Anime columnist Andrew Osmond has been looking at some of the new shows that started streaming this month.
In recent days, I’ve been watching lots of Part Ones. April is the start of a new quarterly TV season in Japan, and the debut of tens of new anime series. In this column, I share my thoughts on a selection of titles, and yes, they include the much-hyped series, Shinichiro Watanabe’s Lazarus, streaming on Adult Swim and other platforms.
But I’ve also watched the beginnings of Anne Shirley, Kowloon Generic Romance, Apocalypse Hotel, Once Upon a Witch’s Death and Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive?, all streaming on Crunchyroll; Sword of the Demon Hunter and Rock is a Lady’s Modesty, on HiDIVE; The Dinner Table Detective, on Prime Video; and Yaiba: Samurai Legend, on Netflix and Hulu. I’ve also watched Part One of the debatably-anime CG series To Be Hero X (animated in China but co-produced in Japan and available on Crunchyroll).
My thoughts on these shows are below, though of course I have more to say on some than others. First, though, some context.
Season’s greetings
In an earlier column, I went in-depth on TV anime, how it’s changed through the decades, and how today’s fans monitor current TV anime. We live in an age of international streaming, when huge amounts of new anime can be watched by us, practically as soon as it’s released in Japan.
Of course, there’s no need to watch new anime, even for anime fans. There are huge archives of older titles watchable legally, and I’ve tried to promote some in this column, from the brilliant Totoro-cyberpunk Dennoh-Coil to the epic psycho-thriller Monster, both on Netflix.
But if you want to try new anime, where to start? Actually, today’s fans have it easy compared to their stone-aged predecessors pre-2000. It’s easy to YouTube a trailer and see if you like the look of it, or try any number of online reviewers, in print or on video. Other fans go by preferred genres (action, romcoms, SF…), or pick an adaptation of a story they liked in a different medium, often a manga or “Light Novel.”
Many fans will go for a new title from their favorite studio and/or director. In TV, the feted studios include Science Saru, Kyoto Animation, WIT Studio, Bones, Trigger, Ufotable and Production I.G. The aforementioned Lazarus scores on both director and studio fronts, as it’s directed by Shinichiro Watanabe (Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo) and is animated by MAPPA (Jujutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man).
Many fans, naturally, will stay with franchises they’re following already. There’s One Piece, 26 years old this year, and the newer The Apothecary Diaries, which I recommended previously. Other titles are returning after a leave of absence, including the long-runner Black Butler. (Be warned, Black Butler has a strange continuity, with the first two seasons on Crunchyroll straying onto an “uncanonical” timeline, completely contradicting the manga-faithful stories that follow.)
There are also new spinoffs from two long-established franchises., My Hero Academia and Uma Musume. The second takes anime bizarreness to its zenith, with famous racehorses reborn as “horse girls” to run the track once more.
It’s also worth acknowledging the trend for new TV anime to be previewed in cinemas. I wrote a column on that recently, highlighting another of this season’s new titles, the fantasy comedy Witch Watch. I liked it based on its first three episodes; it’s now on Crunchyroll, Hulu, Netflix and Disney+.
I was more agnostic about another new anime that previewed in cinemas, the SF adventure Gundam GQuuuuuuX, though I’m hoping it’ll turn out well. The first episode is now on Prime Video; it skips the extended prologue that encumbered the movie edition to get on with the main story, though I’m guessing that prologue will turn up eventually.
The new series
On the basis of the debuts I saw, I was heartened. Many of them were good, and some were potentially outstanding. Of course, it was no unbiased sample. I dodged shows that looked unpromising or already had “stinker” reviews from sources I trust. I hate lazy regurgitations of Sturgeon’s Law, but of course many anime are tedious, atrocious, or somewhere between.
(Indeed, that’s one of the main reasons why I called myself an “anime sceptic” for a long time – see my debut column for this site. Before 2000, only a small selection of anime was available in Britain, and many of them were atrocious. I only found it possible to become a fan when the range of available anime opened up massively with streaming, making it far easier to navigate to good stuff.)
Diving in then, here are my impressions of the new titles I tried:
To Be Hero X (animated by BeDream) – Let’s start with the “debatably-anime.” It’s a (mostly) CG series, primarily animated by the Chinese studio BeDream and co-produced by Japan’s Aniplex. The Japanese-language version includes numerous famous anime actors, with Mamoru Miyano (Death Note’s Light) in the lead, and a main theme by Hiroyuki Sawano (Attack on Titan).
And it’s off to a darn good start. The opening has overtones of Mark Millar (Kick-Ass), as an advertising functionary witnesses his world’s equivalent of Superman step calmly off a building… and plunge to his death. Unfortunately, the person who saw this bears a striking resemblance to the deceased hero, called Nice, and is forced to impersonate him by Nice’s PR team. To complicate things, this world operates on the force of “trust”; if enough people believe someone is a hero, they’ll become a hero. Sounds strange, but many fantasy stories have similar rules about gods.
Most of the episode’s in capable CG, with appealing designs and frenzied fights that shake off the marionette quality of other scenes. However, what’s especially interesting are the show’s occasional slides into 2D animation of different styles, as well as including 2D elements in fights (explosions and smoke clouds, for instance). All that gives the series a sense of freedom like the cartoony CG Spider-Verse and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem, even if it rarely looks like them.
Oh, and the end of Part One is a killer that’d make Millar proud.
Lazarus (animated by MAPPA) – A criminal condemned to 888 years in prison is railroaded into joining a team tasked with saving humanity. So far, so Suicide Squad. Snark aside, Lazarus’s first episode left me agnostic (much like Gundam GQuuuuuuX). It could turn out great, but the characters are surfaces so far. The action includes moments that are mesmerizing, but they set the standard so high that other parts of the extended action scenes feel ordinary and muddy the magic.
Shinichiro Watanabe’s last action series was 2014’s Terror in Resonance (on Crunchyroll), which started stronger than this, but was terribly uneven. It often felt like a dumb live-action film, lifted by individually taut scenes and an outrageous finale, and the hyperrealism which mimicked live-action and still felt beyond it.
A Lazarus moment involving John Woo doves and a falling hero (the latter a familiar motif for Watanabe fans) stood out. However, I was more impressed by the end-titles, which ostensibly show everyone dead except the rogue hero. It’s possibly a reference to the end titles of Satoshi Kon’s classic series Paranoia Agent; it’s also possibly spoiling that humanity won’t be saved at the story’s end. (Or does the title suggest we’re in for mass death and mass resurrection?) Either way, Lazarus needs to work harder to make us care.
Apocalypse Hotel (animated by CygamesPictures) – Even if this series plunges downhill from here on, the opening is quite delightful. It’s hard not to see it as a peculiarly Japanese riff on Wall-E, with less robot romance and more customer service. As in Pixar’s film, humanity has gone. A catastrophe ended civilization, though humans might still be around in space. In the meantime, a robot-staffed hotel in Tokyo operates day after guest-less day, with the “Acting Acting Manager” (a female android) determined the establishment will be in top shape when the guests finally return.
Beyond Wall-E, any science-fiction fan will know similar stories. (One animation-related one is the 1985 tale “Heirs of the Perisphere” by Howard Waldrop, about three theme park robots in a post-apocalypse world – a mouse, a duck and a dog-thing that says “Gwarsh.”) But Apocalypse Hotel presents its scenario with charm and pathos, from the doorman robot who insists on opening the doors every hour, to the glimpse of the innumerable robots who’ve rusted away through the decades, to recurring scenes of the staff dusting, tucking bedsheets, and cleaning surfaces that no human has touched for decades. The resonances go beyond the end of the world. I was reminded of a live-action film about public service, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days, about the daily toil of a Tokyo toilet cleaner.
After all of the anime’s lovely set-up, something big happens at the end of Part One. It’s probably not what you’d guess, but either way, this is a series worth rooting for.
Anne Shirley (animated by The Answer Studio) – Here’s a rarity; a story in anime that Western viewers know at least as well as Japanese ones. By all appearances, it’s a faithful telling of “Anne of Green Gables,” the children’s classic by Lucy Maud Montgomery about a daydreaming orphan girl who’s adopted into a new life on Canada’s Prince Edward Island.
It’s wholesome, lively and well-presented. My problem with it may be just generational. I’m old enough to have grown up when TV dramas in general were far more sedately told. Moreover, I’ve seen the previous anime series of Anne of Green Gables (titles), directed in 1979 by future Ghibli director Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Kaguya). Its English dub is watchable on YouTube’s “Studio100” channel, though the dub’s not much good.
The first episode of the new Anne covers the same story material as nearly the first five parts of Takahata’s original, which had a year to tell its story. The sped-up pace may be a huge recommendation for many readers, but I missed Takahata’s sedateness.
As for Anne herself, she’s almost manically revved up at times. Granted, Anne was always a strange, disconcerting, sometimes maddening girl, with her bursts of enthusiasm and lapses into fantasy. But the new Anne’s aggressively manic – the first minutes stress her “in your face” quality by pushing her face into a fish-eye lens. She was too much for me, for all Anne’s other charms. But I’ve declared my bias, and new viewers may adore it.
Once Upon A Witch’s Death (animated by EMT Squared) – So far, it’s far less somber than the name sounds, though happy endings aren’t guaranteed in anime. The setting is (apparently) modern England with added magic. On her 17th birthday, a perky trainee witch is told by her stern-but-kind guardian that she’s under a curse. It’ll kill her in a year’s time, unless she can collect “a thousand teardrops of joy” by the deadline. Despite the premise, the tone is determinedly light-hearted and upbeat (though, again, some anime series grow massively grim from cheery starts).
The first episode’s a decent story about bereavement. The girl makes a little light deduction at one point (about flowers), which fits neatly with a literary theory about classic fictional detectives, that their main role may not be detecting crime but rather “saving” ordinary people from anonymity, noticing what they truly need. The cozy domesticity at the start recalls Miyazaki’s witch film Kiki’s Delivery Service, but the England-with-magic setting brings it closer to the fantasy anime series The Ancient Magus’ Bride.
Kowloon Generic Romance (animated by Arvo Animation) – The setting for this highly intriguing series isn’t Kowloon City proper, which is a district of Hong Kong. Rather it’s a densely-peopled enclave that once existed in that district, called Kowloon Walled City. It’s figured in anime before – namely in the 1995 film of Ghost in the Shell, where the “old city” backgrounds were based on a location trip to the area. By the time the film was released, Kowloon Walled City had been demolished. The battered, graffiti-covered stonework and rusty Chinese signage in Kowloon Generic Romance could have been transposed straight from Ghost in the Shell.
The real enclave was lawless, but the version in Kowloon Generic Romance seems relatively orderly. On one level, it’s a small story of a young man and woman working in a real estate office. The man is gratingly immature, but the woman’s drawn to him anyway. Around them are many initially unexplained things. There’s an artificial structure in the sky; news reports of digital immortality around the corner; repeated references to nostalgia and memory; and anomalous small details, such as the woman’s improving eyesight.
The designs and backgrounds are lovely, and there’s no Japanese high-school in sight. It’s very promising indeed.
Can a Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? (animated by J.C. Staff) – And just to show I’m not prejudiced against Japanese high-schools, this looks set to be a sweet-natured school love-triangle tale, featuring an introverted boy, the peppy girl who’s his long-time best friend, and the new girl who might just take him away. So far it seems less manic and lewd than many series of its kind, though it loses control near the end of the episode. There’s a groping gag, though it feels different when the groper’s a girl.
A typical pitfall of these series is that they pour in further girl characters, turning interesting set-ups into “harem” wish-fulfilment. However, the signs are this show may stick with being a love-triangle. The boy’s passion is to create flower-themed accessories. The non-stereotypical passion aligns him with the doll-making boy in another popular romcom show, My Dress-Up Darling, which is also on Crunchyroll (and will return in July). That’s another sweet-natured show, but with far more sex jokes,
Yaiba: Samurai Legend (animated by WIT Studio) – This is a cheerily silly, extremely traditional boy’s action show. Emphatically retro, it’s based on a 1988 manga (ended 1993) by Gosho Aoyama, who’d go on to create the massive Case Closed (aka Detective Conan) franchise, rivalling One Piece in scale. The Yaiba manga was animated once already, in 1993 (titles here). The story opens in the jungle, but the action moves to today’s Tokyo, including glimpses of the Tokyo Skytree, built long after the manga was written.
Notably, the new series is one of the very small number of today’s TV anime to air in a daytime slot on Japanese TV. It shows at 5.30 p.m. on Saturday afternoons, right before Case Closed at 6 p.m. (It’s even more notable given that One Piece, which had daytime slots for nearly 25 years, has just moved to 11.15 p.m. on Sundays for its new episodes.)
Yaiba is not “my” kind of show, but it’s jolly enough, with a very funny opening sequence where the boy hero takes on an irate giant gorilla, the madcap comedy bolstered by impressive timing and weight in the drawings. The kendo matches between the boy and human opponents are a step down from that, but still exhilarating. However, one fleeting “girl’s locker room” joke could be ominous, if you’re considering the show as kids’ fare.
The Dinner-Table Detective (animated by Madhouse) – One of the less impressive shows I tried. Much of its murder mystery is played as a shouty farce that I found witless. Still, it’s hard to judge given that the true detective is only introduced properly at the episode’s end.
Rock is a Lady’s Modesty (animated by Bandai Namco Pictures) – This does look fun, despite reservations. For readers old enough to remember Kyoto Animation’s K-ON!, about a schoolgirls’ music band, this could be a parody. This time the school’s a hyper-refined girls’ academy for the daughters of society’s elite, where the protagonist Lilisa must repress her personality at all times. Then she encounters a rival in a disused schoolhouse, and they can cut loose and make rock music together.
One danger is the series might end up more silly than funny, though the girls’ first rock battle is invigorating. It’s undercut, though, by a familiar technical problem – the mismatch between the girls’ normal 2D animation and the CG models that take over in the rock sequence. Lillisa’s giant-sized pigtails are acceptably silly in 2D, but seeing them move around stiffly in 3D is too much.
Still, that’s partly offset by the characters’ lively drawn faces and a few impressive shots dropped between the mechanical ones. For instance, the rock number ends with a terrific last fusillade of drumming; I was truly unsure if it was animated in 2D, partly 2D, or expertly disguised 3D.
There’s also some hilariously blatant Sapphic imagery that must surely be affirmed by the characters in episodes to come… though you can never be certain in anime.
Sword of the Demon Hunter (animated by Yokohama Animation Lab) – Despite a laughably generic title, this is another promising show. Part one is extended (50 minutes), setting up an absorbing tale in 19th-century Japan – the captions specify it’s Japan’s Tenpo Era, which began in 1830. Two runaway children are adopted into a village which guards its sacred Shrine Maiden from demon monsters, who are quickly established to be real. But the runaways have a secret. The girl hides one of her eyes under a bandage, and the demons know why…
The story pulls a deft trick that might confuse you if you’re half-watching (one character doesn’t age like the others). The period setting is established appealingly – some details may remind Ghibli fans of Princess Mononoke and Princess Kaguya, though both films were set centuries earlier. I was underwhelmed by the giant demon that turns up midway through the story, but it turns out to be a pawn setting up the real, far more vivid payoff that plays out like a tragic folktale.
There’s gore in places, especially at the end – this is Not For Kids – but the show doesn’t revel in dismemberment like some “historical” anime. The ending leaves it unclear what the rest of the show will be like, and how much it’ll resemble this first episode, but the quality leaves you wanting more.
