled into one, so you can read the piece even if you haven’t seen all three.
Mage in a Barrel 