Animisery – A Blog About Living Miserably with Anime (Among Other Things)

I’m going to be frank with you. If we’re being technical (and by god are we technical) then I only finished two anime this entire month but I started a whole bunch just to not finish them. That said, I finished two anime on May 1st so they’re getting added to April for the sake of making me look better and not having just two whole entries into this blog. I keep starting seasonals just to not finish them. I’m a glutton. I put all the food on my plate just to throw it all away. I blame my American upbringing. A buffet is only so exciting if you have to pay for the consequences of your own actions. Anyways…

ANGEL’S EGG

You would think that a pair of auteurs like Mamoru Ooshi and Yoshitaka Amano would create something that could be universally hailed as a masterpiece. Alas, Angel’s Egg is a dense watch with only maybe a page of dialogue between every character and it’s a challenge just to sit there and read between all the lines of why anything is anywhere. Why do the tanks kind of look like penises? What is up with the shadow fish? Is there a reason I fell asleep twice when I watched this the first time? These are just a few questions that Angel’s Egg expected me to answer and I’m a terrible test taker so I’ll be dropping out of this Aimless Existential Anime 101 course this semester. It’s a brilliantly looking anime though which may save it if that’s your thing. Getting to see Amano’s designs in motion is a treat in itself but it’s just such a pain that they’re in an anime such as this one where you’re not even sure what’s being presented to your eyeballs. I had high hopes for this anime as just being a piece of art but it didn’t even have the decency to be interesting art. It’s just a dull piece of art house “what did the dog symbolize” anime that my co-host absolutely adored but I found being out off from. I’m not above glazing a piece of pretentious media; it just has to be good and Angel’s Egg is not. In the current state of the American economy, it’s expensive just to buy a few eggs which is why I’m going to have to give Angel’s Egg 3 eggs out of 10 because I just can’t afford to give it any more than that. If you want to watch it then put on a nice eyepatch because it’s pirate time, kiddos.

THE 100 GIRLFRIENDS WHO REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LOVE YOU – SEASON TWO

As I will tell any single person, pet, plant, or pantry item that gets within the range of my voice, I love 100 Girlfriends. It is an absolute monstrosity of a series that I would not dare try to explain to anyone I work with yet I adore it for that very reason. It’s a harem anime (yuck) that plays with the very tropes of the genre (yum) while managing to be adept with meta humor and absurd gags. I do not sit there and watch the series with lust for these fictional women (but Hahari is best so what can you do) but I do actually love them for all the ridiculous antics that manage to get into with their boyfriend Rentaro. Rentaro easily could’ve been a sore subject for this kind of anime yet he’s always, if not more so, as adorable as the girls he surrounds himself with. The first season was a slum dunk of a production for me with numerous episodes and jokes that hit tremendously well and this entry is no exception by any means. There’s an entire baseball episode that had me guffawing to the point of almost surrendering my previously eaten food to the ground. I just couldn’t stop. That’s kind of what makes 100 Girlfriends what it is though; a dedication to the excess that never stops even past the point of all rational consideration. It could easily be the 20 Girlfriends Who Love You or the 30 Girlfriends Who Really Really You but no it’s THE 100 GIRLFRIENDS WHO REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY LOVE YOU because quitting early makes you an extra big quitter with quitting sauce to dunk your quitter fries into. I guess what sells the show for me is that it never lapses into being a piece of media for some of us to sink ourselves into. I cannot self insert to Rentaro and you probably can’t either. He’s nice and loving to a point of dire exhaustion and it’s what propels him from being another harem protag in a huge crashing wave of the things. His girlfriends may be tropes but they all play well (barring like two tsundere-ish girls) and it’s a smile filled watch and I adore that. It gets 9 girlfriends out of 10 from me for sure. Announce season three already, you cowards.

KAIBA

We’re doing a month of reviews of Maasaki Yuasa’s work on my podcast, the Anime Brothers Podcast, in a brilliantly named celebration called May-saki Yuasa month (toot toot that’s the sound of me honking my own horn) and this was the first work of his we’re covering! I had heard high acclaim from many of my friends who have shows of their own and I never gave Kaiba the time of day for one reason or another. The art style didn’t exactly illicit interest from me and there’s always so much anime to watch that something doesn’t get the time it deserves and Kaiba suffered as a result. That has all changed and let me tell you something: you should watch Kaiba if you haven’t already. It’s a unique experience that highlights to me what I love about anime in that it is an anime that could only truly be accomplished in the form of anime. A lot of shows are adaptations of manga or light novels or something similar and Kaiba stands uniquely as an anime original in more than one way. Firstly, no screen shot you look up before watching the show will do justice to Kaiba’s animation. Kaiba moves with an almost Dr. Seuss level rhythm as the pieces of the environment seem constructed so wholly independent of everything else and move accordingly. The pieces of every scene have a different life to them and they move in tandem with everything else in any given scene and it’s wonderful to witness but sometimes perplexing to process. Honestly, the story of “an amnesiac person going off to find clues about who they are” is not original but the world of Kaiba more than made up for it with an question invoking world where people can freely transfer their memories between bodies to achieve eternal life. It’s as fun as it is frustrating with how dense it wants to be at times but I don’t think it served as any detriment to me and it isn’t because I’m galaxy brained 200 IQ or anything. I just gave Kaiba my undivided attention (AND YOU WILL HAVE TO BELIEVE ME HERE) and Kaiba rewarded me with an anime that could only be achieved as an anime and I love it for that. I’m seriously debating granting it a title of “masterpiece” but at this time, I do think it’s an outstanding accomplishment in the form of anime storytelling and thusly give it a 9 out of 10. Hard to believe I was just typing up the praises to an anime where one scene had a 29 year old woman trying to breastfeed a 14 year old middle school student. Kaiba, you’ve given me perspective again.

THE DANGERS IN MY HEART – SEASON ONE

I cannot tell you how long it took me to finish this twelve episode show. Actually I can because MyAnimeList has the stats for this very thing: it took me a year and a month to finish this show. Is this in part due to the shortcomings of The Dangers in My Heart? Not at all. Is this something we can chalk up to you being bad at watching anime? Probably not. No, it’s because The Dangers in My Heart is TOO good at what it does and that is give an adorable slice of life romance between effectively a tiny wannabe goth kid and his giant Labrador retriever (not) girlfriend. It’s absolutely disgusting with how saccharin sweet this show is and it makes me want to fight Care Bears in the back alley of a busy side street. It’s such a fun and heart warming watch to witness this socially awkward kid come to terms with his feelings and try to cope with his adolescence coming to an end. I spent a year in some change because I just couldn’t get myself to keep watching this show. I would watch an episode or two and need a break because the sheer elation involved in seeing such a cute couple had me frothing at the mouth from the onset of diabetes. It’s also a delightful show in that they never tried to outright overtly sexualize the female lead but it did lean into at times showing off her figure with her almost always modest outfits. It’s not a horny show but it’s not exactly chaste either. Overall, I’m glad I finally finished it and get to have this warm feeling in my heart after wrapping up episode 12. It’s easily worth the price of admission for Hidive if it’s the only show you want on it if you’re a fan of this kind of show. It gave me 8 whole doki dokis out of 10 by the end of it all. It’s so funny to me that Hidive has this show when I always think of Hidive having a very questionable selection of anime.

And that’s another month down! I spent more of April reading some of my TBR book pile as opposed to watching anime but such is the way it goes. Books, video games, and many other activities just end up competing for my time and beating the others out which is unfortunate. That said, I’m currently fixated on anime as a whole after doing a series of wonderful collaborations with friends for different anime podcasts. There’s nothing like talking with people who adore the media you do in a similar way. It never fails to energize me and help recapture the spirit of what makes me love anime so much. That said, Stephen Graham Jones can write a killer horror novel so he might also manage to distract me at times. A man can only do so much in the face of solid literature. I hope I’ll see you next month and feel free to drop below what anime you watched in April that you enjoyed! I’d love to hear from you. 🙂

As always, go check out the Anime Brothers Podcast if you want to listen to me meander on about anime with one of my good friends! I hope you’ll check us out but if you don’t then I just appreciate you reading this blog. I’ll see you soon!