Like the world of Avatar: the Last Airbender, the newest anime adapation of a light novel, Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World, features hundred-year war. The belligerents are the magic-intolerant Empire (no further name is given) and the pro-magic Sovereignty. In the prologue, imperial warrior prodigy Iska receives the title Saint… Read More First Impression: Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World
The demon king has kidnapped the princess! Oh noes! The overly serious hero is working on the problem, but what’s going on with Princess Syalis in the meantime? The food is good, but she’s bored. And restless. Obviously the solution is to brush her teddy bear jailers to collect their fur, as well as borrow… Read More First Impression: Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle
As if 2020 weren’t bad enough, back in July, glowing pillars erupted from mountains around the world and began spawning monsters (or maybe they’re robots?). With the pillars proving impervious all known human weapons (up to and including nukes), the world is in crisis. Obviously, this calls for the Norse god Odin to show up… Read More First Impression: Warlords of Sigrdrifa
As a child, Elaina read stories about the adventures of a witch named Nike and wants to go on travels of her own. When her parents say she can travel once she becomes a witch, she studies hard to pass the official exams and become the youngest apprentice witch in the kingdom. For reasons that… Read More First Impression: Wandering Witch: The Journey of Elaina
Supernatural shounen adventures in high school. Need I say more? Well, we open with a masked man announcing he’s about to murder the apparent protagonist. The highly athletic Itadori Yuuji loses his grandfather, leaving Itadori alone in the world. Gramps’s dying words are an exhortation to help others and build strong relationships so that Itadori… Read More First Impression: JUJUTSU TAISEN
One day after class, Yotsuya Yuusuke finds himself in a game-like fantasy world, along with the popular Shindou Yuu and shy Hakozaki Kusue. Shindou was actually the first summoned to the fantasy world. When she completed a quest, she got to go home…but also received a quest to become friends with Hakozaki. Upon completing that… Read More First Impression: I’m Standing on a Million Lives
There’s a medieval fantasy kingdom. The king is unwell. There was a big war with demons a century ago. The kingdom discriminates against the dark elves. Dark elf mercenaries and their leader Riheet hope to exact revenge on their oppressors. There’s an obviously corrupt noble working with the dark elves, but it’s unclear to what… Read More First Impression: King’s RAID: Successors of the Will
Cute girls…using weapons powered by magical bloodsucking rings, fighting evil robots? Well, we did it, team. This is a thing now—let’s go home. Assault Lily: Bouquet appears to be a show about cute high school girls called “Lilies” battling mysterious wild robots called “Huge.” Protagonist Riri is just starting to attend an academy for Lilies… Read More First Impression: Assault Lily Bouquet
(It’s getting difficult to distinguish between the titles of my posts and the titles of light novels, isn’t it?) You’ve probably heard that the winners write the history books. The victors of various conflicts (military, political, cultural, etc.) fabricate self-glorifying stories at the expense of the losers. Except that’s not how history actually works. Since… Read More The First Duty of Every Starfleet Otaku is to the Truth, Whether it’s Scientific Truth, or Historical Truth, or Personal Truth
When it comes to anime and light novels, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an isekai series or six. Countless stories spanning many genres have used the person-travels-to-another-world premise. To borrow language from the infamous TV Tropes, the isekai concept has been played straight, played with, inverted, subverted, parodied, deconstructed, reconstructed, and more.… Read More The World Is Not Enough: Isekai and the Hope for More