I start this new year…with a sickness. Not only have I developed a cold, but being epileptic doesn’t do me any favors, especially when I have bad seizures. I’ll live though, and I promised to watch these shows this season, and watch them I shall…so let’s get stuck in, shall we?
Asteroid in Love Episode 1
We kick things off with Asteroid in Love, a sugar-coated school slice-of-life from those folk at Dogakobo. This was originally a manga in Manga Time Kirara Carat, which has featured plenty of successful anime adaptations (K-On!, Hidamari Sketch, New Game!). As a young girl, Mira Konohata makes a promise to a boy to discover an asteroid together, when they learn there is nothing in the night sky named after him. Fast forward to high school, and Mira learns the school’s astronomy club has been merged with the geology club to form the Earth Sciences club.
This may only be the opening episode, but this adaptation really does show some promise, since it already has a few of the things that entire shows sometimes have trouble with. This one relationship between Mira and Ao is on a whole new level now; initially, Mira thought Ao was a boy due to her taste in clothing and haircut back then. Now, she is a totally different person from that time, has grown her hair long, and become much more of a reserved girl…although her passion and knowledge for astronomy hasn’t wavered, and she remains just as committed to finding a asteroid that she can name.
Asteroid in Love has done extremely well in setting up a slice-of-life show we can all get absorbed in already. All the other members of the Earth Sciences club all have fairly unique traits that we can identify with; Moe Suzuya, for instance, is the show’s resident yuri protector, while on the flipside, we have someone like Mikage Sakurai, who was originally president of the geology club, and seems to hold some hidden agenda about taking a step back from leading this newly-formed Earth Sciences club. I know that, in the space of these 3 months, a very pleasant story will form around Mira and Ao, and how they plan to pursue their high school life into both astronomy and geology.
The artwork and animation seems on point for this show as well. It’s only until about halfway through this opening episode when we see how pretty all of these characters’ eyes are, which alone makes these Dogakobo girls pretty adorable to watch. I mean, I don’t even care what kind of dance this is (the Crab Rave?), but I’m sold.
Kandagawa Jet Girls Episode 11
This gem from the Fall 2019 season hasn’t quite finished yet, and while I was eager to end my other Fall shows early, I just couldn’t give up this one. It’s approaching its end, and this is the show’s last filler episode before we’ll likely get into the big face-off between Rin/Misa and Kaguya/Kuromaru. That is…unless the show decides to delay…again.
Rin believes she may be able to awaken her inner racer if she goes home and visits her mother’s grave, and it’s only there when she realizes how big of a Jet Racer her mother really was. Meanwhile, Misa is getting antsy about not seeing her precious Rin, and decides to go to a training camp, where she accepts the fact that Rin needs to know who her older sister is.
Risa Aoi used to be a genius Shooter, and Misa was expected to live up to her standards. So when she failed to do so, she initially swore to leave Jet Racing for good, until Rin came and showed up in her life. In the flashbacks we watch, we see much a younger Rin & Misa, both of whom are hungry for action and look up to family. In different circumstances, their lives are changed, and the two of them have had to build whole new lives – Rin without her superstar mother, and Misa no longer in the shadow of her superstar sister. It should be interesting to see what kind of relationship Misa and Risa have today, if at all. I mean, the last time we saw Risa was where she is now: coaching Kaguya and Kuromaru.
The final episode next week will have to cram a lot of things to make this work; either that, or it’ll just forget some things that had happened in past episodes, and make this an even more flawed show.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! Episode 1
Now onto something truly odd. This might end up being the kind of show I need to have frequent re-watches of in order to fully absorb it.
One discerning fan might initially think that anything made by Science SARU would be an instant hit, and I fear a little that any criticism that I’d direct towards this show will result in me getting lynched by the hardcore Science SARU fans. Those same fans who have totally absorbed shows like The Tatami Galaxy and Ping Pong, and movies like The Night is Short, Walk On Girl and Lu Over The Wall. The one immediate thing I will say about Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! is that it is not a show for every anime fan.
Here in this opening episode, three girls Midori, Sayaka and Tsubame have come together in the school’s Video Research Club with the intention of making an anime. The school’s Anime Club is a no-go, and so the three of them must look elsewhere to make their dream real. Like I already said, this is the kind of show that not just demands re-watches, but darn right encourages re-watches.
In my original research for this show, I learned that the original manga was made with the intention of being a sort-of ‘love letter’ to anime, and so with this adaptation of the manga now being a reality, what are we as the discerning fan supposed to think? Is this show a ‘love letter’ to anime as well? Or maybe it’s something more? I’m probably just overthinking things here; all of this pretense (Science SARU, directed by Masaaki Yuasa) has won over a lot of people as well, but that’s not me suggesting that this isn’t very good. On the contrary. I think that Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! could be a show that a lot of critics, panelists and journalists will be talking about for months to come. It’s just way too early to call, though. I mean, it is only the first episode…
Flying Witch Episode 1
This 2016 show concerns city witch Makoto, who moves into her cousins’ house in the country to continue her witch training, and episode 1 is a good primer of what is expected to come along in the rest of the show.
Here in episode 1, Makoto and her cat familiar Chito meet Kei, Nao and Chinatsu for the first time, Makoto enrols into the local high school to blend in with the ordinary folk and not be cast out as the dangerous witch with dangerous powers that Chinatsu originally thought she was, and collect a mandrake from the ground for Nao, as an apology for confusing her.
I didn’t cover Flying Witch in Spring 2016, as I was taking a few months off around that time (due to poor health), but I was still casually watching it, and this would certainly have been the kind of show I’d be picking to cover, along with a couple of others – knowing me, I’d have probably picked Mayoiga as a show-to-watch, and immediately regretted it. But it is so good to watch this again and actually cover it this time.
Here in this show, and right from this opening episode, we get a good establishment of who we’ll be seeing the most throughout these 12 episodes. Makoto, obviously; the show is about her. Kei and Chinatsu too. Nao is brought in towards the end of the episode, and we’ll be seeing Makoto’s older sister Akane a little later. Sound is also used well in this opening episode to establish the fact that we are far away from Makoto’s native Yokohama, and out into the countryside.
So a bit of a mixed bag for this opening week. My third season show, In/Spectre, won’t be starting for a while yet. But in the meantime, we have one show that I’ve just fallen in love with completely (Asteroid in Love), while another one still needs more time to fully develop (Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!). All sorts of shows start this month, so what kind of Winter season will you be having? Feel free to hit that like button, and air your opinions in the comments below!