My brief thoughts on the Anime of Winter 2025.

There are 7 Anime that aired during that season I watched to completion. 

Some I already talked about a lot on different posts.

Zenshu I initially gave a 9 but I'm thinking of upgrading it to a ten.  If I had to recommend only one it'd be that. 

The third seasons of Re:Zero and Arifureta were both hype, I look forward to season 4.

Magic Maker is perhaps doomed to be the most overlooked.  For one being so easy to dismiss as disposable Isekai Trash I found it pretty great. 

The possibility still exists I could watch more from this season in the future. But even if I don't I'd still say I'm satisfied with what it provided me. 

Update Aprils 30th: The new Rose of Versailles movie came out in January in Japan.

It's good, but my basic concerns with trying to retell this story as a single Film remain vindicated.

Compared to the other attempt I've seen to remake this as a movie, the Live Action film from the 70s, this one definitely ends better. Lady Oscar should die on Bastille Day.

This new one makes other different decisions on what to skip as well, this movie basically enters he last act of the old Anime less then half way through. It's also a bit of a Semi-Musical.

It's a decent experience when you already know the full story. but I would not recommend it as a first impression.

Anime 2025-2026 was a Mistake

The Introductory post of this series.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/04/anime-year-2025-2026.html

My Anilist Profile.

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

And my Social Media

https://c.im/@KuudereKun

Gundam GQuuuuuuX episode 3 was pretty cool.  I suspect the people who got into Yuri Shipping so fast are a bit annoyed by the new male character, but I like him. 

And speaking of Gundam, I followed up much of what I talked about last week by watching Gundam Hathaway on Netflix and then Gundam Unicorn on Hulu.

The first episode of Once Upon A Witch’s Death was pretty good. 

Episode 11 of Loner Life In Another World was good as well. 

Episode 4 of Lazarus was good, but my trigger those sensitive to Sexual Assault/Date Rape scenes.

And I'm already starting to regret quasi committing myself to this project.  I rarely have anything to say after a single episode other than “I watched it and I liked” or “I watched it and decided not to keep watching” and in my charitable nature usually unwilling to say the second option was because it was bad or anything.

The fact is sometimes when a show is currently airing it is just not when I’m in the right mindset to watch it.  I suspect I will finish season 2 of Slime 300 eventually but during episode 2 this week I simply wasn’t in the mood for it. 

Issues like this are why I abandoned my last attempt at a project like this, but that was a few years ago so I thought I could be different this year, but I can’t.  Especially since current shows are not even really the focus of my thinking right now. 

The problem with Ranking Anime

I use Anime Database websites like Anlist and Anime-Planet mainly to help me keep track of what Anime I have and haven't watched for my own sake.  The thing I’ve increasingly noticed is how I feel compelled to score an Anime on an at least Semi-Objective out of 5 or out of 10 scaling system doesn’t correlate well to how often I feel compelled to revisit one or talk about it. 

It honestly feels more useful to put them in categories rather than mathematical rankings.

First there are my Favorites, the Anime I would unambiguously start with when trying to summarize what my taste in Anime is, as well as what I consider masterpieces even when they don't entirely conform to my general tastes.  You can get a taste of these by looking at what I list as Favorites on those Database websites, but on those sites I try to list only one entry per franchise, the truth is most any franchise that produces one Favorite of mine probably also has many other entries I could have listed.

Then there are shows that I like and consider worthy of how successful they are, but wouldn’t call a personal favorite and probably wouldn’t talk about as much as I do if they weren’t among the most well known Anime, a frame of reference I can be confident most people into Anime at all will somewhat understand.  

Examples would include Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online, Re:Zero, Mushoku Tensei, Vinland Saga, Frieren and Delicious In Dungeon. Those are all shows from the last 15 years, certainly there are older shows I could put in this category?  Cowboy Bebop is probably the clearest 90s version of a show I feel exactly this way about.

Maybe the more of an Old Classic something is, the harder it is for me to even be self aware how much my own praise for it is because it has that Classic status.  Revolutionary Girl Utena and Serial Experiments Lain are shows I feel like I rank higher than any of those I just listed, yet I rewatch them less often, maybe that’s just because they are such uniquely Dense and thus intellectually exhausting shows to watch. 

Then there are shows I like about as much as the second category but may seem more enthusiastic about because of how much my talking about them exists in the context of defending them against the hate they receive from the online Anime Community at large. Rent-A-Girlfriend, Future Diary, a number of Isekai.  Of course some stuff in the second category does receive similar hate in certain contexts, (in fact several years ago I’d probably have placed SAO here but the intensity of it’s hate seems to have died down).  But I don’t talk about them so defensively because their vocal unironic fandoms are pretty visible.

Then there are shows I like about the same as those two categories but indeed I don’t wind up talking about much because it often feels like I’m the only one even aware of them. When they are talked about on this Blog it's because I’d currently or recently watched them or they’re relevant to some specific topic I’m talking about.  But even within this category there are some I’m more likely to actively recommend to others when I feel like they are the kind of show someone is looking for but hasn’t found on their own.  Engage Kiss is one example as are most shows I mentioned in the Anime Neo-Westerns post, as well as the shows I like to recommend as Fantasy Anime that in no way feel like Isekai even though they came out during this Isekai era like Grimoire of Zero and it’s spin off Dawn of The Witch, or Tales of Zestiria, WorldEnd and Manaria Friends which are also from 2017 or the film Maquia.

And then there are shows I have significant issues with, but also have something I find fascinating about them, about what they could have been, that has me thinking about them more than many shows in the fourth category.  Wonder Egg Priority is placed here, a lot of people seem to feel this way about that show but my opinion is more overfall positive then most peoples.  But arguably the show the character I use as my Avatar comes from is in this category.

And then as perhaps an Evil Counterpart to the second category are shows I failed to enjoy that I would have never thought about again at all if they didn’t become super popular, if I didn’t feel like I was the only one to watch it and not like it.  I don’t want to be a person who hates on things others enjoy, but sometimes I can’t help myself and need to say my piece. The lead Anime in this category is probably Revue Starlight.

Thing is, while I’m pretty sure every Anime I have any strong opinions on at all are in one of these categories, I’m not always sure myself which one.  Like I certainly can’t confuse the first two categories with the bottom one, but in between those is a lot of fluidity.

April Anime 2025 Week 3

The Introductory post of this series.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/04/anime-year-2025-2026.html

My Anilist Profile.

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

And my Social Media

https://c.im/@KuudereKun

GQuuuuuuX episode 2 documents the point of divergence from the usual UC timeline.  Next episode will be back to the new main cast.

Episode 10 of Loner Life In Another World was good. 

The finale of Ameku M.D. was good.  I’m giving the show as a whole an 8. 

I decided to put Rock Is a Lady’s Modesty on hold during episode 3.  I don’t like its use of CGI and was finding some aspects of it surprisingly dull.

Weird how I’m saying On Hold still when I’ve moved to different Database websites, that language has become the default of how many fans talk in general.  Anilsit and Anime-Planet each use a different term, Paused and Stalled.

Episode 1159 of Detective Conan was a decent episode but I didn’t feel like how the movie tie episodes usually feel. The Detective Conan World Wiki is no longer listing who wrote this episode like they were last week, so maybe what I said last week was mistaken. 

Lazarus episode 3 was great, things are really getting interesting now. 

The season 2 premiere of Slime 300 was pretty fun. 

I won’t always be commenting on what Anime I’ve watched outside of what’s currently airing.  But this week I felt like mentioning how I’ve rewatched YU-NO which still holds up great and done a bunch of Gundam watching.  Rewatched Char’s Counterattack and The Origin and some episodes of some other shows.  And I watched for the first time the 08th MS Team which was phenomenal, and Requiem for Vengeance which I have a few mixed feelings on but is overall pretty good, and the first 3 episodes of 0083 Stardust Memory.

Before that I’d rewatched Str.A.In, 86 and a bunch of Code Geass. 

Update April 21st: Well Ubel Blatt's dub dropped on Amazon's Prime Video but after watching 5 episode the dub for Episode 6 somehow isn't loading, so this has caused an annoyance.

Further Update: That issues was fixed the next day.  After finishing the show I will say it's good but it's not a kind of Anime I'm into that much.  It's an adaptation of a Manga that started in 2004 and so is a throwback to a particularly style of Edgy Anime that was already on the way out when it started.

There are a couple things I find interesting about it.

The Empire being depicted has a Holy Roman Empire structure, I know I'd said that before about War on Geminar but this is even more explicit even using the term Elector.  So it's always a big refreshing when a Medieval Fantasy shows familiarity with more then just England and France.

The main character is clearly a Vampire even though they aren't using the word.  I generally don't like Vampires being thrown into full Fantasy settings, I think they're more interesting as a Secret history in the real world.  But in this case I'm intrigued by them actually throwing back to the old 19th Century Ruthven rules with him being healed by the Moonlight.

YU-NO and The Elixir of the Hero's Journey

The thing about discourse around Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Monomyth is that it’s based on a bunch of observations that I’m not even sure he intended to claim universally applied to absolutely all stories as much as it often seems like he was.

Even when we take the observation that the Return Section involves three mutually exclusive options that can’t coexist in a story with only one timeline thus moving the total number of bullet points down from 17 to 15, you’ll still be hard pressed to find any story that actually does all 15 without the analysis being forced to really stretch some parts, even in the stories most said to be directly intentionally following Campbell like Star Wars.

However that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful and fun to notice the points that apply intentionally or not. And I also want to note that the different Story Structure models we talk about aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as we sometimes paint them.  So for example a Japanese writer who’s been influenced by Western Stories can write in the Kishotenketsu structure and still have pieces of the Hero’s Journey influencing beats within those Acts. 

One aspect of the Hero’s Journey that rarely happens in modern stories in a remotely straightforward manner is the idea that there is a Boon or Elixir in the “Other World” that the Hero has to find and bring back to his world for the benefit of his world. I’m calling it the Elixir mainly because of Blue’s video on the topic on the OverSarcastic YouTube Channel.

The desire to apply this to Star Wars or LOTR or Narnia or The Matrix or any number of Superhero films requires highly abstracting all of it. Now that the “Other World” isn’t actually a completely different world or even always a different part of it geographically speaking is fine actually, it’s everything else that I find kinda funny how you have to really force it to apply. 

One exception is the 1984 Supergirl film, I remember on IMDB back in the day at least one poster really invested in saying that film is the most perfect encapsulation of the Hero’s Journey, and I do see why they would feel that way.  In the case of this topic the Omegahedron is the Elixir. 

I also recall Leonard Nimoy talking about this in the Audio Commentary for Star Trek IV The Voyage Home where in that film the Elixir is the Whales. 

But what I really find fascinating in this context is the 2019 TV Anime adaptation of the 1996 Adventure Game titled YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love At The Bound of This World. It really turns out to be a fascinating fusion of Kishotenketsu and the Hero’s Journey. 

First of all the fact that in Kishotenketsu the “twist” happens close to the halfway point is perfectly represented by how the actual transportation to the Isekai world happens a few episodes into the Second Cour. 

But in this context the Elixir is the Saikite that Takuya needs to save Kanna.  That he’s doing it for one Girl instead of the entire world fits in with common Otaku Media tropes quite well actually.

The last point is a difference from the original game however, I imagine it’s a change many fans dislike but for me it constantly proves to be a crux why I find the Anime so incredibly good and underrated. 

April Anime 2025 Week 2

The Introductory post of this series.

https://mithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2025/04/anime-year-2025-2026.html

My Anilist Profile.

https://anilist.co/user/KuudereKun888/

And my Social Media

https://c.im/@KuudereKun

The Pilot of Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX on PrimeVideo was good, and has a great English Dub Cast as well.  Looks like the part of the movie people were calling Episode 0 is actually going to be  episode 2 next week (Wednesday in Japan but Tuesday in the US).

Episode 9 of Loner Life In Another World was pretty good. 

Aemuk M.D. episode 11 introduced a new Denny’s variation, Bemmy’s spelled with Green Text.

On April 9th I finished Re:Zero season 3, it was great, and it looks like season 4 is gonna be pretty good too.

Rock is A Lady’s Modesty episode 2 was quite amusing. 

Moonrise on Netflix was a pretty decent Sci-Fi story.

The last episode of Guild Receptionist was decent.  I give the show as a whole an 8 out of 10. 

Detective Conan episode 1158 was an okay episode.  I was expecting it to be the tie-in to the new movie since it's the last new episode before the movie releases in Japan, but it didn’t end with an allusion to the film’s events.  However I can tell next week’s 1159 will be since it has the same writer as the movie.

Update: I just watched the first episode of Lazarus rather late on the Adult Swim app, and it looks like the second episode will drop today so I may add another update.  It was pretty entertaining, can't guarantee I'll stick with it but it has a good start.

Update: Episode 2 was also good.  The Suicide Squad comparisons are inevitable, but this this exact story couldn't actually be told in the DC Universe.

The Overflow Wiki has Birthdates including Gregorian Calendar Years for the School Days Characters.

On their Character Pages, but the Timeline page itself states no Year dates are definitively given.

And I don’t think the years given on these pages had enough thought put into them based on how Japanese School Years work.

You see in Japan the School Year is April-March So I’m pretty sure that means Setsuna being born in February and Sekai in December of 1988 would not actually be in the same Grade. Now if their Birthdays do come from Canonical Material then Setsuna is more likely to be born 2 months after Sekai rather then 10 month before. Maybe I’m mistaken and there is some nuance to how who is in what School Year is decided I’m missing.

Japanese High School is also only three years, and it seems you generally begin as 15 expected to turn 16 before that School Year is over and end it as an 18 year old.

So on this Wiki

Setsuna is February 14 1988

Sekai is December 7 1988

Taisuke Sawanaga is July 19th but a year isn’t given

Makoto Itou is October 16 1988

Kotonoha Katsura is January 4 1988 (Kokoro is November 28 but no year)

So they decided to put all the cast in the same Grade as 1988.

If School Days takes place in the then present of when it was released, then all these characters being in their First Year of Japanese Highschool would more likely have been born April 1989 to March 1990. Coincidentally the first year of the Heisei era. Their Conceptions would then be the the Summer of 1988 through Spring of 1989.

School Days dropped in April of 2005 however, so maybe it wouldn’t make it that much of a period piece to imagine it’s drama as being primarily set in 2004 moving those estimates down a year.

Setsuna and Sekai’s mothers were previously Heroines of the original Summer Radish Vacation. It’s heavily implied we’re supposed to assume that Setsuna and Sekai were conceived during or within a year following the events of that game.

Based on the title I’m assuming that game takes place during Summer Vacation. Summer Vacation from School in Japan is only 6 weeks not the 3 months we Americans are used to (and certainly not the 104 days of Phineas and Ferb’s OP), generally starting around July 20th and ending around the end of August. Neither Setsuna or Sekai’s proposed birthdays fit being conceived during those 6 weeks.

Regardless of what Gregorian Calendar Dates you choose to lynchpin the Overflow timeline to, Setsuna and Sekai being first years in School Days creates a contradiction between the Overflow Wiki saying Snow Radish Vacation is 30 years before School Days and Summer Radish Vacation is 17 years after Snow Radish Vacation. However it could be where ever they got that 30 year estimate from really meant over 30 years.

If the title of Snow Radish Vacation is implying the Winter Holidays, in Japan that’s usually December 26 through January 6. But it opens on a sequence set at least 9 months before the main narrative so that would be in March probably, maybe early April.

There is more then one example across School Days HQ and Shiny Days of Youko saying she’d “long” had Sekai already by the time she was Sekai’s current age. But if her and Mai are in Middle School during Summer Radish Vacation they sure aren’t built like it. Shiny Days also says Youko is exactly 30 if you go down her Route.

It would be really funny if the most logical timeline places the events of Snow Radish Vacation in 1969.