Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid
I'll say right off the bat that this anime is not good. It answers the question that nobody asked, "What if Soul Eater was extremely horny?" In this world, some women have been infected with a virus that gives them incredible powers. There are Extars, who transform into weapons, and Liberators, who wield those weapons. Sound familiar? The difference is the Extars can only transform when they're aroused, although I'm pretty sure it's implied that most of the time they transform specifically when they orgasm. So that's fun. Although it could also be that it isn't a requirement to go that far and they just wanted to animate them going at it for reasons. As a reminder, both partners can only be women. So, yeah… If you want to see some anime titties or watch yuri sex scenes you can find about 1,000 better ways with a simple Google search. The actual story here was pretty flimsy. Just barely coherent enough for me to understand what was going on by explaining lore at a surface level. It seemed that there might be some interesting stuff at play hiding just below what we're shown, but it didn't expound on anything enough to truly become interesting. You can probably imagine why there's not enough runtime spent on the plot.
The series opens with our protagonist Mamori waking up on a mysterious beach with no memories of how she got there. She is almost immediately attacked by two sexy sunbathers using their powers against her. Out of nowhere, the buxom Mirei swoops in to rescue Mamori from danger. After being forcefully kissed (gross) she transforms into a sword that Mirei wields to fight off the other women. You know the drill here: Mamori just so happens to possess an incredible rare ability that makes her the most powerful Extar, and together with Mirei's equally unique ability as a Liberator they can activate the "Valkyrie Effect" for even more unbelievable power. All of these Extars and Liberators live on Mermaid Island, being outcast from society because they are deemed too dangerous… unless the military can harness their power via secret experimental programs, obviously. Mirei wouldn't cooperate and was banished. Mamori was kidnapped and dumped on the island around the same time after her powers awakened, and so the two were fated to meet or something.
All of these women have been lead to believe they are being "observed" and if they do a good enough job at uh, existing, then they can rejoin society, which is clearly a lie to us viewers. They've formed their own society on the island lead by the only man, who is obviously a very poorly disguised woman. It legitimately doesn't make sense that nobody sees through this, which is why I appreciated when the series' main villain infiltrates the island and immediately calls out this terrible disguise. It was also kind of painful knowing that these women, who could snap regular people in half like a toothpick, immediately rolled over and surrendered to some random person because they thought she was a man. Something something societal commentary. In a story this shallow, it ended up being amusing in a stupid way. Anyway, after gaining allies and uncovering the truth of the island, Mamori and Mirei discover that they're actually so powerful together that they can erase the virus and strip these superpowers away from others. No more banishment and no more using people as weapons. The series ends with the duo leaving to travel the world and free all affected women everywhere. You might get the idea from my description of the plot that the show actually sounds pretty decent. It did have that potential, if 80% of it wasn't spent on sex scenes and sex jokes. Although I will say that the stupid premise lead to a legitimately incredible joke where Mamori encounters a beautiful naked woman at a hot spring, turns completely red, and then immediately poofs into a sword. I'm not ashamed to admit I laughed my ass off.
All that said, I do have to praise some of the music for going way above and beyond. In fact, I was a bit bamboozled into thinking the series was going to be pretty good because of the opening. I don't think I can properly convey its quality compared to everything else. It reminded me a bit of those corny cartoon shows from the 80s and 90s that were clearly meant to sell toys or something, but the people who made the theme songs gave 1000% effort for some reason. The opening for Valkyrie Drive: Mermaid, I believe sung by the villain's voice actress, is easily in the top three of all the anime I watched in 2024. It's so memorable I'd probably say it's become one of my all time favorites. That's not even the only original song produced for the anime! Why anything of this caliber was created for an anime that was clearly designed to satisfy somebody's fetish is beyond me, but damn if I'm not grateful that it was. Skip the anime and just listen to the songs.
Absolute Duo
With a name like "Absolute Duo" you'd think this series would be the pinnacle of its genre. It's certainly better than Valkyrie Drive, but nothing to particularly write home about. Stop me if you've heard this one before: Students with special powers can summon magical weapons and form pairs to combat evil forces. In this case, our main guy Tor is an "irregular" because his power produces a shield instead of a weapon. He fights with hand-to-hand combat to augment his shield ability, and enrolls at the international Koryo Academy in order to strengthen himself so he can avenge the death of his sister. He is paired with a Scandinavian student named Julie who has come to the academy so she can become stronger and avenge the death of her father. They start out as a temporary pairing, but later decide to take an oath and pair permanently. Trauma bonding ensues.
Honestly, it didn't stand out too much but I still enjoyed it. It definitely had the potential to be a solid if unoriginal series but it was stunted by its short runtime of, you guessed it, 12 episodes. Even more honestly? I barely remembered any of the finer details of this show until I skimmed back over it for this review. I don't really know why, because I do remember it being pretty decent. I think about halfway in I probably accepted the fact that this anime was going to end prematurely and not resolve any of the big picture stuff happening, so I checked out and just went along for the ride. It started off with all the students having to dual each other with the losers being expelled on the first day. You find out later that they were actually transferred to another campus for special training, and those characters get mixed in towards the end too. There's an insane teacher that tries to kill the students but gets to keep her job, and a british exchange student named Lilith who conjures a gun and is obsessed with Tor because they're both irregulars. She battles everyone in a shopping mall, which was a pretty cool fight from what I recall but for the life of me I can't remember why it happened. Then there was some kind of evil organization or something and a dude named K with an exoskeleton thing. There's a second girl Miyabi who falls in love with Tor because he was nice to her once, but he turns her down saying he's not strong enough to protect her. Miyabi takes an offer from K to become stronger herself to try and win over Tor but they end up brainwashing her and there's a big fight at the end where they rescue her, defeat K, and also Julie goes berserk and nearly kills everybody.
So, yeah, it's another one of those series where everyone is in love with the main guy, but I appreciate that he turned them down. I also appreciate that Julie wasn't in love with him. It was nice to have a boy/girl pairing who were just platonic for once. They simply decide to stick together and get stronger to help each other achieve their goals because they get along as friends. The story arc adapted here concluded the conflict with that guy K while also leaving room to continue the adaptation, which never ended up happening. This was the type of mindless entertainment you watch in a weekend when you've got nothing else going on.
Freezing
Sort of a weird mix of the previous two, but much more memorable than both of them combined. It definitely wins the award for "most horny for no reason" which is probably a deal breaker for most people but sort of just got an eye roll from me. What I mean when I say that is the series will basically use any excuse to literally explode the clothes off of any and all female characters. One of them just straight up walks around naked like 90% of the time. Again, this is definitely a case where the author just wanted to see some titties, but at least it served the stupid plot in Valkyrie Drive. Here, the characters are just constantly naked for no reason. As a result, I became desensitized to it almost immediately, hence the eye rolling every time it happened when it didn't need to be happening. Putting that aside, the story was actually pretty interesting and memorable. Humanity is at war with these interdimensional beings called Nova that randomly appear and disappear with little warning. The setup here is kind of like Evangelion, and I wouldn't be shocked if Freezing was inspired by it. Instead of giant mechs to combat these enormous creatures, they have genetically enhanced women called Pandora paired with a male partner called a Limiter. The Pandora use special implants that give them the strength to take on Nova, while Limiters can emit a special "freezing" field that can negate a Nova's power and allow their Pandora to attack them.
The second season moves away from the school and focuses on a new initiative to create Pandora more easily through a new process that doesn't require biological compatibility with stigmata. By enabling any woman to become a Pandora, humanity can increase their forces and enhance their chance of survival against the Nova. Something's fishy about the whole thing, though, and as the season progresses we get to learn a lot more about the lore of the world and the origins of Pandora and the stigmata used to create them. (Also, shoutout to the word choice of "stigmata" in this series, as the multilayered meaning fits really well.) We learn a little bit more about Kazuya's family history here, but the season mostly focuses on Satela's arc as the dark backstory with her family is finally revealed. You might be able to guess why she has an aversion to being physical with people, but I assure you it's probably even worse than what you're thinking. Kazuya is a decent protagonist, though a bit of a generic Mr. Protagonist, but Satela is a pretty compelling character. Underneath her hard shell is a kind and sensitive person who really needed a Mr. Protagonist in her life. The brief arc to the el Bridget family villa was probably my favorite part of the series. After that, the ending of the season gets absolutely crazy with some big revelations about the Nova and the Pandora, particularly how the two are related. The only complaint I really had is that the first half introduces a bunch of characters that are made irrelevant by the change of location in the second half, which introduces a completely new set of characters. Besides our main duo and a couple of recurring secondary characters, the cast was very large and I had trouble keeping everyone straight. Just when I thought I had it, they swapped the tertiary cast with new people to keep track of. This season, and thus the series, ends satisfactorily enough for not having a definitive conclusion. Don't expect the Nova to be defeated or anything like that.
Unfortunately, things end at 24 episodes… is what I'd normally say, but perhaps it's good in this case. I did enjoy this series enough to look into it further and it turns out the manga it was based on was left unfinished. It's been on hiatus since 2018, and I don't have any expectations that it will ever continue. Like I said though, maybe that's okay. Things go completely off the rails beyond the point where the anime ends, if the summaries I read are any indication. Satela's story seems to have more or less wrapped up in the anime, with the rest of the story focusing on Kazuya and the Aio family's insane history. Honestly, it kind of retroactively makes the stuff in the anime worse. It feels like a rare case where they could have continued on with an original anime story seperate from the source manga and it probably would have been an improvement. As it stands, though, they picked a good place to stop. Part of me does wish there was more, but more probably would have sucked.
Lycoris Recoil
In years past, my anime consumption has mostly been whatever Toonami has had on. The state of the industry right now means they don't get as many new shows as they used to, but every so often they'll air something I've never heard of that I really vibe with. In early 2024 they aired Lycoris Recoil, apparently one of Japan's most popular anime of 2022. It is a part of the very real, somehow not made up "girls with guns" genre, and is also some damn fine yuri. Damn fine! I typically like to do a little research after watching a thing to learn a bit more about the reception and production, and this show taught me both about girls with guns and more about yuri. Although commonly used to refer to lesbian romance, it is not necessarily synonymous with "girls' love". In fact, yuri is an umbrella term to refer to works with a focus on relationships between women, as opposed to yaoi which seems much more interchangeable with "boys' love". Even when it does feature romance, yuri also tends to be less explicit than yaoi.
All that to say, Lycoris Recoil is not a love story but it is yuri. At its core is the relationship between two girls who also happen to be assassins. It involves a secret underground organization known as DA (Direct Attack) that eliminates Japan's crime from the shadows, using an army of orphaned girls trained as assassins disguised using school uniforms as urban camouflage. One of our two protagonists, Takina, is disgraced and essentially thrown off the force after disobeying orders to save her squadmate. She is sent to Cafe LycoReco, a front for the organization's special task force lead by our other protagonist Chisato. There's intrigue and mystery and a terrorist plot that needs foiling, but at the end of the day the show is really about how these two girls change each other's lives for the better. It's equal parts character building and would building, as little threads start to intertwine and form the bigger picture. Also, gun fights. Absolutely crazy firefights. Dude gets exploded with an RPG at one point and lives.
The show also has a great secondary plot focusing on the older mentor figures, too. You thought you were getting yuri, but really you get old man yaoi. Truly something for everyone. It's paced very well, thanks to it being an anime original and not an adaptation of anything. Finally, a 13-episode season that doesn't feel like it's only scratching the surface! As such, it balances slice-of-life and action very well. The quieter moments early on are essential for setting up the emotionally impactful moments when things get crazy later. At the start of the series, Takina hates the cafe and will do whatever it takes to be let back into the main branch of DA. She respects Chisato for her reputation as DA's best agent, but she also struggles to understand why a trained assassin like Chisato would actively try to not kill people by using non-lethal rounds. Chisato spends the early part of the show with an unflinchingly positive attitude, eager to show Takina all the ways their job can help people without harming anyone. Really, both of their worldviews become shattered. Takina sees the merit in Chisato's ways and comes to love her found family at the cafe. Meanwhile, Chisato unfortunately discovers that she was living a lie. Oof. I'd love to talk about the added drama the comes into play halfway through, but this anime is so good that I want people to discover that on their own. The show brilliantly drops little hints throughout the first half and weaves them together into a grandiose narrative that ties together all of the character's individual stories with a high-stakes terrorist plot. Oh, I guess I should mention the poster villain, Majima. He's basically a chaotic neutral antagonist, and I feel like we don't see those very often. His goal is to take down DA because they're operating outside of the law, covering up all crime to make Japan seem like some sort of utopia. If he has to become a criminal himself to expose them, then so be it. He'll even take himself down in the process if it means exposing the truth.
As an anime original, it was so satisfying to watch a series of this length tell a complete, satisfying story! They could have ended it at 13 episodes and I would have been satisfied, but things are left slightly open-ended for the future which is great considering they decided to continue it. In addition to an upcoming second season, a series of slice-of-life shorts is releasing this year as well as an English translation for the light novel based on the show. I'm looking forward to all this stuff!
As a final note, I'd like to shout out Chisato's voice actress, Lizzie Freeman, a former YouTuber who I knew from doing My Little Pony impressions for fan animations. Apparently, she went on to become a professional voice actress and is now probably best known as Pomni in The Amazing Digital Circus. However, she absolutely kills it as Chisato in Lycoris Recoil by bringing an immaculate energy to the character. Easily the best performance I've heard from her, and perhaps one of my favorite dub performances ever. Takina's actress, the veteran Xanthe Huynh, is no slouch either of course!
As a final final note, I also want to shout out the show's extremely memorable ending theme. I love it when a show has the outro creep in during an episode's final seconds, leading directly into the credits. Jojo's Bizarre Adventure was so famous for this in its first season that it became a meme, and evidently this show's outro was also a meme in Japan. Sadly, the artist, Sayuri, passed away in September 2024 at only 28 years old. Rest in peace!
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury
For anyone who's ever been on the fence about Gundam, I highly recommend checking this series out. Chances are you'll enjoy it even if you haven't been a fan in the past. Perhaps that makes this series divisive, but shows like this are sometimes necessary to grow a fanbase. I'm going to give some older series another look myself, starting with Gundam 00.
I've never been much of a Gundam guy. I've tried to like it, and even wanted to like it. Thanks to my old frind Toonami, I've ended up dabbling in a bunch of different Gundam series over the years: Wing, Seed, Iron-Blooded Orphans, Unicorn, The Origin, and even the accursed SD Gundam. The main issue I have with Gundam is the same I have with many mecha series. You've got these cool, giant-ass death machine robots and yet so much of the time is spent not fighting with the cool, giant-ass death machine robots! Gundam usually has too much focus on the politics of space war for me, and I find that boring. The very concept of giant fighting robots seems like the furthest thing from boring, yet they somehow managed to find a way in just about every mecha series I've seen. Not this time! I actually got my fill of giant robot fights in With from Mercury. The closest I came to enjoying Gundam prior was Iron-Blooded Orphans, which started out okay before it delved too much into war politics for my taste.
Witch from Mercury is a completely character-driven series from start to finish. The military stuff here is just a backdrop for the characters that are pulled into it whether they want to be or not. Using a tried and true school setting was a good call here as it makes the series instantly more relatable. A devastating first episode introduces us to some of our major characters and establishes the canon of this alternate Gundam timeline. Here, the "GUND" format is a neural link between the human brain and specially-created machinery that was originally developed for medical purposes. Seeing the potential dangers of its misuse, both it and the gundams based on it are outlawed. The entire research station is targeted and destroyed with only a mother and child surviving.
Cut to years later, and that child, Suletta Mercury, begins school life at the prestigious Asticassia School of Technology, the centerpiece of a giant space station. Here she meets our other main character, Miorine Rembran. Pretty much immediately we're introduced to the personal politics taking place here, which is the only kind of politics I fuck with. Miorine's father is using his school as a matchmaking service for his daughter and the future of his company. Asticassia is a magnet for the children of the wealthiest and most influential individuals in this Gundam universe, and so whoever is the top student is arranged to marry Miorine. Obviously, she hates this and is trying to escape into space when she is "rescued" by Suletta, starting their relationship off on the wrong foot. Suletta soon witnesses a mobile suit duel between students with Miorine as the prize and is suitably disgusted by it, challenging top pilot Guel Jeturk in an attempt to help out Miorine. What she gets out of it is a bride. Look, it's not my fault they're making so many anime about gay women! Although, to be fair, in this story it's not so much of a romance thing as it is a convenient alliance. The two agree that Suletta will continue to defend her new first place position until Miorine is old enough to get out of the arranged marriage. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure what exactly Suletta is getting out of this deal except for additional hardship, but I guess her innate desire to help people is its own reward. Getting involved in one another's lives brings a lot of hardship, and the two often have no one to rely on besides one another. How could they not start to form an inseparable bond? Suletta eventually begins to develop genuine feelings for Miorine that don't seem to be reciprocated, leading to tension that threatens to tear apart both their deal and their lives. Hey, I said it wasn't so much a romance. It's not like they make time to smooch or anything when there's lives on the line.
And lives on the line there are! War is not the direct focus in Witch from Mercury, though that threat is always looming, but it is technically about politics. Business politics. That means bloodshed, because in this world big business is intrinsically tied to war. I suppose it's unfortunately not too dissimilar from real life. However, the main focus is on the smaller picture. The relationships of the individuals. The plotting and scheming and quests for power. The children of all these influential people are born into this world of conniving, and we get to see the different ways in which they handle that. Will they rebel? Embrace their position? Buckle under the pressure? The first season ends in a brutal fashion, with an unforgettable final scene that sets the groundwork for the second season's focus. The second season delves even deeper into the repercussions of these business politics as Guel discovers the hardships of Earthlings firsthand. Suletta's mother is also a focus this season. Without spoiling anything, the second season blows the GUND research plot wide open as it delves into the true motives behind the "incident" at the research facility while introducing an insane twist that is evidently the kind of thing that is commonplace in Gundam. Morality… mortality… In the end, it boils down to how far a parent is willing to go for their child.
Witch from Mercury has all the makings of a great mecha series, in my opinion. I got a multilayered story with great characters, but most importantly I got exciting robot fights. I don't know how exactly they were animated, but the mechs themselves looked phenomenal. Too often these days, shows like this with an emphasis on vehicles are completely ruined by ugly CG imagery. Despite how good they look here, there's probably no chance they were animated by hand. In fact, there are a few early scenes where the machines were clearly 3D objects. But for nearly the entirety of the series, crucially including the fight scenes, the mechs don't look like they've had any 3D animations applied to them at all. The fact that they look like drawings leads me to believe that they must have been animated as CG objects and then traced over by hand. Nothing bothers me more than out of place CG, and I have a keen eye for it. It's always very obvious to me and it always looks bad. That's why I'm so pleased that I couldn't tell what was happening here. They really did a fantastic job.
Finally, I'd like to give some credit to the music of the show. Not just the opening and ending music, but the background score too. In terms of said opening and ending themes, they were all solid but the ending of the second season is probably something that will stick with me forever. It's kind of a perfect storm outro. It did actually jumpscare me the first time I heard it (I've amusingly seen it referred to as "weaponized voice crack") due to some unorthodox vocals, but the woman singing here does have a genuinely beautiful and haunting voice. Paired with some fantastically directed animation, I'd say this one is going on my list of all-time favorite anime endings. It's simply beautiful. But I must also take a moment to praise the regular episode scores as well. I feel like for the majority of my anime watching, the background music just kind of blends in. But every so often I'll watch an anime where the musical score really stands out. Any time Sawano is involved, for example (which he has been with Gundam before which makes me wish I liked Gundam Unicorn more). Here, it's not just the occasional movement, but the whole score consistently that stands out. The composer for this series, Takashi Ohmama, seems to only have done a scant few anime including one Gundam short film in 2017. Bringing him back on for this series was a great call, as he clearly understood the assignment!
Dandadan
Dandadan is one of the most accessible anime that's been released in a long time. I mean that literally. Netflix was heavily marketing this series, so imagine my surprise when I noticed it was also on Crunchyroll. Later I found out it's on Hulu too! Episodes were streamed simultaneously with Japan in both Japanese and English. It's been a long time since I got to watch an anime straight out of the oven as it was airing without having to wait weeks or even months for a dub. And to have my choice of streaming service? Dandadan got some serious exposure, and that's great because this anime rules!
The beginning of this series does its best to grab you by the balls and hold you fixated to the screen. First comes the incredible opening with both a memorable song and incredible animation that lets you know what you're about to watch is both beautiful and insane. It's the kind of anime opening that will become iconic and be in everybody's top ten openings list a decade from now. And the first episode is absolute insanity. Dandadan follows Momo Ayase and Ken Takakura as they fight against and unravel a conspiracy involving both aliens and ghosts. After sulking about being dumped by her first boyfriend, Momo happens to walk past Ken being bullied in class and defends him because she has no tolerance for that shit. Ken takes this as an invitation to become friends and they end up arguing about whether ghosts or aliens are real. It ends in a dare for each of them to go to a spooky location to see if they can encounter anything. You can probably guess that they certainly do, and Momo gets abducted by aliens in an abandoned building while Ken gets cursed by a ghost in a haunted tunnel. After being probed and nearly inseminated, Momo awakens her psychic power while defending against the alien mind control. Meanwhile, Ken transforms into a monster after being possessed by the spirit of an old woman known as Turbo Granny. After defeating the aliens, Momo discovers she can hold back the curse with her power. However, Turbo Granny has literally stolen Ken's penis as collateral and dares them to defeat her to get it back before she spreads the curse through Ken. The season generally focuses on the two defending against some kind of ghost or alien threat while trying to retrieve Ken's balls. Yes, you read that right. After the penis, he loses his balls and then they have to get those back too. At the same time, Ken must learn how to control Turbo Granny's borrowed power while Momo learns how to strengthen her psychic abilities.
But also, it's a romance. Yes, I have heard Dandadan described as a romance with shonen skin, and that's not wrong. I'm not just talking a romantic element like a b-plot. This is actually the story of two people falling in love under outrageous circumstances after being brought together by their insane shared trauma. Dandadan is like the opposite of how other anime work. The supernatural stuff is all in service of the romance stuff. The first episode is even called "That's How Love Starts, Ya Know!" However! Both parts of the story get equal attention from a writing standpoint, and that's what sets the series apart. Neither aspect is half-assed, so you go in thinking it's going to be some crazy mystery action thriller, which it is, but you also get one of the best written romances in anime that would normally be an afterthought in this kind of series. The author evidently read over 200 romance manga to make sure he nailed it. Basically, it's for fans of both genres.
This balance leads to a really interesting dynamic between our main duo. It's not really the story of them slowly falling for each other over the course of the adventure like many other series do. Instead, you've got two characters that fell hard and fast trying to process what that means for them and how they should proceed, all with a crazy backdrop of supernatural shenanigans that propel their relationship forward with each encounter. It's been kind of refreshing not to have a "Welp, after all we've been through together, I guess we should be in love now." kind of series.
But it's not just this fresh take that makes the series such a joy to watch. Oh, no! Dandadan is the total package. The animation, the music, and the performances are all top notch. This adaptation comes to us courtesy of Science Saru, a newer studio founded in 2013 that burst onto the scene as guest animators for a random episode of Adventure Time (remember season 6's "Food Chain"?) and doing some support work before hitting the big time with Devilman Crybaby. Since then they've had hits like Keep Your Hands off Eizouken! and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. These guys really know how to make a visually stunning and beautifully directed anime. Direction is something I mostly ever think about when action is involved, but Dandadan also has some very memorable scenes of the characters just hanging around thanks to the stellar cinematography. The use of unique coloration during each supernatural encounter was also something that stood out to me, with each creature bathing the scene in a unique tint. Then there's the music. It's kind of all over the place in a good way. It doesn't really have a cohesive sound and mostly throws out whatever works best for the scene, and that's what works best for the show. I sometimes wonder how anime studios adapting manga decide how the material should sound. Dandadan is so weird and out of the box that only a suitably quirky score would do the trick. I particularly enjoyed one scene in episode five that featured what sounded like bouzouki to me, which is definitely something I've never heard in an anime before. Then sometimes the music veers into hiphop or a remix of the William Tell Overture. Forrest Gump would say it's like a box of chocolates.
Finally, the characters. Dandadan features an interesting and colorful bunch, but they do highlight my one problem with this series. We need to sit down with these anime studios and have a serious discussion about how to adapt long or ongoing works. Dandadan is a new manga, having only just started in 2021. I get that there's not a ton of material yet, but ending the season at 12 episodes was some major bs. The show's opening features all the main characters, and one of them isn't even introduced until the final 30 seconds of episode 10. The season literally ends on a cliffhanger just as the next story arc is beginning. This was absolutely diabolical. I spent almost the entire damn season wondering who that guy was from the opening. It's Momo's friend Jiji, and he's great, but he's barely here! Don't tease me like that! Likewise, just as another secondary character, Aira, feels like she's finally integrated into the story she goes away and is replaced by Jiji for the last two episodes. I'm sure that in the manga this works fine, but the anime pacing kind of ends up in the toilet by choosing to cut off the season where they did. And then they go and air a "season 2" trailer right after the final episode, announcing the anime will be back in July. It's obvious they simply cut one season in half and probably could have continued airing the show for a single 24-episode season that would have worked a lot better. It felt like just as things were starting to really get going and we had all the characters introduced and their dynamics sorted out, it ended. This should be illegal!
But... at least it's continuing. This series is hot off the presses, and hot in general, so I hope they continue it and eventually do a full adaptation. I haven't read the manga and don't intend to, since I'm enjoying the anime so much and I don't want to be spoiled, so I have no conception of how long it might go. Regardless, I hope the anime continues for a good long while because it has all the makings of a classic. To be honest, I'd like to talk more about it but I don't think this is the time or place. Being a brand new and ongoing series, I feel like Dandadan is something people should check out for themselves so we can all experience the crazy adventure together.
That's it for this installment of what I guess is a series now! These bulk review "spectaculars" are something that I want to keep mostly spoiler free when it comes to the really good stuff. I'd like to talk more about Lycoris Recoil and Witch from Mercury in the future, in more of a spoiler-focused breakdown. Dandadan is also the first time I've written about a confirmed ongoing series, so I tried to be as vague as possible while still trying to give impressions. I might write more about the first season, or just wait until season two is out to go more in-depth. Being spoiler free is hard! But the one thing I definitely learned from these anime reviews so far is how much fun it is to write about the weird stuff. I'll have to dig up more anime like Valkyrie Drive and Freezing in the future.
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