Chatty AF 238: 2025 Fall Wrap-Up (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

DEE: Hey, I love talking to you guys, too. It’s more like I’m thinking about our poor transcriber being like, “Wait, how the fuck long was this episode?” Anyway, Peter, you can cut most of this chatter when we’re done here. You can pretty much cut it from the part when you did your Spy Fam thing, and I will say—

PETER: [Laughs]

DEE: I will say— No, seriously!

[Introductory musical theme]

DEE: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. I’m Dee, former AniFem managing editor, currently subbing in for Cy, who unfortunately had to work when we were scheduling this one, so I’m helping out the team by hopping onto the pod. You can find me posting about cat pics and geekery on Bluesky @deescribe and very occasionally remembering I still have a Tumblr @joseinextdoor. And I am joined today by fellow AniFem staffers Caitlin and Peter!

CAITLIN: Hello!

[Long silence, lasting about five seconds]

DEE: Do you wanna, like…

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Oh, I gotta introduce myself here?

DEE: I mean, you don’t have to.

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

DEE: You can have an aura of mystery. That’s fine. You can just say, “Wassup!”

PETER: “Y’all know me by now!”

DEE: [crosstalk] And then just fade into the background. Yeah! “You know me, come on!”

CAITLIN: If somehow this is your first episode, I’m Caitlin. I am mysterious.

DEE: [crosstalk] Alright, Peter, Caitlin’s being mysterious today. Would you like to introduce yourself next?

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

PETER: Tuxedo Masking, okay. Yeah, I’m Peter Fobian. I’m an editor here at Anime Feminist, and I’m @peterfobian on Bluesky.

DEE: And today is our 2025 Fall anime season retrospective. As usual, we’ll talk about shows starting at the bottom of our Premiere Digest list and work our way up, and then we’ll leave a little room for sequel chatter at the end as well.

Peter, you are, as per yoozh, watching a lot of stuff. Let’s go ahead and start with an update on A Wild Last Boss Appears, as you’d mentioned that one needing some discussion here.

PETER: Yeah, I think Chiaki’s probably going to have an update somewhere about it as well, since they were keeping track of the show, but in the mid-season we kind of brought up that it had sort of a trans narrative going on with the main character being a guy who was isekai’d into the body of his female avatar and was kind of having a bit of an identity crisis and feeling like maybe his sexuality and identity were being folded into the character that he was playing. Um, I don’t think—

CAITLIN: So, I do have some spoilers on that, by the way, what’s going on with that. Oh, I do. Do you want me to just go ahead?

PETER: Um, I guess… I mean, I know season 2 is supposed to be coming. I think they announced a season 2? So, that could be coming further down the line. I guess if you have reason to encourage people who are kind of banking on something like that, that might be worth mentioning.

CAITLIN: It’s not a trans narrative, I will say.

PETER: Okay.

CAITLIN: It is not, like, a gender thing. There’s a weirdness to it that is kind of interesting, but… Yeah, I don’t even remember the details or even how this was revealed to me, but it might have been the ANN forums because people love to spoil shit in there.

PETER: I bet.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles] But, yeah, it’s not a trans thing. There’s a reason why his identity feels kind of confused and lost within hers. And I guess that’s what I’ll say.

PETER: Okay. I do think even outside of the trans element of it, it is still kind of doing some interesting things with the genre by having him kind of absorbing her memories and trying to maintain the boundary between himself and the character narrative that he was originally creating, as well as the story itself kind of addressing the nature of him being isekai’d into the world as a meta-narrative rather than just getting dropped in and then you’re 100% absorbed in the going-on of the world that you’re in. So, on that level I think it’s still doing some pretty interesting stuff, and it’s got a bunch of fun “boss lady punching bad guys” type deal. 

In fact, I think the penultimate episode, they had Lufas fight the demon lord and they played some heavy metal while the two of them were just punching thunderstorms into the sky above the hero, who had just set out on his adventure and immediately ran into both the last bosses. So, on another level it’s got some fun to it as well. So, I’ll be watching season 2, for sure. But, yeah, I guess don’t expect too much from the trans narrative, it’s sounding like.

DEE: Yeah. Just temper your expectations. Otherwise it sounds like a pretty solid, fun isekai.

CAITLIN: It kinda sounds like Yano-kun kept on keeping on for the rest of its run?

PETER: Yeah, I think. They sealed the deal as far as the relationship early in the second half, so it wasn’t one of those slow burns. After that, it was just them both being really awkward and trying to figure out how relationships work, which was really cute. Actually, I thought of you a lot while watching this, Dee, since I know we both have pretty similar tastes in slice-of-life shows, and this one has definitely entered my upper echelon. I think it’s somewhere in my top ten.

DEE: Oh!

PETER: I haven’t decided where yet. Yeah, it’s really cute. The animation is pretty great. I don’t think it wore out its welcome with the jokes about Yano just constantly getting injured. It kind of laid off that a bit near toward the end and more strategically used that joke rather than just using it as a crutch the whole time. And the characters are really great. I particularly like Yoshida just has a tendency to get overwhelmed and just kind of enter a fugue state, where she will go out the rest of her day just completely absent, like cooking meals for her two siblings, taking a bath and then going to bed before re-entering her own body and recovering and then going like, “Wait. What did he mean by that?” [Chuckles] That kind of thing. And the outside cast is pretty good. So, I’m probably gonna pick up the manga, as well. I really enjoyed it.

DEE: Well, yeah, that one totally was not on my radar at all, so I will make a note to check that out. Always nice to have some backlog shows in case we have a real thin season, which does happen sometimes.

Okay, Caitlin, this is another one I’m curious about. You’ve been watching Wandance. How’s that one going?

CAITLIN: So, it wrapped up the show with a big dance battle arc. It’s kind of structured like a sports series and, Dee, I know you love the sports series. [Chuckles]

DEE: Often, yes. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: Yes. But there is a reveal I don’t think we talked about in the last episode that Wanda is a CODA, a child of a deaf adult.

DEE: Oh, okay!

CAITLIN: And they haven’t really done anything with that, but I think that is interesting because it does add some context to her and her relationship with dance and with rhythm, because her dad can’t hear the music but he still gets annoyed with her dancing at home because of the physical sensation of it—which I get. A lot of times when there’s heavy bass it’s a little overstimulating to me, as well. But with the dance, there hasn’t been a lot of exploration of Kabo and his stutter recently. There was a bit where he put a little thing on the background of his phone that’s just like “I have a hard time communicating but I can think clearly,” basically communicating like “Give me a second to get the words out.” Because there was a moment where he couldn’t greet the judge of a competition; he felt like he looked really rude afterwards. So, I think it’s really interesting in that way. The girls are a little Manic Pixie Dream Girl–ish…

DEE: [disappointed] Oh. That’s…

CAITLIN: … but I still really like Wanda as a character. Yeah, yeah, you know, it’s… yeah. And I think there’s still time for exploration of them as characters. We’re getting a little bit more into the tension between the two older members of the dance club. And it does still really respect their skills as dancers. They’re still super talented competitors. So, yeah, I’ve been really enjoying it. The dance animation has improved from the first episode, although watching Tamon’s B-Side did remind me that you can make dancing look good and not like this! The CG is just…yeah.

DEE: [crosstalk] The CG’s rough? Yeah. Yeah, I’ve already seen that from the premiere.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] They were trying to do something new with the mocap, I think, and just did not have the skill to pull it off. Because they’ve been doing dancing for mocap for decades! I don’t know what happened there.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, it’s been around for a while at this point.

CAITLIN: I don’t know what happened there. But even if it looks better, it never—

DEE: [crosstalk] But it does improve.

CAITLIN: It looks better but it never looks good.

DEE: Ah, that’s too bad. Yeah, I had heard solid things about the manga and it was one that was lowkey on my radar but, you know, there’s a long list of manga out there, so I was excited when I saw it had an anime. That’s a shame about the animation, but it does sound like it still might be worth checking out for folks who like a sports series or a dance series.

Okay, so, unfortunately Cy’s not here to give us an update on Touring After the Apocalypse. That’s another one I’m curious about, so I will have to ask them about it later.

CAITLIN: I do know it was in their top five for the year.

DEE: Oh, really? Okay. I didn’t realize it made their top five. Okay, so, yeah, I mean, I guess, folks, whatever Cy said at the mid-season, keep that in mind; it sounds like the show continued to do well. So, might make a note to check that one out myself, as well. [Breaks into song] My watchlist is getting long!

[Returns to normal speech] Okay, Peter, you watched Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider. I know that one was getting some buzz early on. How’d the back half go? Anything new to report after the mid-season?

PETER: Yeah, I was shocked how much I enjoy this show. It’s really fucking fun. My basically one criticism was the fact that Tackle was kind of a fanservice character early on. I feel like the addition of Yukarisu, the female combatant, has kind of moved a lot of the humor toward her— She’s kind of the joke character, right, because she’s supposed to be one of the bad guys but she’s dating one of the good guys. 

So, her existence, I feel, took the pressure off of Tackle to just be a straight man to the group/ogle object, and she’s really had a crazy arc in this new tournament arc, where she won the tournament against all the male guys and kind of had her own… I think she was… She’s kind of as obsessed with Kamen Rider but she wasn’t as willing to be as wacky boys’ club yelling as the rest of them were. But she really got into a fight, yelled at a mountain how pissed she was that her favorite character got killed off in the original show, and then literally beat every other main character one after the other until only one was left that she didn’t need to fight, and she said, “Just to make a full collection, I’m gonna beat your ass as well, so let’s fight right now.”

DEE: Okay, that does sound great.

PETER: Yeah, it was sick. It was super sick. So, I feel like the series is really taking her seriously, which is something that I was really concerned about, which has really kind of brought me back in about, I think, my main point of reticence about the show. There is still some fanservice involved with her character, but it’s mitigated by the fact that she’s allowed to do cool things and win fights, even against the guys. You know?

DEE: Yeah, no, that goes a long way.

CAITLIN: I did see that on Crunchyroll the episode titled “What’s-Her-Name [sic] Is the Strongest” was rated weirdly low for an episode of an action series on Crunchyroll.

PETER: [deadpan] Oh. Interesting. Yeah, I wonder why that is.

CAITLIN: It sounds like some people were big mad!

PETER: Mm-hm. That she beat Mitsuba? Yeah, that’s uh… Well, that’s too bad, because she beat his ass and then she said, “Ichiyo, even though I’ve just won the tournament, we didn’t fight, so I’m gonna beat your ass, too.” [Chuckles] It was pretty sick. Yeah, so…

DEE: Peter’s like, “Five stars.”

PETER: Yeah, it did the Dragon Ball Z thing, too, where it’s like, “The next fight is the finals,” and the episode title is “Tackle Is the Strongest.” I’m like, “Oh, I wonder who wins.”

DEE: I can’t imagine!

PETER: Yeah. Also, it has expanded its female cast, as well. It had introduced previously Ichiyo and Mitsuba’s older sister, who runs an izakaya, but it’s kind of implied she can and has beat them both up, and now she’s kind of been pulled into the combat arc. And it turns out she is so strong because she trained under a female tiger mask mentor to be like an ultimate pro wrestler fighter, and she’s about to fight some bad guys as well, last I checked. And she might be a lesbian, as well?

CAITLIN: Oh! Good for her.

PETER: [crosstalk] The reveal of that was a bit, uh, unfortunate, with her… I think she’s obsessed with her tiger mask teacher.

DEE: Oh, no.

PETER: Was smelling her mask or something.

DEE: Oh, no! [Chuckles]

PETER: Yeah. She has—

CAITLIN: This is the Air Master manga artist, after all!

PETER: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

DEE: Oh, I didn’t know that.

PETER: [crosstalk] But she has been able to… She’s mostly— That’s been the one point of weird humor with her character, whereas otherwise she’s pretty serious. And also, she learned to fight specifically so she could kill her brother because he’s such a pain in the ass, which is also funny. And right now the new heavy that they just introduced is another female Shocker combatant, so I feel like it’s introducing and taking seriously the combat ability of a lot of its female cast, where I think early on it was just like “Is Tackle just going to be the joke one and all the guys get to do cool stuff?” and that is absolutely not the case, so I’m enjoying it even more.

DEE: Yeah. That’s nice. Usually the sidelining of the female characters happens as you continue into the series, so the fact that it’s paying more attention then as it goes is a nice sign. Is it ongoing? I mean, I assume it’s based on an ongoing series.

CAITLIN: It is.

PETER: I think it’s a continuous two cours, at least, so, yeah, we’re going right into the next part.

DEE: Okay, yeah, definitely keep us posted on that. You know I have long-running shounen fatigue a bit, but I like to keep an eye on those titles, and then if they’re close to completion or wrapping up or something, I’m like, “Oh, I’ll check that out now that I know it has an ending in sight.” So, very cool. Appreciate the update there.

Caitlin, I know you’re not a hundred percent caught up on A Star Brighter Than the Sun, but was there anything you wanted to touch on past the mid-season as far as that one goes? I know it’s getting a season 2 as well, so it’s one that we can touch on again later.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Oh, yay! I forgot about that. I don’t… Shortly after the mid-season [Affects a languid Valley-esque accent] I started a new job and I enrolled in school and I’ve just been, like, so busy! [Returns to normal speech] No, but [Chuckles] I have— And also I was in L.A. for six days and did not have access to my Amazon Prime. But I have been reading Rebecca’s reviews on ANN because I’m not expecting any surprises, right, I’m not expecting any big plot twists, and, surprise, everything has unfolded pretty much exactly how you would expect. All the things that you think are happening are happening. 

So, it sounds like there’s some really… not interesting commentary but it does kind of talk about the pressure after a certain age to only be close to people of the same gender as you. And that’s kind of what happened between Sae and Koki. And yeah, I definitely… I really want to catch up with it. Just the barrier for catching up was a little higher than with Wandance, so Wandance was the one that I ended up prioritizing.

DEE: Yeah, that’s fair. We all get busy. No worries. And like I said, it’s getting either… is it…? I know it’s getting a second season. I don’t know if it’s going straight into season 2 in the winter or if there’s going to be a break there, but it sounds like there will be more anime, so there will be an opportunity to chat about it later probably.

CAITLIN: There’s definitely a break.

DEE: Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, and I know the manga is available on the Viz app, too, if folks wanted to enjoy it that way, as well, if you don’t have Prime, as some of us do not. So that’s also an option, but… It’s by the My Love Story writer. Is that correct?

CAITLIN: Yes.

PETER: Oh, it is? Wow.

DEE: Yeah, that automatically put it on my radar because My Love Story is so good.

PETER: Yeah, you have my attention.

DEE: So, yeah, that’s one I— Yeah, that’s one I definitely want to check out. I may just read it instead of watching it but, yeah, it’s for sure on my radar as well.

CAITLIN: It’s just classic shoujo plotting done well. It’s just, you know, rock-solid fundamentals.

DEE: Sometimes all you need… Sometimes that’s all you need to make a good story, right? And like you said, it sounds like it’s touching on some worthwhile character beats and social stuff, as well, along the way, so that’s nice. Good to have those on the…

CAITLIN: If you like Kimi ni Todoke, you’ll probably like this one.

DEE: Okay, yeah, Kimi ni Todoke’s really nice. Cool, great, good to know.

Okay, Peter, any updates on My Status as an Assassin, or pretty much stayed the course?

PETER: It just became extremely boring.

DEE: Oh, no!

PETER: [crosstalk] The second half, they don’t fight at all. It’s just everybody’s asking Akira to assassinate a guy and he’s like, “Do I want to? Uh, I don’t know if I want to kill a person, even though my class is assassin. And this story is called Assassin, so I will inevitably do it.” And I think it’s supposed to be a big dramatic beat, but it just doesn’t explore his reticence to end a human life in any kind of interesting way. It just feels like the show drags on a long time. The guy he ends up needing to kill is just so cartoonishly evil that there’s no way you could feel bad for him. They introduce a woman who’s in a fantasy wheelchair just so the bad guy could break the wheelchair and laugh about it.

DEE: Geez!

CAITLIN: Oh, my God! [Chuckles]

DEE: Lazy.

PETER: Yeah, they introduce another guy who’s just like, “Oh, I used to have a younger sister until that guy killed her for no reason.”

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

PETER: So, he ultimately has to kill the guy in the last episode and feels bad about it, and then it just kinda ends there. And… I don’t know. He kills him off screen. He’s kinda tortured about it, but then his girlfriend says, “You did the right thing,” and he’s like, “Okay.” And that was the end.

DEE: Riveting.

PETER: Yeah, really good first half, but I just had no… I appreciate that it was trying to go for something like that, but the execution was not there, man.

DEE: Yeah. One of those stories that has a really good first arc and then is like, “Oh, I have to keep going, don’t I?”

PETER: Yeah, you’re just not writing in the medium and genre where you can kinda perform this story very well, I don’t think, not with a title like My Status as an Assassin Exceeds the Hero’s. [Chuckles] Yeah.

DEE: It’s sort of right there in the name, yeah.

CAITLIN: They should have kept Saran alive.

PETER: Yeah.

CAITLIN: He would have saved us.

PETER: Yep. Oh, Saran? Yeah, yeah.

CAITLIN: He’s too beautiful for this world.

DEE: How about The Fated Magical Princess? How are we doing there?

PETER: I don’t know if I… It’s really fun. I think the main character is super fun. The animation is crazy good, which I think we just sort of come to expect from the latest batch of donghua coming out of China. I understand that— I don’t know how much is left. It feels like it’s nearing some sort of conclusion, and I’ve seen from some comments about it that it seems to have departed from the plot of the comic a little bit, which I think might just be with the intention of wrapping it up. 

It is doing some kinda… I don’t want to say “innovative.” I feel like I’ve seen a lot of this stuff before, but it’s got kind of either a time travel-y or time loop-y or future C–type thing with the main character kind of escaping her tragic villainess fate, even though she’s not in any way a villainess, and resolving her father’s grief—and her own grief—over the death of her mother, which they did with some really spectacular magical animation stuff in the last two episodes. So, it’s been really fun. She’s a fun character, I think a lot of the cast around her is pretty goofy, and it’s just a feast for the eyes, so I definitely enjoyed watching it, if nothing else.

DEE: That’s another one that I kind of missed out on, but it sounds like it might be up my alley.

PETER: Yeah, I’d recommend trying it out. I think you either might really like it or you could just bounce off, but it definitely has a lot to offer. So… yeah.

DEE: Okay, awesome, thanks. You’re gonna have to monologue at us again, Peter. With You, Our Love Will Make It Through. You finished that one. Anything to add past the mid-season?

PETER: Much like A Wild Last Boss Appears, with its kind of fantasy racism thing going on with the different-colored people’s wings and the beast-person-versus-human-person thing, I think it kind of got into some hairy territory but managed to avoid doing anything too problematic once it had gotten into that premise. 

There is an ending arc where this guy kind of catches them kissing and makes a newspaper article in the school newspaper about how he was sexually assaulting her, which I think probably had sort of a racialized element to it since I think the implication was “Of course he was assaulting her, because he’s a beastman and she’s…” You know. But I think that it really tried to avoid getting too metaphorical with that one, and it sort of just came down to the guy getting in a lot of trouble with his parents and the school going like, “This is patently fucking ridiculous and we’re gonna have to see about expelling you, maybe, for even implying something like this was happening when it was so clearly consensual.” And after that, they come out as a couple as well, and it doesn’t really… You don’t get a lot of, like… The student body isn’t weird about it either. So, I think it was just trying to imply that that one guy was kind of being a freak rather than the whole school was… I don’t know. You know. It could have gone in some much poorer directions. It introduced a catgirl in the second half, which I know has been a pretty popular character, which sort of ended up… She’s very Merle-coded, so I like her a lot, being a big Escaflowne fan…

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] I have seen her around the feed.

PETER: … who ends up being sort of a consolation character for the human guy, who is into… is her name Mari, the main girl? Because, you know, the two backup characters often just end up together because they’re [obscured by crosstalk]—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Pair the spares!

DEE: Aw.

PETER: Yeah. They actually seem to be a pretty popular couple, though, based on some of the chatter out there I see. So, they’re pretty cute. The catgirl’s fun.

DEE: Good for them.

PETER: So, overall, it was a pretty fun watch. It does have a lot of that Millipensee surreal kind of look to it. It’s something about the way they composite their shows, really makes your eyes cross, but overall the animation quality was pretty good. So, I don’t know, it was fun. Yeah. I like the mom a lot, too, who was from the hentai manga. [Chuckles] But she’s a cool character. At the end of the episode, she and Mari meet and she gives her the thumbs up, literally. She just goes like, “You have my approval.”

DEE: Well, it sounds like that one worked out pretty well. If you are a fan of furry romance, I think that might be up your alley.

Okay, hey, we’ve finally gotten to a show that I watched this season.

CAITLIN: Yay!

DEE: Caitlin and I both finished this one: Sanda. Which, whoo! I don’t think we have time to unpack this bad boy on the pod.

CAITLIN: So we are going to do a podcast episode about it with me, Tony, and Sylvia Jones, who reviewed it at Anime News Network. But since you’re here, Dee, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

DEE: Okay, speaking in broad strokes, Sanda was very interesting to me. There’s a lot to chew on, which is why I’m glad we’re getting a full pod. The final story arc ticked me off even though I think it was still trying to say some kind of valuable things. I think they rushed the finale a bit as well. Maybe we’re getting a season 2. I haven’t heard anything official. There are parts of Sanda that feel extremely well put together, like metaphors layered on top of metaphors in a way that is reminiscent of an Ikuhara anime, and then there’s other parts of it that are just very raw and emotional that is more reminiscent of a Fushigi Yugi. And both of those are like… it’s very compelling storytelling, but I do think that it leads to it being a bit messier the deeper it gets into its story.

CAITLIN: Well, you know how I feel about—

DEE: [crosstalk] So I’m very [obscured by crosstalk] the end. I would watch a season 2, so…

CAITLIN: Well, Dee, you know how I feel about mess.

DEE: Yeah.

CAITLIN: [Chuckles] Yeah.

DEE: Hey, like I said, I’m compelled by it. I would watch more of it. I think there are elements— Again, and I’m trying so hard not to spoil things for folks at home. There are elements of the back half of the story where I think it’s trying to say one thing but doesn’t necessarily take into account all of the intersectional identity elements of the characters it’s working with (again, I’m speaking really vaguely here, so I’m sorry, folks) and does not hit the beats it wants to hit, I think, is where I’m at. But I love a show that swings for the fences, so I’m not gonna… and I really look forward to hearing you guys dive into it and discuss it because I think there’s a lot of meat on those bones.

CAITLIN: Yeah. I… There are definitely parts of it that… I think the parts that I felt like didn’t work are different than the parts that you [feel] didn’t work, because your parts more have to do with a discussion around identity; meanwhile, I’m sitting here like, “What the fuck is this Black Santa thing? This doesn’t make sense.”

DEE: [crosstalk] Oh, yeah, no, that was weird, too. Yeah, no, there’s some stuff that kinda gets thrown at the wall in the back half of this one, I think.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Just like, “What?” I know that we need a Santa… a version— Like, there are all of these different folkloric figures that punish naughty children. We don’t need to do a whole Black Santa thing. That doesn’t make sense.

DEE: The name was also unfortunate. Folks at home, Black Santa is Santa wearing a black tuxedo, to be clear!

PETER: Oh, so it’s like [Goku Black] (Peter says Black Goku) [sic].

DEE: Uh, yes? Yes. I’ll say yes.

CAITLIN: Does Goku wear a tuxedo?

PETER: No, there’s a Black Goku that wears black, who’s an evil clone of Goku.

CAITLIN: Oh. Yeah. But… Because the thing is that there is a child who is wishing for a bad thing, so we need a Black Santa, who does not want to give her her wish. It’s really confusing, and it doesn’t make sense. And the point is: pull out the fucking Krampus or something. Call in the Yule Boys. I don’t know. There are all of these different mythologies that we don’t need to do this very weird and confusing shounen training arc thing.

DEE: The show’s not particularly interested in actual Santa mythology, in fairness, beyond the base level of who Santa is in the public mind. It is a shounen. Like, it really is, and I think that that arc is part of that, is where you see that.

CAITLIN: It was just very weird and confusing in this show that had a lot of really interesting commentary about abandonment and aging and society’s attitude towards children. Paru Itagaki is a really interesting storyteller in a lot of ways, but I do think sometimes she gets lost in the sauce of like, “Well, now we gotta punch it out”—or riddle a character with bullet holes as the case may be.

DEE: Yeah. I’m… again, this is one I’m really curious to see how it wraps. I think a lot of my feelings about it will depend on how the story itself ends (and I don’t know if the anime is getting a second season; I know there’s more manga), because it’s definitely… there’s a conversation it’s having around adolescence and adulthood that’s super-duper interesting, but there are times in the story where it just—and again, this is kind of the rawness of it—where it’s just this sense of “Adults suck and being an adult is bad and you don’t want to do that,” and I don’t think that’s what it’s leaning for, but in the back half especially I felt like it leaned into that harder than it did in the first half, and so I’m curious to see how the series kind of addresses all those, again, very raw adolescent anxieties in a way that is healthy and not destructive, is my hope.

CAITLIN: Yeah, I just… I feel like that part was interesting because it did feel a little bit more of a conversation of “This is a society that quote-unquote ‘treasures’ children but doesn’t treasure them as humans; it treasures them as a resource.” And then in a society where if you are not youthful, you’re worthless, what does that mean to be a person aging in that society?

DEE: Yeah. It’s also… There are definitely parts in it where I chuckle to myself because they’re like, “Ah, yes, the perfect peak age where you are at your most beautiful, 15.” But I’m like, “15?!” Have you— You’ve hung out with 15-year-olds, right? They’re awkward and acne covered. [Chuckles]

CAITLIN: And they stink!

DEE: Yeah, well, they’re still… you know.

CAITLIN: They smell bad!

DEE: Teenagers… It’s an awkward age where you’re like… Again, it’s adolescence. You’re growing into adulthood but you’re still kind of a kid. And it’s just so funny to me that that’s like… because I think in American society we definitely idealize youth but it’s like we idealize, like, early 20s, right? It’s more that college age, where you’ve kinda grown out of that awkward phase. So, for this series to be like, “Yes, 15-year-olds, pinnacle of grace and beauty,” I’m like, “Okay, guys. Okay.”

CAITLIN: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the age of fiteen in particular… I think that’s going… I think I mentioned this in the mid-season: I think that goes back to, like, Tale of Genji shit.

DEE: It may. Yeah, well, and it’s also this idea of… it’s also this idea in this world, you know, it’s like you’re a kid or you’re an adult; there’s no in-between, which is very off-putting when you’re watching it because you’re like, “No, these are still children! They’re adolescents! It’s different.” And so, I think it’s also the reason that is the age that’s considered like beauty, is because it’s like the last possible time, if your puberty is relatively late, that you could be considered like a child. So, it’s like this idealization of childhood more than adolescence. But it… No, it’s a hefty show. So, like I said, I think it needs its own pod for sure, and I’m looking forward to that.

CAITLIN: Yeah, there’s a lot going on, for sure

DEE: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, hopefully… Science Saru did just a phenomenal job, as they always do, adapting it.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Oh, my God, gorgeous.

DEE: So, I wouldn’t be mad at all if we got more of it, as well, down the line.

CAITLIN: Stunning.

DEE: Sadly, we can’t talk about Plus-Sized Misadventures in Love. I know Cy had a lot of thoughts about it. Possibly an article down the road. I don’t want to promise anything but I know it was floated, so that would be cool to see.

And then, the next one that we have on the list… Oh! Peter, we’ve got another one from you, This Monster Wants to Eat Me. How’d that one wrap up?

PETER: Uh… I know there’s been a lot of—

CAITLIN: Did the monster eat her?

PETER: No.

DEE: Did the monster eat her? Yeah, good question. No? Spoilers.

PETER: [crosstalk] The monster didn’t even want to eat her, it turns out. That was a lie.

DEE: What? Then the title was a lie?

PETER: It is a lie, yeah. This one’s been getting…

CAITLIN: Fuck. What the fuck?

PETER: [crosstalk] I feel like the critical space has been pretty positive about this one. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum necessarily, but I kind of felt like the end was sort of a letdown and kinda calls a lot of the story into question since the whole idea was that the mermaid, Shiori, wanted to eat Hinako because she is a particularly delicious human, but it’s one of those things where it’s like “I need you to be at your peak deliciousness before I eat you.” But it turns out she was lying. She had run into her when she was a kid…

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] At the age of 15.

[Chuckling]

PETER: … and she’d connected with her like she’d never connected with another human before and seen her as a really happy child. And now, of course, Hinako is suicidally depressed after her entire family died in a car crash. But it turns out when she was a kid she’d also fed her some of her blood, which means that she now tastes disgusting to monsters. And a key point in the early narrative was that she was particularly delicious, which is why she was getting attacked so much and she needed to be defended by Shiori and… I can’t remember the fox girl’s name.

CAITLIN: So, wait.

PETER: But it turns out, no, she tastes bad.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] So, it was a rug pull?

PETER: She tastes awful.

CAITLIN: Oh, come on!

PETER: Yeah, yeah.

DEE: So, then, why was everyone attacking her?

PETER: I don’t know. Maybe they couldn’t— I think the implication was they couldn’t tell unless they got super close, but also why did she suddenly seem particularly delicious? I’m not sure about that either. But anyway, so, that’s revealed, Hinako finds out that Shiori doesn’t actually want to end her life, which she had promised to do, so she gets very upset because she wants to die. So, Shiori is forced to renew her promise and make a pact that once Hinako has gotten happy again, she will in fact eat her, even though she tastes disgusting.

Which, I don’t know… It kind of actually reminds me that the first two—ah, I can’t believe I’m referencing freaking Bakemonogatari here—the first two arcs in Bakemonogatari, Araragi really fucks things up and kind of leaves both sides… he kind of ensures mutual suffering between himself and the other party rather than resolving the problem by letting the other person have their own agency, because he doesn’t like that outcome more than the idea of just him taking on part of their burden. And narratively, I feel like the story understood in Bakemonogatari that he had found a terrible resolution that was not a resolution and was creating needless suffering in his misguided efforts to help someone else.

I feel like this is the same scenario except the narrative really didn’t treat it that way. It came off as really kind of optimistic even though it doesn’t seem like Shiori has any guarantee that she’ll ever be happy, and if she is happy now… [Clarifies] or Hinako, rather, has no guarantee that she’ll ever be happy, and if she does manage to become happy, Shiori’s instantly obligated to kill her. And it ends on an optimistic note. I don’t know if that’s just because they ran out of episodes and they needed to end it some way, but I just kind of feel like… it just sort of ended that way and I was like, “What the fuck?” I don’t know. I don’t really know if it just pivoted because it ran out of ideas or what. But [it is] very confusing to me.

CAITLIN: The show’s definitely…

DEE: [crosstalk] Maybe there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Perhaps.

DEE: I don’t know what. I haven’t seen the show. Maybe there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. [Chuckles]

PETER: I wish somebody would explain it to me.

CAITLIN: It’s definitely very divisive.

DEE: Sorry, what was that, Caitlin?

PETER: [crosstalk] Oh, it was divisive?

CAITLIN: I said it’s definitely very divisive. Like, people seem to either absolutely adore it or they’re like me and they peace out pretty early because they’re like, “This is just not working for me.” And most people are not professionally obligated to watch it like you are, Peter! Congratulations!

DEE: That is true, yeah. So, it kind of sounds like one that maybe if you don’t bounce off it early, then you’ll like it. But I do think it’s funny how many backbends I made to not say any spoilers in Sanda, to the point of not telling people about a content warning, and then Peter’s like, “Here’s how this one ends, fools!”

PETER: I don’t know, I just… It feels like the whole premise was just a fake-out, and I don’t know how you could get around addressing that, especially when essentially the dynamic is reset to be exactly the same dynamic, except I feel like… In the early part, I can see the appeal. It’s kind of like the one girl has the call of the void, which attracts her to a dangerous character, who is interested in consuming her, right? So, I mean, there’s [an] obvious sexual metaphor there. But in the new one it’s just like, “Oh, we’re sad and we’re locked in this bad relationship but we’re just trying to stay positive, you know?” [Chuckles] And, I don’t know, it just…

DEE: That’s 2025 right there, baby!

[Laughter]

PETER: Disappointing, I’ll say.

DEE: Okay. Well, moving from a disappointing show to one that Peter and I both watched and, I think, had a pretty good time with, May I Ask for One Final Thing? So, you saw this one in its entirety a while ago, didn’t you? Because I remember you were pretty high on it when the season started.

PETER: Yeah, actually the whole show was finished before it aired, so I was going on vacation in early October and I just basically watched the whole thing to prepare all the promotional materials for it before it came out.

DEE: Nice!

PETER: So, yeah, by like October 3rd, I think I’d watched all twelve episodes, basically. So, I was trying not to…

DEE: Did you watch it again? … Spoil anything?

PETER: Yeah, I was cutting it week to week and stuff. Yeah, I was struggling to remember exactly where the cutoff was so that I only discussed so much. But I kind of had the whole of it in mind when I was talking about it before. And I was very positive about it, the original podcast, because I think it’s a very fun romp. I enjoy that Scarlet is just allowed to go around destroying literally everything with her fist throughout the entire time. I think Alex brought up some criticism of the fact that a lot of the supporting characters are men, so she doesn’t really interact with too many other women save for the priestess, whose name escapes me.

DEE: Diana, right?

PETER: Diana, yeah. Or at least that’s her priestess name, not her real… yeah, yeah.

DEE: That’s her priestess name. Yeah, I don’t remember her—They mentioned her real name but they don’t say it very often, so…

PETER: Yeah. And, yeah, in the second half, it reveals that that one guy is her brother, who is a little bit creepy about her, which is not great. In fact, a lot of men kind of have a very aggressive relationship toward women, which I… So, in that way I can understand— In fact, yeah, I don’t know— It’s kind of like you’re either… Most people are not willing to be normal [Chuckles] about Scarlet or, in the one case, Diana, which is a bit disappointing, but I do enjoy the fact that when someone’s being creepy to Scarlet, she will just drive their head through a table or something like that, so it’s not like you get away with that without consequence or that she’s just… unless you’re a prince—until the very end.

DEE: It’s very much a show that to me is a comedy first and foremost, and there’s other stuff happening, but it’s really kind of about the jokes. You know, it’s frequently kind of a rug pull as far as “Oh, you think now it’s going to go into shoujo romance mode, but it’s not. Scarlet’s just going to punch him in the head instead of having a bunch of dramatic feelings about it.” And those moments continued to happen and continued to get laughs out of me. The bait-and-switch timing… The very first episode, there’s that moment when she first meets Julius and they’re out in a field and he says something about, like, “Oh, I’ve just been fascinated with you. I just can’t seem to take my eyes off of you.” And rose petals go by or something, and then it cuts to Scarlet and she just makes this annoyed face and kind of sighs like, “Oh, this fucking guy.”

PETER: “That’s gross.” [Chuckles]

DEE: And that really sets the tone for the whole show in a way that I enjoy. I also think it helps that, other than Leonardo, who is a wonderful anxious boy who I love very much, the dudes are all trash but they’re not garbage, if that makes sense. I feel like we’ve talked about this before. So, it’s still kind of fun. You’re like, “This guy sucks,” but you can kind of chuckle about it, especially because we know that Scarlet can always punch any of them “Blast off, Team Rocket” style into the ether when she wants to. I liked the first half better than the second. Again, it’s another one of those that feels like the author had an idea for a first novel or a first story arc and then was like, “Oh, this is gonna keep going? Uh, uh, let me figure out what I want to do next.”

PETER: Oh, and that is just the first half in the manga, too. There’s a whole second half.

DEE: Oh, wow. Yeah, there’s more to go. I figured there was probably more to go. No, I loved— I mean, it’s so nice in the isekai landscape to see a storyline that’s like, “Slavery is absolutely terrible and everyone involved should be punched in the face,” so the first arc was great. The second arc, I really like that they added Diana/Sanya to the cast, because there weren’t a lot of female characters and so it was nice to have somebody else with some depth and an actual character arc and who’s not as overpowered and crazy as Scarlet is in that aspect. I think they didn’t— There was kind of a missed opportunity with Terenezza as a villain, because I think the idea of the villain of the story is the person who got isekai’d into this world and is actually making things terrible because they think they’re the main character is really, really strong, and I now very badly want to see an isekai that’s about the people of the world being like, “Yeah, this colonizer showed up and is forcing mayonnaise down our throats.”

[Chuckling]

DEE: I think that would be…

PETER: Yeah, they didn’t like that!

DEE: … really, really fascinating.

CAITLIN: Did you watch The Executioner and Her Way of Life?

DEE: Yeah, you’re right. That one did start that way a little bit, yeah, where people come in and they just immediately axe them as they come through the door because they don’t want to have to deal with their nonsense. Yeah, I think this one tapped into that a little bit. Truthfully I think it would have been better if the isekai person had been a dude, because I think that aspect that Terenezza is tapping into as a character works better with isekai male protags than it does female protags, generally speaking, if you’re making a genre commentary. 

But it just… Yeah, I don’t know, I just never found her as compelling of a character as I think she could have been in that back half and all the stuff with the church. So, the back half was weaker than the front half, but I still had a good time all the way through, and it usually got a full-on laugh out of me every single episode. And… yeah! So, I mean, overall, I would recommend it with some kind of caveats about the fact that the guys are kind of shitty, in a way that I found kind of amusing because, again, I never felt like Scarlet was really in danger. And none of them are, like, assaulters; they’re just pushy, I would say. And Julius is like… God, the ANN review for the final episode talked about the 4D chess he plays to get Scarlet to hit him, basically. [Chuckles]

PETER: Literally flirting with death, that guy.

DEE: Yeah, he really is flirting with death over here. And it’s like, I don’t know what your deal is but for some reason I ship the two of you and I don’t know why! So, yeah, it’s a real fun time, and, again, I think if you go into it knowing that it is first and foremost a comedy meant to be sort of silly, I think you’ll probably have a fun time with it, as well. And I would not be at all upset if it got a season 2.

PETER: Yeah. One of the things that I think kind of made the guys not so bad is… like, the prince from the other country who’s really into Scarlet is interested in her because she’s a badass, and he’s just like, “Oh, you’re so freaking cool. Please marry me.” [Chuckles] And he’s willing to suicidally jump into enemy militaries just to impress her and stuff like that. So he’s kinda like… he’s just a puppy, right? Also, he’s voiced by Ota’s voice actor from Tanaka-kun, which I thought was very funny.

DEE: I actually— I meant to mention this. I watched this one dubbed, because by the time I started it… it was one that was simuldubbing, basically, and it popped on dub, and I was like, “Sure,” and so I kept up with it. The dub is great. Everyone is having an extremely good time.

PETER: Yeah, a very popular dub.

DEE: Yeah, the line delivery is very fun because, you know, they’re all kind of like highfalutin nobles, but then they will say, like, you know, “Whilst I beat his ass,” and you’re like, “Yes! There was a ‘whilst’ in there.” And, yeah, there’s a part with that prince from the rival kingdom where his retainer is like, “Please forgive me. My lord is an asshole.” I’m like, “Yes!”

PETER: [crosstalk] Oh, yeah, and he just calls out what an idiot he is. And they kept going, like, “Did he just call the prince he serves a dumbass? Are you allowed to do that?”

DEE: Yeah. “Did he just call him an asshole? I don’t think that’s legal!”

PETER: And I do think it worked to mollify those situations by… Like, in the end, where the prince unlocks his fabled power or whatever and goes like, “Okay, now I’m gonna save the day,” she goes, “Actually, no, I’m gonna beat up the villain because I’ve been waiting to do this for 11 episodes. So you can just sit there and watch, buddy.” And he goes, “Oh.” [Chuckles] “Alright, I guess I’ll…”

DEE: He happily supports her, too. I do love that. Because he’s like, “Oh, you just need me to build a shield and clear the way for you so you can beat the hell out of her? Yeah, sure, I got you, boo!” [Chuckles]

PETER: And in the end, she finds out he was kind of shitty to her and then just literally flies straight to his castle and uppercuts it, so the guys don’t really get away with being assholes either. She definitely pummels them into ground beef.

DEE: Scarlet always gets the last word, and I appreciate that.

PETER: The last punch.

DEE: So, yeah, it was— The last punch, more accurately. Yeah, no, it was a fun show, for sure.

Okay, next one on the list is A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace. I did finish this one. It was a nice little workplace slice-of-life. I checked it out mostly because it’s by the creator of The Moon on a Rainy Night, which is a really good yuri title—a manga that’s out in the U.S., for folks interested. I would describe it maybe as like a soft yuri. There’s no official couples, there’s a lot of blushing and subtlety, and two of the characters do fully go on a date, but it’s kind of coated in this layer of “Oh, I wanted to experience a date so that I could write about it for my manga,” but then they have such a good time that they want to go on another one, and I’m like, “Okay, so are you guys just for real dating-dating at this point?” So, it plays a little bit in that space of subtext that’s not quite text, but you can certainly have a nice time with the ships.

My favorite thing about this title is that I think it does a really nice job of showing how the creative process, the storytelling process, is often a group effort because I do think we think of—and this was honestly a nice reminder for me—I do think we tend to think of it as being like a single person sitting at a desk plugging away, but, you know, she has her assistants who help her out when she’s close with deadlines, or she has her editor who helps her come up with story ideas or just bounce different things off of her, and there’s people who work… She’s writing a shogi manga, so she has some contacts within the shogi world who will give her advice and feedback on how to write the next story arc and things like that. And so, the way it creates that sense of community around a career that is, I think, often considered to be very individual and lonely, I thought that was really sweet about it.

I’ll be honest, this was one that sometimes I would turn it on and I would zone out a little bit, because it’s just a very sort of pleasant iyashikei-esque workplace comedy. But definitely a nice show if you’re looking for something to put on and just kind of chill and have a good time. So, yeah, I like this one well enough. Any thoughts or follow-up questions? Are we good?

PETER: I do have one question. Would you say that… Were the insights very Shirobako-esque, where you feel like you really get an appreciation for manga production—or a lot of insight, rather?

DEE: A little bit. It doesn’t go super deep into the sauce, but I do think it gives you a better idea, again, like I said, of some of that communal effort of the mangaka going out and talking to their resources for whatever subject they’re writing about or how they bounce off of different editors. But no, I wouldn’t say it’s that Shirobako level at all. It doesn’t get that deep into it.

PETER: Okay. Alright. Well, I’m glad it was fun.

DEE: Okay, so, next up we have Gnosia, which I did not know you pronounced the G hard until I started watching the show, so I learned something new immediately.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] I refuse.

DEE: Well, I’m sorry, Caitlin, that’s how they say it so that’s how I’m going to say it: Gnosia [pronounced “guh-NO-shuh”].

CAITLIN: Gnosia [pronounced ÑO-shuh]. Well, no, see, I say it the proper way, which is with an alveolar nasal: Gnosia [pronounced ÑO-shuh].

PETER: Okay. Alright.

DEE: Alright, well, I’m pronouncing it like the characters pronounce it.

[Laughter]

DEE: So, there! This one is halfway through. It is continuing into winter. So, might be one that we… I mean, it’ll be one that we revisit in some fashion and then might be worth a full pod at some point. I started this one because you and Cy told me to, and while the game mechanics early on were hurting my brain a little bit—because you do kind of feel like you’re watching a video game in the first few episodes—once it starts to get into the character arcs, I think it really starts to shine. And it’s twisty, it’s fascinating, as you learn different things about the characters and as you go through these different time loops, there’s layers to it, so it definitely… I binged it pretty fast to catch up for this pod and I had no problem doing so. It’s a very compelling show. So, thank you for the recommendation. I’m curious to see how the back half turns out.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah! And you are, for clarification… Like, Cy and I both played the game, love the game, but you are a raw newbie, correct?

DEE: Yes, I have not played the game. So, that element of it has not… Again, other than the first few episodes, where there is very much the sense of “And here are the rules,” I’m like, “Okay, but why are those the rules?” and it’s like, “Because those are the rules,” and I’m like, “Okay, fine!” [Chuckles] Once I was able to kind of get through that in the first, I don’t know, probably three, four episodes, and then just kind of ride with it and enjoy both the mystery element of it and trying to figure out… you know, it’s the werewolf game, it’s trying to figure out who on the crew is the Gnosia… and then also just learning more about the different members of the crew as the… Oh, my God, I should have pulled up the character list! What’s our main character’s name? Caitlin.

CAITLIN: Yuri.

DEE: Okay, I was gonna say Yuri and I was like, “That can’t be right.” But it is Yuri. Okay. As Yuri gets to know the rest of the crew and we find out more about their lives off of the ship, it’s a very good character drama, too, and has been pulling me in in that regard, as well. So, yeah, I’m excited to watch the back half.

CAITLIN: Yeah, it’s interesting because it is broadly a series about exploring identity and also about hanging out with these characters. I thought it was really interesting because in the game the gender you choose determines certain character interactions. And so, when they were doing the one with Sha-Ming and Yuri, it’s like how are we gonna do this? Yuri’s kind of ambiguous but definitely does not have boobs, so we’re assuming she’s not a girl, and then one loop Yuri just wakes up as a girl! And it’s like, okay, this is how we’re doing it. And so…

DEE: Oh, okay, so, in the game you choose your gender at the start and then that impacts how characters behave?

CAITLIN: Yeah, well, not strongly, just in a few events. Like, Stella isn’t super fawning on you if you are… as a girl or nonbinary.

DEE: Oh, that’s cool that you can pick nonbinary. I mean, there’s nonbinary characters in the game, so that makes sense that they’d let you pick that, but that’s very cool that they let you pick that.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm. Yeah, no, Gnosia… I feel like that could also be a whole podcast episode.

DEE: Yeah, we could put a pin in that because I think you’re probably right. I am really glad it’s going into a second cour because I was like, “Man, I feel like we’ve just barely scraped the surface of these characters and I’m already on episode 13,” and then it was like “No, this is continuing,” and I’m like, “Sweet! Excellent. Thank you.”

CAITLIN: And Cy’s working on an article about how it depicts identity, I know.

DEE: Yeah. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot going on. The episode you’re talking about where Yuri wakes up and has boobs and just immediately kind of IDs as a girl. I do think the show does kind of have a difficulty separating gender as an identity versus gender as a body. And maybe it’ll dig into that a little bit later. And the episode where Yuri is a girl is a little unfortunate just because it’s like, oh, Yuri had to be a girl so that a dude would threaten to assault her? That sucks. And he doesn’t mean it, content warning–wise. I felt like I kind of got what they were trying to go for there, but I was like, “Ooh, this is rough.” If they do more episodes where Yuri has time-looped as a girl and that doesn’t happen, I think that would help a lot.

CAITLIN: Well, and I thought it was interesting how Yuri was like, “Oh, it’ll be fine,” and then she’s lying in that bed with Sha-Ming and realizing just how vulnerable she is in this body and like, “Oh, this is actually a very different experience.” I thought it was interesting how they depicted it that way, as a difference in how Yuri navigates this world as a woman versus not a woman, you know?

DEE: Yeah, I think it is saying something about misogyny in that moment, as well. It’s just unfortunate that that is the one storyline we have of Yuri as a woman, right? Like, some positivity in there would also maybe be nice!

CAITLIN: Yeah, we could have gotten more in with Remnan’s bit, which is a little… you know, Remnan’s not that kind of guy.

DEE: Yeah. And we might. We might get more there. We’ll see.

CAITLIN: I hope so.

DEE: But yeah. So, yeah, one we’ll for sure revisit later because, again, there’s still so much story there that we need to get into.

CAITLIN: And listen: this series does have a male rape victim!

DEE: Oh, it does! That’s true. Yeah.

CAITLIN: [uneasy] Yeah…equal opportunity.

DEE: Yeah, definitely some content warnings in here for some heavy material, although for the most part it’s told rather than graphically shown, other than some [Chuckles] pretty unexpected violence in a couple of episodes that… yeah, just to kind of be aware of, but…

CAITLIN: Yeah. [Chuckles]

DEE: But again, that may be something to dig into later because there’s still half a story to go there.

CAITLIN: Yes. Now, Dee, I do want to note that the way I got you to watch the series was I said that it has Seki Tomokazu wilding out as Shigemichi.

DEE: Listen, I was gonna watch it anyway, but you said that and I was like, “Well, now I have to watch it, because Seki Tomokazu’s in it and he’s having a good time.” And he is having a good time and I love that character, so I look forward to more with him, as well.

Okay. Alright, last show on the list, [Assumes a somewhat grand tone] The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess! [Returns to normal voice] I had a great time with this one, Caitlin. I assume you did, as well.

CAITLIN: Oh, yeah. And we’ve talked about doing a podcast episode about this one, as well, you know, in keeping with tradition.

DEE: I think that would be fun. I really want this one to get another season. I’m probably going to pick up the manga. I think this was my favorite show of the season, as far as shows that completed. I just had a really good time with the cast every episode. It’s another one that’s very funny. The animation is not lavish but the team knows what they’re doing, so it is still very bright and energetic and bouncy even if there’s not a lot of actual movement.

CAITLIN: Mm-hm. This is the guy that directed Di Gi Charat. He knows how to do comedy on a budget.

DEE: Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, I just find the whole cast terrific, and the way it engages with having to meet the demons of your middle school cringe era is very, very good. I probably don’t have a lot to say about this one that you didn’t talk about at the mid-season, just because I do feel like it very much stayed the course the whole time through. I don’t know if there’s anything in particular you want to mention in the back half or not.

CAITLIN: I think… because this is… we’re getting to the point where I kind of fell off the manga, because it started to feel like, well, are we actually doing anything interesting with this? Are we gonna move past…? And I am starting to spot some foreshadowing that I didn’t see before about, like… and maybe that’s informed partially because from seeing people talk about it it’s like “Oh, things do actually kind of pop off not far after this point,” because, well, you see, the demon lord is still out there.

DEE: There’s always a demon lord, man.

CAITLIN: And Konoha’s still got the latent saint powers…

DEE: Yeah, that have not awakened yet.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] … even if they haven’t awakened yet.

DEE: Yeah. So, no, there’s definitely stuff to come, I would say.

CAITLIN: But yeah, no, it has kind of been just keeping on keeping on.

DEE: I think this is one that if you bounce off the first two, three episodes and this is just a show that is not for you… You know what I mean? But otherwise, otherwise, I think you’re going to have a very nice time with it. It has a good sense of humor. Again, I think the cast is all… they’re working within tropes intentionally, but they’re still likable and there are still layers of them that are being developed as we go. So, it’s just a good time. It’s a good time.

CAITLIN: Yeah, Yomi kind of reminds me of Yuri from Spy × Family but without the incest, and so I enjoy him a lot more [Chuckles], this version.

DEE: I kind of see what you mean there. Yeah. Her having to get him to back off by being like, “No, secretly I’m still evil, fwah-fwah-fwah!” was pretty great. I like how she can tap into that villainess deep down inside of her when she needs to, when it’s like, “Oh, now I gotta go full villain mode. Let me do this!” So, yeah, I think this one might be a fun one to chat about at some point, as well. But yeah, not a whole lot to add to it, I think, from the mid-season. Just a good show, good time. Go watch it. Watch more shoujo. The end.

CAITLIN: Honestly, my big thing is: if you are a fan of Fushigi Yugi, this is the show for you.

DEE: Yeah, I think a lot of those ‘90s shoujo isekai-style shows, it’s engaging with. Fushigi Yugi’s obviously the big title from that era, but…

CAITLIN: Just because Fushigi Yugi has the rawness to it, so it feels like, even though Yuu Watase was twenty-two and not fifteen, it was still kind of coming from sublimating a lot of different… and I have talked about this extensively—we have talked about this extensively. But it’s kind of coming from a very similar raw place, and this one’s kind of being like, “And this is why she did it: it’s because she’s a pervert.”

[Chuckling]

DEE: “Because I was horny and I didn’t know what to do with being horny! So, I wrote some problematic stuff in middle school and now I have to live through it, and it’s very difficult.”

CAITLIN: [Laughs]

DEE: One note I will add, and then we can probably call it here: it keeps kind of touching on the fact that she’s into BL and yuri and kind of teases the edges of queerness being in the story but then never quite commits. So, I do hope it maybe delves into that a little bit more in a way that is affirming. But we’ll see. I do think there’s definitely an element of life goals or wife goals with her relationship with Konoha. [Chuckles] That’s kinda fun. That can be kinda fun sometimes.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah, it’s a little weird with them being sisters, but…

DEE: I mean, it is her self-insert. Oh, they are technically sisters.

CAITLIN: Yep! They are sisters.

DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, fair point, fair point. Yeah. More just from the perspective of the person who got isekai’d into the story, I guess is what I mean by that. But yeah, she touches on that a little bit, and so I am hoping we maybe see some positivity from there if this ever gets more or if I read the manga, which I probably will at this point because I like that one a lot.

Okay. Real quick here, did you guys want to talk about sequels or carryovers briefly?

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yeah!

DEE: Was there anything that you wanted to mention?

CAITLIN: I just want to talk about Ranma ½ a little bit.

DEE: Okay!

CAITLIN: Yeah, because we’ve got all the major players here. Continues to be very faithful to the manga. [Starts speaking gutturally or through gritted teeth] They did skip over some arcs! We did not get the breaking point arc! [Returns to normal voice] Although apparently that’s going to be the next season.

DEE: Oh, okay.

CAITLIN: Sorry. It was just something that was frustrating me a lot in my ANN reviews, where I’m like, “Why? Ryoga! Where are you? Where’s my sad, wet cat?” But, so, what I want to talk about a little bit is there is just a brief original scene in the ending where Akane and Ranma are running to school and Ranma gets splashed with water and he’s like, “Well, I guess I’m going to be going to school as a girl today. That’s fine, I guess,” and Akane is like, “You know, boy or girl? Doesn’t really matter to me as long as it’s you.” And I’m just like, this supports so many of my readings of the series.

DEE: That’s sweet, yeah. So, that’s a new line in the anime that wasn’t necessarily in the manga.

CAITLIN: Yes, that is new to the anime. And so, what’s interesting to me is that Ranma is a little bit of a Rorschach test, right? A lot of people read their own relationship with gender into him. I use he/him with him because he is always saying, “I’m a boy.” It’s like, okay, dude. But my reading of him has been, since I learned about this as a concept… (I can’t say it was always it, because I was reading the series when I was 12) but since I learned about this as a concept, that Ranma is kind of genderfluid by the end. He sort of starts to accept that sometimes he’s totally cool with being in this girl body and that there are things that are nice about being a girl sometimes. And so, at the end there, where he’s like, “Well, I guess this is just me today,” kind of feeds into that, right?

DEE: Yeah, definitely.

CAITLIN: And Akane’s just like, “That’s cool!” It’s like, alright, Akane! Good for you. Go, I don’t know, do some motorboating or something. [Chuckles]

DEE: [Chuckles] Geez, Caitlin!

[Laughter]

CAITLIN: Sorry! So, yeah! I just wanted to talk about that a little bit. It’s continued to be a really solid adaptation. So, yeah, no, definitely recommend it.

DEE: Yeah, it sounds like they’re kind of doing their own thing with it instead of just having it be beat for beat an adaptation of the original, and so that’s nice to see.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Oh, no, they are doing beat for beat.

DEE: Oh, JK.

CAITLIN: It’s very loyal. They’re just… They’ve rearranged some of the story arcs, but it is almost… very nearly one for one. There was like one bit in the Romeo and Juliet arc where you can’t show teenagers drinking alcohol on Japanese TV anymore, so they did have to change that, but otherwise it’s pretty much exactly the same.

DEE: Okay. So… But like you said, they’ve added some lines here and there, so, I don’t know, I think that’s nice that—

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] No, just that one. Just that one bit at the end.

DEE: Just that one single line is the only difference, okay.

CAITLIN: [crosstalk] Yes! Yes! [Chuckles]

DEE: Hey, it’s a nice line.

CAITLIN: It is.

DEE: It’s a nice line, so I’ll take it.

Peter, any carryovers you wanted to shout out here at the end, or are we good?

PETER: I guess all that’s left is Spy × Family. This I remember being the point in the manga where I feel like it kind of did the last three things that really interested me before it’s really sort of been spinning its wheels, so I’m kind of… I don’t know what else the manga really has to offer unless it starts getting into plot stuff again. I’ve actually just kind of dropped it since. I do think it introduces a really interesting subplot with Damian’s mom kind of being very… We’re not quite sure what’s wrong with her, like if she has postpartum depression or something, because 50% of the time she’s very loving toward Damian but especially when the topic of his father comes up Anya literally catches her thinking like, “You’re a mistake. I wish you were dead” toward Damian.

DEE: Yeah, there’s…

PETER: But also “I love you dearly. Oh, my God, you almost got killed. If you’d died I don’t know what would happen to you.” So, definitely internally there’s some sort of conflict going on with her, which I think is a very interesting development that the manga has neglected to explore ever since.

DEE: Oh, no!

PETER: So, there’s definitely some fertile ground there. I guess it’s just whether or… I don’t know when or if the manga picks it back up, but I do kind of hope that that goes somewhere. It kind of reminds me of Todoroki’s backstory in My Hero Academia, which ended up being a huge disappointment with the way it resolved, so I’m kind of hoping Spy × Family has a better plan for that subplot, especially if it’s related to her suffering some abuse from Damian’s father, the guy who the whole Operation Strix thing is supposed to be trying to get toward. There could be some really interesting… I don’t know what to say. It could be interesting. It could maybe say some stuff, maybe, but not a lot of good precedent for that so far in Shonen Jump, I guess I’ll have to say.

DEE: Excellent. Yeah, I’m also— No, you’re fine! I’m also watching Spy × Family. I don’t have much else to add to it. I enjoy it, but I know what it is: it’s a sitcom with action and drama sometimes. So, I liked… I thought this season was a pretty strong one. But I know it’s up and down as far as being more story focused and more just kind of like shenanigans. So…

And with that, I think we have run out of anime to chat about. We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Chatty AF. If you like what you heard, tell your friends. And if you really like what you heard, why not head over to patreon.com/animefeminist and become a patron? For just $5 a month, you can get access to our private Discord server, where you can geek out with fellow feminist minded animanga fans. We also have a store, animefeminist.com/store, where you can find cute and cool merch for the progressive geek on the go.

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And that is the show! Let us know what you think about this season in the comments, and we will catch you next time.