Wein (pronounced like “wane” rather than “wine”), crown prince of Natra, epitomizes the idea of being too smart for one’s own good. With his father the king in poor health, Wein is in charge of his small, impoverished kingdom, but in his heart of hearts, he’d much rather just live a life of laziness and… Read More First Impression: The Genius Prince’s Guide to Raising a Nation Out of Debt
In a world where tokusatsu heroes are real, beleaguered lab assistant Touka Kuroitsu works in monster R&D for the nefarious Secret Society: Agastia. Her boss forces her to give a presentation to the society’s bigwigs on a barebones proposal he threw together at the last minute. The proposal gets rejected; although the supreme leader thinks… Read More First Impression: Miss Kuroitsu from the Monster Development Department
Due to a freak electrical outage that apparently knocked out auxiliary power too, Keina, a totally disabled, hospitalized girl, perishes when her life support systems go down. She wakes up / reincarnates in a fantasy world as the elf Cayna, her game avatar in the VRMMORPG she played. There are some wrinkles, though. A couple… Read More First Impression: In the Land of Leadale
Yo ho ho, piratical Christmas?! I’ve kind of made it a personal challenge as to how many posts I can write out of “Red Nosed Reindeer,” the third episode of Sword Art Online. (I believe this is my third.) This time, I want to explore the contrasting attitudes toward death displayed in the episode. Death… Read More 12 Days of Christmas Anime, Day 3: Sword Art Online, Death and Birth
As the Light Novel Club discussed a few months ago, the original Sword Art Online vol. 1 skipped over nearly two years of events in Aincrad, jumping from the day people became trapped in the game all the way up to shortly before the death-game ends. Short stories in later main-series volumes helped fill in… Read More Review: Sword Art Online The Movie -Progressive- Aria of a Starless Night
Yo! In my admittedly limited experience, Sword Art Online seems to be one the most polarizing anime around. People are either “We hates it, Precious!” or “It’s awesome!” Nobody ever says “Sword Art Online? What’s that?” Well, after the original light novel became a series (one which is up to twenty-two volumes now), author Reki… Read More Light Novel Club Chapter 34: Sword Art Online Progressive, Vol. 1
Once known as Gideon, knight and elder brother of the divinely appointed Hero Ruti, the man using the alias Red is now living as a lowly D-rank adventurer out in the distant, rural frontier, far from the war against the Demon Lord that’s consuming the continent. Ares the mage (a strikingly Hamaan-esque character with the… Read More First Impression: Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside
Music-hating monsters from space invaded Earth. Pairs, a Conductor and a Musicart, do mellifluous battle with the fiends. Takt (a Conductor) and Cosette (a Musicart) are one such dynamic duet; also, it’s not clear just what Cosette is, but she’s apparently not a normal human. They are traveling to New York from somewhere out west,… Read More First Impression: takt op.Destiny
We open in media res, with protagonist Seiichi in another world with busty naked girl who asks to marry him. Now flashback: at a high school in Japan, chubby Seiichi is a victim of bullying and seems to be despised by pretty much everyone in class. A voice from the PA system announces it’s a… Read More First Impression: The Fruit of Evolution
In Oslo, Norway, a train falls out of the sky. Cut to Japan, where high school girl Botan returns home only to be attacked by men in black as a test by her grandfather, who raised her to be a ninja. Botan learns that the time has come for “Mission T,” the task of saving… Read More First Impression: Tesla Note