Doctorkev’s Thoughts on the Autumn 2023 Anime Season: New Shows
It’s that time in the anime season where I take stock, and let you know which new shows I think are worth recommending, and which are either hot garbage or boring drivel. I’ll cover ongoing shows and sequels in a separate article. As the Autumn 2023 season is so absolutely stacked — seriously, there are around seventy new anime episodes dropping every week right now — I’ve had to be ruthless with what I choose to watch.
That ruthlessness means HELL NO to even starting the following three shows:
1) KamiErabi GOD.app, the latest piece of insanity from NieR Automata madman Yoko Taro. Normally I’d watch or play anything with his name attached (I even tried both of his recent gacha games SinoAlice and NieR Reincarnation, though dropped both of them within 24 hours…) but the bargain-basement CG art style looks cursed, and after the crushing bore that was Platinum End, I’m disinterested in yet another Death Game anime. No thanks.
2) A Girl and Her Guard Dog: Could it be this season’s most problematic show? Is anyone even watching this story about a full grown adult man who pretends to be a student so he can be inappropriately overprotective to the schoolgirl who crushes on him? I’m not.
3) Buta no Liver wa Kanetsu Shiro: Japanese otaku wastrel is reincarnated as a pig. Lusts after busty young girl who can hear his perverted thoughts. Could you pay me to watch this? NO. Was anime a mistake? All evidence points to YES.
Started, but dropped:
Generally, I try not to drop shows after starting them, but after a single episode of the very odd, tonally discordant and ugly Under Ninja, I dropped it after a single episode. It’s not for me.
The Family Circumstances of the Unreliable Witch has one joke, and does nothing creative or interesting with it. It’s a comedy where I barely even cracked a smile, the “joke” being that the titular witch is small and underdeveloped, while her 16-year-old adoptive daughter towers over her and has massive breasts. Ha ha ha ha how side-splitting. Dropped after two uninspiring episodes.
Stardust Telepath was a little different, as I stuck with it for five episodes before realising that despite a promising start, it bored me senseless. Another variation on the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things formula, this one features a spacey girl who may-or-may-not be an alien, and the shared girls’ activity is building rocket ships. Sounds fun, right? Yeah, it’s cute and colourful, but the main character is a sub-Bocchi the Rock quivering mess of social anxiety, and unless done well that turns me off shows completely. The other characters are uninteresting and I think I spent most of the fifth episode dozing off as nothing of great import appeared to be happening. Dropped!
New shows worth your time:
I’m in Love with the Villainess — Crunchyroll, Mondays — watched six episodes
So I described this on a recent AniTAY podcast as “ultra aggressive disaster lesbian masochist simp the anime” and stick by that description (at least until the uh… “hotly… anticipated…” anime for Gushing Over Magical Girls erupts onto our screens next year.) It’s yet another villainess-flavoured reincarnated-into-an-otome game story, though this one has a very prominent yuri tone. Japanese wage slave Rei Ohashi is overworked to death by her employer (not an uncommon occurrence, apparently), and finds herself embodied as Rae Taylor, heroine of her favourite visual novel/dating sim. She’s not interested in any of the male romance options though, she has her heart set on Claire, the main female antagonist who is destined for a bad end whichever narrative route Rae chooses…
I’ve been looking forwards to this one for a while as I’d heard interesting things about the light novel series it’s based on, and so far I’ve not been disappointed. Rae herself is hilarious, and poor Claire spends most of the time confused and embarrassed by Rae’s odd, amorous behaviour. The animation and presentation is rudimentary at best, but the strength of the characters helps to keep it very entertaining. Things look to be getting more serious soon — the title of the game is Revolution after all… Also — for some reason I’m in Love with the Villainess is getting a simuldub, and it’s great! The cast really do give it their all. It’s worth watching over the sub, for once.
Migi & Dali — Crunchyroll, Mondays — watched six episodes
From Nami Sano, sadly recently-deceased author of Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto, comes this deeply weird mystery/comedy with unsettling horror vibes. The source manga was her final work before her death from cancer earlier this year, so watching this excellent animated adaptation is already an emotional experience. Migi & Dali isn’t like anything else I’ve ever seen, it’s so very odd. Migi and Dali are identical twin boys who are adopted from their orphanage by a well-meaning, if naive, older couple, Mr and Mrs Sonoyama. The Sonoyamas are unaware that their new son “Hitori” is in fact two separate people, pretending to be one.
Much of the queasy humour from the first couple of episodes centres on the frankly bizarre and uncomfortable ways the boys manipulate their adoptive parents and avoid detection — everything from improbable acrobatics with their impossibly bendy, wiry bodies, to relentless subterfuge and risky concealment strategies. The boys aren’t geniuses though — they often screw up, and their minutely-planned schemes go hilariously wrong, especially when they fail to comprehend other characters’ motivations.
Every supporting character has freaky personality quirks like something from a David Lynch movie, and the soundtrack specialises in evoking tension and dread with high pitched choral singing and discordant sounds. It’s like a skewed sitcom directed by Junji Ito. The central murder mystery is compelling and only gets more wild and complicated as it progresses. I have absolutely no idea where this show is going, but I almost don’t want it to end as I know that there will never be anything more from its author. Bonus points for a truly excellent and evocative closing song that lingers in the mind long afterwards.
16Bit Sensation — Another Layer —Crunchyroll, Wednesdays — watched six episodes
I’m so glad that fellow AniTAY writer Reikaze convinced me to watch this wonderful show. It’s nominally based on a two-volume doujin manga about a small independent bishojo game development company in the 1990s. What really makes this great is new anime-original character Konoha Akisato. Konoha is an accomplished artist who loves drawing beautiful women but is unfulfilled in her role at her modern day company that produces mobile game shovelware. She pines for the age of bishojo game supremacy back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in the era of the NEC PC98 and earlier Windows iterations. Via the medium of Mysterious Magical Visual Novel Game Cases, Konoha finds herself randomly transported back to 1990s Tokyo where she becomes involved with small game studio Alcohol Soft.
Konoha wants nothing more than to indulge her dream of making a visual novel game featuring her beautiful artwork of pretty girls, but the road to artistic satisfaction is paved with many complications. Konoha’s hyperactive fangirling is adorable, and the way she bounces off stoic programmer Mamoru is genuinely fun. The show is full of little historical touches for the very nerdiest of gamers and followers of otaku culture. For example, game graphics on the PC98 were limited to 16 colours only, artwork was drawn pixel-by pixel, and painstaking techniques like dithering were used to create the illusion of extra colours. 16Bit Sensation itself is brightly-coloured, upbeat, and quite odd. It’s one of the shows I most look forwards to watching every week.
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End — Crunchyroll, Fridays — watched nine episodes
We come to the Autumn season’s undisputed Hype Show, and… the hype is real. This is a phenomenal adaptation of an excellent manga. Frieren is a nigh-immortal elf whose lifespan so far approaches one thousand years. Several decades ago she spent ten years with her party of three friends — a cleric, a dwarf and a swordsman — and together they became national heroes, defeating the Demon Lord. Following their victory, Frieren wandered off only to return years later to find her friend Himmel the Hero is aged and dying. His death triggers in her a realisation that the ten years they spent together was perhaps the most impactful of her long life. She embarks on a journey to retrace their original quest, and winds up accompanied by two proteges of her earlier companions.
Most fantasy stories tackle the main conflict and leave what happens afterwards to epilogues, appendices, or the reader’s/viewer’s mind. Frieren starts after everything is already resolved, and dares to ask “well, what next?” When you’re an elf, the lifespan of the humans around you seems ephemeral. Frieren gets distracted, wandering off in search of ancient grimoires (her obsession is collecting new spells from obscure, rare texts), and thinks nothing of spending six or more years wandering in a forest to achieve her goal. Humans do not have that luxury, and Frieren’s differing conception of the passage of time provides ample exasperation to her travelling companions.
Apprentice mage Fern is a joy, with her disgrunted reaction to Frieren’s habit of sleeping too late, treating her master like a child. Although the show is extremely chilled and melancholy at times, the action scenes, when they happen, go hard, with Fern and Frieren unleashing terrifying spells of apocalyptic power when provoked. There’s some fascinating worldbuilding here, and there are deep explorations of the concept of living memory. Frieren’s famous exploits were so long ago that the only remaining witness are former children who were alive at the time, but are now elderly. Once that generation passes on, Frieren and her friends will pass on into myth. It’s a sobering and sad story in that regard, yet there’s also a hopefulness for the future in Frieren’s new friends. A gorgeous series with beautiful art and excellent music, studio Madhouse have outdone themselves with this candidate for anime of the year.
Our Dating Story: The Experienced You and the Inexperienced Me — Crunchyroll, Fridays — watched five episodes
Wow, this one turned out a lot wilder than I expected. On the surface, this is a really stupid-sounding romantic drama about a super-anxious nerd (Ryuto) who somehow ends up dating the most popular girl in his class (Runa). He’s constantly self-sabotaging with his over-thinking and poor self esteem, while she’s mystified that this nice boy hasn’t insisted she drop her knickers on their first date. While Ryuto unwittingly screams “VIRGIN” with every action he takes, Runa has had a string of short-lived relationships with shitty boys who have used her body for sexual gratification and dumped her within a month when they got bored.
Their attitudes to life and relationships couldn’t be more different — at least on a superficial level — but Ryuto endears himself to Runa by… well… acting with a shred of basic human decency. He may be annoying, but he genuinely wants to get to know her better, wants to find out what she likes, wants to treat her well, and although he most definitely is very horny for her, he feels wrong about pushing her into physical intimacy before it is right for them both. You know, basic stuff. Poor Runa has never been treated as anything other than a receptacle for lust by shitty men. So if the whole show was merely about their (admittedly sweet) relationship, then it would probably become insufferable within a handful of episodes. The third episode, however, throws a nuclear bomb into the status quo, which creates some extremely spicy, ridiculous drama.
I don’t really want to spoil the god-tier levels of insane soap-opera style drama that accompanies this new plot element, it’s best watched unprepared. Suffice to say I was considering dropping the show until this point, but now I am so far invested, it’s painful. Let the flames of madness burn, I say BRING IT ON.
The Apothecary Diaries — Crunchyroll, Saturdays — watched five episodes
Another hotly-anticipated anime, this light novel adaptation is House M.D. via ancient China. Maomao is the daughter of an apothecary in a city in what appears to be a fictionalised version of China (era unspecified). She’s kidnapped and sold to the palace to serve the emperor — specifically the emperor’s multiple concubines. Initially she plans to keep her head down and work out her period of servitude, but her advanced medicinal skills and knowledge are soon discovered, and she is given a position with more authority and freedom with which to investigate medical mysteries and cure various ailments.
This is a really fascinating show for me, referencing as it does real ancient medicine and herbology. In the first episode, some of the concubines are unwell and Maomao realises its due to poisoning from their makeup (which probably contains arsenic or lead). Other ailments are caused by the burning of poisonous wood, or exposure to irritating sap. Maomao herself is a fun character, immune to the charms and wiles of the charismatic chief eunuch Jinshi. Maomao’s cat-like mannerisms never fail to raise a smile. I’ll definitely keep watching this, there are fourteen whole novels to adapt, so The Apothecary Diaries could potentially run for a long time if it’s successful.
Tearmoon Empire — started 7/10 — Saturdays — watched five episodes
Basically this is “what if Marie Antoinette, following her execution by guillotine, was isekai-d back in time into her childhood self and given the opportunity to change her circumstances for the better.” The first episode is quite grim, with our Marie Antoinette-equivalent Mia Luna Tearmoon languishing for years in a filthy dungeon before she is eventually forcibly separated from her head. When she awakens in her 12-year-old body she is understandably confused and distressed. Thankfully she has a magic diary that contains entries from the future she can refer to.
Motivated primarily by self-preservation, Mia sets out to make friends with (or at least avoid) the most prominent figures involved with the future revolution, or those she can engage to prevent the revolution from occuring in the first place. Although Mia is almost entirely selfish, her actions tend to impress others and to improve the lot of the common people. It seems to be one of those anime where the protagonist fails upwards, regardless of what they do. It’s mostly light-hearted fun, though the opening sequence shows Mia fleeing in terror from an anthropmorphic guillotine. Your mileage may vary as to how much empathy you have for a member of the spoiled, entitled out-of-touch super-rich attempting to prevent her (possibly well-deserved) execution. Normally I’d advocate slaughtering, skinning, roasting, and eating the rich, but Mia is entertaining enough I’d consent to her stay of execution for now.
The Vexations of a Shut-in Vampire Princess —HIDIVE — Saturdays — watched five episodes
I’m really not sure how to describe this bizarre show, it’s all over the place in terms of tone and content. It’s based on a 12-volume light novel series and it seems like the author threw everything at the wall to see what stuck. Set in a fantasy world inhabited by various magical races, we follow Terakomari Gandesblood, a traumatised teenage girl who belongs to a vampire family. Due to past experiences, she has shut herself away in her room, but is forced to leave as she is nominated to become one of her country’s top military leaders… Tanya the Evil style. Sort of. She has to convince all of her bloodthirsty subordinates that she is an ultra-strong officer who is ruthless to her enemies and suffers no fools. Oh, and despite being a vampire, she has an aversion to drinking blood. Ok… like a non-duck Count Duckula, then.
Also she’s been assigned a mysterious new maid who follows her everywhere (even into her bed), who appears to have some kind of deep-seated sexual attraction to her. Oh, and despite Komari’s kingdom being engaged in perpetual war with its neighbours, because of some all-powerful magical item, no-one actually dies, they get better. Mix in some terrorists, childhood grudges, family secrets, slapstick humour and imperial politics you’ve got a story that feels torn in about twenty different directions at once. Komari is one of those fish-out-of-water protagonists who doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing but somehow manages to succeed anyway — not unlike Mia from Tearmoon Empire. There are so many random ingredients it’s hard to tell where the hell the story will go next, so I’ll keep watching for now.
The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really Love You — Crunchyroll, Sundays — watched five episodes
I’m on the bubble with this one. It’s a truly ridiculous harem comedy where, due to a godly administrative error, the hapless main male character Rentaro discovers he’s been assigned one hundred female soulmates rather than the standard one. If he’s unable to reciprocate the affections of every single one, then they will die. This is obviously existentially horrifying, so Rentaro does his best to accommodate each successive new girlfriend he collects, and tries to keep them all happy with him, and each other. At least he’s open about it, I suppose.
Superficially it’s similar to the truly execrable Girlfriend, Girlfriend, which has inexplicably returned for a second season this Autumn. Thankfully, 100 Girlfriends isn’t so stupidly braindead, and seems to be engineered to drive the harem genre to its logical extreme. So far, Rentaro has collected four very eclectic girlfriends, all with very specific personality traits — one is a hot-tempered tsundere, one is seemingly prim and proper but is truly very horny, one is so shy she’s practically mute and uses words from an archaic novel to communicate, and the most recent is super-intelligent, efficient and single-minded. They all love him so much they apparently don’t mind sharing. Perhaps that’s not so bad with four girlfriends (?) but, what about one hundred…? The show really leans into absurd humour and bizarre situations, and can be very funny at times. I wonder if it might eventually get tiresome? It’s probably my least favourite of the shows I’m continuing to follow and may drop it if something else comes along to take its place.
PLUTO — Netflix — watched two episodes
Finally! This adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s 2003–2009 manga was initially announced six years ago, at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Now all eight hour-long episodes have been dropped at once on Netflix. I’ve only had the opportunity so far to watch the first two. It’s an adult retelling of the famous story The Greatest Robot on Earth from Osamu Tezuka’s 1964s Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) manga. I love Tezuka’s manga, and treasure the complete collection of Astro Boy manga published monthly by Dark Horse in English between 2002 and 2004. I’m also a big fan of Naoki Urasawa, in particular his series Monster and 20th Century Boys. Pluto’s eight volumes were released in English by Viz from 2009–2010 and it’s one of my favourite manga.
So far, Pluto’s big budget prestige anime adaptation has been excellent. Set in a future where robots are commonplace, they’ve hard-won equal rights with humans. Robots can be large, powerful machines, or they can look and function identically to humans — even down to being able to eat, to marry, and to adopt children. A series of murders of powerful robots and human robot sympathisers leads Europol inspector Gesicht on an investigation around the world, including to meet the most advanced robot on the planet, housed in a child’s body — Atom.
Every frame oozes with care and attention, there’s a mix of excellent 2D animation and smooth 3D imagery. Urasawa’s realistic character designs are faithfully captured, themselves rationalised versions of Tezuka’s more outlandish, cartoony designs. Even in more grounded fashion, characters like Profession Ochanomizu are instantly recognisable, and the mecha designs take elements from Tezuka’s originals. So far I have some questions about the mechanics of the world and the ways that robots fit into it, but I expect they’ll be answered eventually. Each episode contains roughly the same length of footage as three standard anime episodes, so this may as well be a 24-episode anime series. For now, I’m looking forwards to continue deeper into Pluto’s dark mystery.
Not yet started:
With this season providing an embarrassment of riches, I’ve not had time to sample everything that looks good. Netflix is on a roll with two interesting-looking samurai action shows, the first being Onimusha, an adaptation of the fantasy/historical/survival horror video game series. I loved all of those during the PS2 era. Blue Eye Samurai isn’t technically anime as it’s a US/Canadian production, but it’s set in 17th Century Japan so who really cares? It looks good so I’ll take a look. Netflix also streams VRMMO title Good Night World, and I hear it’s meant to be decent, but I’m mostly allergic to that genre.
You’d think major Shonen Jump adaptation Undead Unluck would be more widely available, but due to some idiotic licensing decisions, it’s trapped on Hulu in the US and is not available to stream anywhere else in the world except Japan. Normally you’d expect Hulu shows to appear on Disney+ elsewhere in the world, but who knows what the plan is with this. Disney certainly isn’t telling anyone.
Crunchyroll’s almost monopolistic position as primary anime streamer means it’s bursting at the seams this season with so many shows. A few that I’ve heard are good include grounded mecha show Bullbuster, superhero story SHY, racing anime Overtake!, esports drama Protocol: Rain, and the more-than-slightly-suggestive-sounding I’m Giving the Disgraced Noble Lady I Rescued a Crash Course in Naughtiness. Maybe I’ll get to some of these one day, but my backlog isn’t getting any shorter…
Anyway, thanks for reading and I’ll be back at some point in the next few days to talk about this season’s sequels and ongoing shows, of which there are also far too many.
