Doctorkev’s Thoughts on the Summer 2022 Anime Season: New Shows
Although Summer is somewhat quieter on the anime front compared to the previous Spring 2022 season, that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of shows to watch. Most of the heavy hitters are sequels or ongoing shows, and I’ll cover them in an upcoming article. First of all, lets take a look at some of the season’s more interesting new things.
The Girl From the Other Side: episodes 1–3 COMPLETE— CRUNCHYROLL
This was a lovely surprise, randomly appearing on Crunchyroll this week without any apparent fanfare. A three-episode OVA delicately animated by Wit Studio (and funded by Kickstarter), it was originally released in Japan in March 2022, and I wondered if we would ever get it here. Based on the 11-volume fairy-tale fantasy manga written and illustrated by Nagabe, this is a beautiful and melancholy watercolour delight.
Aesthetically it’s reminiscent of more experimental, even traditional, European animation, with its earthy tones, delicately wavering linework and ambiguous storytelling. Ethereally cute little poppet Shiva is seemingly rejected by her people and abandoned in the shadowy, dangerous forest in the “Outside” region. Not much about the world is clarified except through indirect storytelling. It appears that the “Inside” is where normal humans dwell, whereas the “Outside” is filled with dark, malformed and accursed creatures (former humans?) who maliciously spread their curse via direct touch.
One of these cursed individuals, a tall being with an animalistic head (think a little like Elias Ainsworth from The Ancient Magus Bride, but less bony) finds Shiva and decides to care for her, if at least only temporarily. She emotionally attaches to him, calling him “Teacher” (Sensei) and together they journey through a quietly nightmarish world filled with understated horror and inexplicable strangeness.
Teacher has little idea how to relate to Shiva, but clearly has some experience with children — it’s hinted that perhaps, before he was cursed, he may have been a husband and father. He strives to do his best for her, even if that means trying to send her back to her own people, a choice that exposes her only to more danger.
Best viewed as a beautiful and evocative fever dream, the ending strains the bounds of even dream logic, and I struggled to understand what was happening. Perhaps this is an inevitable result of compressing such a long-running manga into little over an hour. I’d definitely recommend watching it at least once, if only to experience The Girl From the Other Side’s striking art and unsettling atmosphere.
Bastard!? Heavy Metal Fantasy — episodes 1–6 of 24 — NETFLIX — DROPPED
I really tried, but after six episodes of Hyper-Concentrated Ultra Horny Edgy Teen Innuendo, I’m out. My fourteen-year-old self would probably have loved this, or at least pretended to his friends he did, but I struggle to find Bastard even remotely entertaining. There’s only so many instances of fake comedy fellatio that I can tolerate without groaning and rolling back my eyes so hard my optic nerves snap.
Main character Dark Schneider is like a super annoying house guest who starts off charismatic and interesting, but soon becomes boorish, repetitive, dull, offensive, and impossible to eject. He’s not a sympathetic lead, the main female characters are nothing but levitating boobs, and what minimal story there is completely fails to engage me. I understand why people enjoy this, but over and above the “fnarr fnarr, he just groped her tits” entertainment level, I can’t imagine wasting any more of my life on Bastard.
Uncle From Another World — episodes 1–4 — NETFLIX (Wednesday)
Broadcast internationally on a two-week delay (compared to the Japanese release) by Netflix, unfortunately this show’s schedule is the latest anime casualty of the alarming current COVID-19 outbreak in Japan. We’ve caught up for the moment, but episode five won’t be available subtitled in English until August 31st.
The four episodes we do have are great, though. A wonderfully simple but effective twist on anime’s over-saturated isekai storytelling trope, this is the story of a middle-aged man who, in his late teens, back in the year 2000, was isekai-d by Truck-kun to a generic fantasy world. While he battled dragons with magic and interacted with tsundere elf-girls, his body in this world was comatose and attached to life support. Seventeen years later he awakens to find that the strain of his long term illness destroyed his family and his only close remaining relative is his twenty-year-old nephew.
Discovering that his fantasy world magical powers still function in this reality, his nephew introduces him to YouTube video monetisation and a new career is launched! Uncle himself is an… unusual lead character. He’s obsessed by the Sega Saturn (so expect a great many late 90s gaming deep cuts) and heartbroken to discover his favourite console manufacturer exited the hardware business shortly after he was isekai-d. He’s also completely oblivious to interpersonal relationships, probably asexual (or at the very least aromantic) and likely somewhat neurodivergent. Whether it’s healthy for him and his nephew to share a home is debatable…
It’s a very funny show with a bleak brand of humour that may not suit everyone. It’s common for the show to set up some typical fantasy or romantic situation, only for Uncle’s actions to completely upend or derail expectations in the most disappointing, tone-deaf way. Your mileage for this may vary. I’d be unable to binge this, but once a week it’s a hoot. Despite the fact that Uncle himself has an incredibly ugly character design (the denizens of the fantasy world initially mistook him for an orc), the female characters are extremely cute. The “real” world has a very grey, mundane appearance that’s juxtaposed with Uncle’s technicolor isekai memories. The recent The Executioner and Her Way of Life notwithstanding, it’s definitely one of the best twists on the isekai genre in years.
My Stepmom’s Daughter is My Ex — episode 1–6 — CRUNCHYROLL (Wednesday)
Couldn’t they have made the title less wordy by calling it “My Stepsister is My Ex?” Anyway, this is another one of those contrived only-in-anime situations where two single parents marry one another and their children only meet after the fact. Obviously in this case, the father’s son and mother’s daughter previously dated each other back in middle school. That relationship ended with bickering and bitterness on both sides, so the fact that they now must share a house and play happy families isn’t ideal for either teenager. Oh, and they’re both now in the same high school class.
Reading the above synopsis, you’d think this would be a ridiculous setup ripe for overwrought and emotionally complicated shenanigans like Domestic Girlfriend. So far, you’d be wrong. There’s no heightened soap opera insanity, no teenage sex, and definitely no rectal suppositories. Sorry to disappoint those of you keen to experience such narrative delights once more.
Instead this is a tonally uneven sort-of-romcom-sort-of-relationship-drama. I’m really not sure what to make of it, nor what the show is aiming for. The main characters are both kind of irritating and the first few episodes focus on their immature psychological one-upmanship games. That then falls by the wayside as we mainly follow the main female character who clearly is not over her stepbrother. The stepbrother himself is a bit more of a mystery, and he comes off as manipulative, creepy and smug. I don’t like him. I’m not sure I can really recommend this, it isn’t that great. It feels aimless and uncomfortable.
Call of the Night — episodes 1–5 — HIDIVE (Thursday)
From one show that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be, to one that most certainly does. Directed by Monogatari and The Case Study of Vanitas’ Tomoyuki Itamura, he stays true to type with a show about sexy vampires. Directionless 14-year-old Ko Yamori hates school and can’t sleep at night, so he takes to sneaking out late and wandering the twilight streets. He meets the seductive vampire Nazuna Nanakusa and makes a pact with her — he will let her suck his blood, and if he falls in love with her then he can become a vampire too.
Nazuna exudes exhausted millennial energy, even down to her character design with half-closed eyes that makes her look permanently half-asleep. She’s obviously older than Ko but doesn’t seem a whole lot more mature. Despite her love of dirty jokes to make Ko embarrassed, she struggles to cope with talk of romance and true feelings. Together they pass the wee dark hours of the night, Ko with his ambition to avoid the responsibilities and troubles of encroaching adulthood, and Nazuna with… Ko’s apparently unusually tasty blood.
They make an odd double-act, but I love this show. I find it incredibly evocative of that time as an older adolescent/young adult when you and the people around you are still trying to figure out who you are, and your relation to others. Identity and purpose are in flux, and relationships are intense, sometimes fleeting, sometimes foundational, often confusing, yet intoxicating. Call of the Night reminds me painfully of my own adolescence, and looks gorgeous while doing so. This is almost my favourite show of the season. Oh, and both opening and closing songs are incredible.
Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer — episodes 1–5 — CRUNCHYROLL (Friday)
I’ve never read the manga this is based on, but it’s apparently very highly regarded and also tragically long out-of-print in English. It’s written by Satoshi Mizukami, author of Planet With and Spirit Circle, both of which I enjoyed. College student Yuuhi Amamiya is pestered by a magical lizard only he can see to become a Beast Knight, a chosen hero who must assist the Princess to protect the world from an evil mage who plans to destroy the planet with the enormous Biscuit Hammer that hangs ominously in orbit, visible only to the chosen few.
Yuuhi is no stereotypical hero character and repeatedly refuses the lizard’s call to action, until he meets the Princess herself — the similarly misanthropic Samidare Asahina, his next-door neighbour (and crush). Asahina does want to save the world from the evil mage and his Biscuit Hammer — if only because she wants to destroy the world herself afterwards! It’s certainly a bizarre setup. Yuuhi the reluctant hero isn’t charismatic enough to carry the show by himself, but Samidare most certainly is. I love her.
Unfortunately a promising show is hamstrung by some pretty horrendous production issues. This was clearly made on the cheap, by studio NAZ, they of the infamous My Sister, My Writer production debacle in 2018. The animation is barely functional at best, with hopelessly inept battle scenes, sub-PS1-level CGI and uninspired direction. Manga fans will probably give up in frustration early on, but as I’ve no emotional attachment to the (unattainable) original, I’ll stick with the show for now as the underlying story is strong, and interesting. I just hope the production doesn’t fall to pieces even more before the season is complete.
Lycoris Recoil — episodes 1–6— CRUNCHYROLL (Saturday)
Although I wasn’t completely sold on the first episode, Lycoris Recoil quickly solidifies itself as contender for best new anime of the season. Set in a near-future Japan run by a totalitarian government that claims to have eradicated all major crime and terrorism, in reality serious threats to the country’s stability are prevented by an army of gun-toting assassin schoolgirls. In a country with extremely strict gun control, where better place to hide enough firearms to level an entire society than within school uniforms?
A bright and breezy show with a dark undercurrent, it reminds me a lot of Gunslinger Girl (the excellent first season, at least) but without the existential misery. Main duo Takina and Chisato initially seem to be a reluctantly paired mismatched crime-fighting duo, like Lethal Weapon with schoolgirls, however they quickly bond and become best friends. Serious brunette Takina’s cold edges are softened by the perpetually cheery Chisato, though both are terrifyingly competent. Chisato has an aversion to killing not shared by Takina, who prefers real bullets to Chisato’s non-lethal plastic variants.
Each episode has a self-contained “A” plot where our main duo must solve a problem, or perform some kind of duty, there’s usually a fun twist or two, lots of beautifully choreographed violence, plus a few little nuggests of information about a building background “B” plot that’s sure to become only more prominent with time. There’s all kinds of tantalising secrets barely only hinted at so far, it’s clear that at some point everything these girls think they know about themselves, their jobs, and their society is likely to spectacularly blow up in their faces.
Engage Kiss — episodes 1–6 — CRUNCHYROLL (Saturday)
The second new show this season from the prolific A1 pictures (the first being Lycoris Recoil), unlike many of my AniTAY discord colleagues, I’ve mixed feelings about this one. A mixed media production, there’s an upcoming mobile (presumably gacha-based) sequel game coming soon from Square Enix titled Engage Kill.
I think this is meant to be set in the near future, though I suppose it could be fairly close to the modern age, in this world there are frequent violent incursions by demons. Although there’s a government agency set up to tackle such problems, they often hire mercenaries, and Engage Kiss follows the perpetually-broke, chain-smoking Shu Ogata, a mercenary with a habit of undercutting his rivals’ fees, fighting the demons and ending up poor as a result. It seems to be a fairly biting satire on the precarious finances of those trapped within the gig economy.
Shu’s “secret weapon” is the demonic Kisara, a pink-haired yandere demon girl who looks to be about twelve, seems to be in love with him, and is insanely jealous of Shu’s exasperated blue-haired ex-girlfriend Ayano. What seems to be a fairly basic action anime with an unlikeable protagonist mutates into something much more tragic and compelling by the end of the third episode. It’s this dark, existential nightmare that’s Shu’s life that keeps me watching. Seriously, there’s some really twisted relationship stuff in later episodes. This isn’t your typical anime love triangle. I think Lycoris Recoil is an order of magnitude more entertaining, but Engage Kiss has enough thought-provoking moments that I’m willing to stick with it for now.
The Maid I Hired Recently is Suspicious — episodes 1–2 — CRUNCHYROLL (Saturday)
With a recent sporting-related delay affecting the third episode, it’s hard to come to any kind of conclusion so far about this slightly odd comedy/mystery. Based on just the first two episodes, it’s going to have to mix things up quickly, as already I feel the central concept is running out of steam due to uninspired repetition. Also, why not just call it “My New Maid is Suspicious”? What’s with the unneccesarily verbose titles this season? It sounds stupid and clumsy, but I suppose lots of Japanese popular media features ridiculously wordy and overly-descriptive titles recently. The manga it’s based on is by the author of The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated! and I really enjoyed its adaptation, so I’m willing to give this more of a chance to prove itself.
Recently parentally-bereaved boy (of indeterminate age) Yuuri inherits his family’s mansion and chooses to live alone. Due to lack of funds he dismisses his servants, but one day Lilith, a mysterious purple-haired maid, arrives and offers to work for free. Yuuri’s understandably suspicious about her and tends to jump to ridiculous conclusions about her (usually completely benign) actions, while also inadvertently broadcasting his not-so-secret attraction to her, causing her to become flustered. This pattern of interaction occurs on multiple occasions per episode, hence my concerns about repetition. There’s only one joke, and so far it’s not that funny.
It’s kind of similar in tone to last year’s The Duke of Death and His Maid, which started off a little shaky but soon became a personal favourite of mine. There’s an upstairs-downstairs-style central relationship, awkward flirting and teasing with a background of mystery. Except instead of an adult duke, the main male character is a child, while the female is clearly a fully grown (young) adult. This makes me more than a little uncomfortable. I’ll wait and see how it goes.
Yurei Deco — episodes 1–6— CRUNCHYROLL (Sunday)
I really wish I liked this one more than I do. It’s from Science Saru, the studio most well known for producing the recent works of famed animator Masaaki Yuasa (Get Your Hands Off Eizouken!, Ride Your Wave, plus the not quite so stellar Japan Sinks). Yurei Deco doesn’t involve Yuasa in any way, though it does keep the studio’s non-standard animation style — you won’t mistake this for the hundreds of other generic anime shows churned out by other studios on an annual basis.
Written by the excellent Eureka Seven’s Dai Sato, we need to remember he was also responsible for 2020’s awful Listeners, a show that started off fairly well but degenerated into absolute crap by the end. Although I’m hopeful he can produce something meaningful with this, based on the very patchy first six episodes, I’m not so sure…
Set on the future nation of “Tom Sawyer Island”, the overt Mark Twain references extend to the main cast names — Hack, Berry, and Finn. Berry is our main viewpoint character, a rebellious young schoolgirl who is drawn into the chaotic and exciting world inhabited by those on the edges of society, by the mysterious Hack. Hack initially appears to be male, but more recent episodes suggest Hack is actually a tomboy girl.
Their world is fully integrated with metaverse technology, with a main currency based on social media-esque “love”. It’s very similar in concept to the Black Mirror episode Nosedive, though perhaps not quite as breathtakingly bleak. Each episode seems to explore some aspect of this alien society, though it does so in a muddled and inconsistent way. It’s difficult to tell what Sato is trying to say with this. Perhaps we’ll need to wait until the end, but I worry that whatever message Sato wants to send with Yurei Deco will be as banal and pointless as Listeners’.
RWBY Ice Queendom — episodes 1–6— CRUNCHYROLL (Sunday)
I’ve never been a huge RWBY fan. I did watch the first couple of very janky CGI seasons but decided it wasn’t really for me. It had a fairly generic “magic academy” setting with some cool monster fights and cookie-cutter characters. RWBY always wore its anime influences on its sleeve though, so it’s fascinating to see it coming full circle with its debut as an actual Japanese anime, courtesy of Studio Shaft no less.
The first couple of episodes are a slick and intelligently compressed adaptation of RWBY season one. Episode three is an incoherent mess where they rush through almost another season’s worth of material, and then from episode four onwards its mostly an anime-original story that I think seems designed to fit within continuity without breaking anything. So it’s essentially filler.
Episodes four to six are all set within a dream world, an understandable way to shoehorn in fantastic-looking and surreal fight sequences without completely destroying canon. Unfortunately I tend to hate dream-world stories, as anything that happens within them is ultimately inconsequential. I’ve really struggled with this show’s direction as I just don’t care about anything that’s happening. I really hope they stop this dream story as soon as possible, but my concern is that this is the main story of this season. Yawn.
At least the character designs are wonderful, the characters themselves are quite fun, and I don’t think Shaft have ever made an ugly show. I’m not sure I can hold out to the end of the season though.
Other shows of note this season (that I haven’t watched yet):
The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting — CRUNCHYROLL (Thursday)
My fellow AniTAY authors seem to like this goofy-sounding comedy that sounds a lot like Hinamatsuri. I’ll maybe give it a try if I get the time.
When Will Ayumu Make His Move? — HIDIVE (Thursday)
Apparently this one is a gentle romantic comedy, Kaguya-sama-lite, except with Shogi. It’s another maybe…
Parallel World Pharmacy — CRUNCHYROLL (Sunday)
I had no intention of ever considering this, but I’ve heard it’s a lot better than expected. My interest in medicine may spur me to give this one a look at some point.
Are there any decent new shows I’ve missed this season? Apart from Call of the Night, Lycoris Recoil and Uncle From Another World, it’s fairly slim pickings for high quality anime. Let me know what you think in the comments! I’ll be back soon to cover Summer 2022’s ongoing and sequel anime.
