Category: Anime

This one was a pretty decent fantasy / harem series. It goes some places I did not expect.

This one was surprisingly deep.

This is kind of a run-of-the-mill fantasy / comedy, but the premise is at least interesting.

This one kept showing up on listicles of good romances featuring adults, and it deserved its place. I finally found it on Amazon Prime.

This month’s a bit of a grab bag of series that caught my notice.

This one is best described as House reincarnated as a Japanese anime. Not a bad analogy.

This one has a pretty decent premise, but I wouldn’t recommend watching it with kids around.

This is another one that with a subversive take on the “power ranger” theme.

Another isekai with an interesting premise and strong protagonist.

I’m doing a quartet of isekai’s this month.

This one is where the protagonist goes from extremely underpowered to extremely overpowered, but the progression is interesting to watch. I love how the world is built.

This one is another with a pretty decent story and good world building. The protagonist is sometimes cringey.

I really liked the how the protagonist solves problems in this one and the general earnestness.

This is one where the concept is intriguing, although sometimes it plays a bit fast and loose with its own “rules”.

Okay, so this movie has been in my “to-watch” list for a while. However, this video kind of spurred me to suggest it to The Wife for watching.

The general gist is a college student who is saving money to study abroad takes on the job of watching a paraplegic woman – Josee. Her grandmother refuses to let Josee out of the house to protect her, and hires the MC to watch her in the afternoon. Events happen where the pair start “sneaking out” for adventures and draw them closer.

I strive for no spoilers in my reviews, so I won’t spoil the major plot twists. This is anime, so expect the normal love triangle and gorgeous animation. Josee is also a tsundere extreme. This was a sweet, cute, romance with a few bouts of intensity. I think it’s a great couple movie.

In the last six months or so, I’ve been watching dubbed anime more than subbed. It was a comment by Oddball on one of the Assorted Calibers Podcast blooper reels. Essentially, why would you miss any of the great art reading the subtitles if the dub was of decent quality. I realized that since anime skyrocketed in popularity, the quality of the dubs similarly improved. It was no longer the dark days of the 1980s and 1990s with badly translated scripts read by actors who couldn’t emote themselves out of a wet paper bag.

Unfortunately, some of the dubs are bad enough to switch over to the subtitled versions. I recently started watching “Blue Box” with The Wife. I’d seen it when it first aired and the dub wasn’t available. Let’s just say the dub is not my favorite. There are a couple of voices that are annoying for characters that are of key importance.

Still, it’s the rare exception.

I’m still working on learning Japanese, partly to get to watch anime in Japanese without needing the subtitles. I still think the original actors provide the best performances. At least I don’t have to suffer needlessly anymore.

And here’s hoping we’ll get new dubs of some old anime.

For May, I thought it would be interesting to do some Mecha recommendations. These are a bit older, but I certainly enjoyed them all.

This one has some very frenetic energy.

You can tell the impact of Gundam on this one, but I really enjoyed the storyline.

This is one where I was trying to figure things out until the very end.

One where the storyline plays with a few common tropes/concepts in anime.

This is a cute romance, but one where I was hoping the main character would fall for the other girl instead of his main interest.

A second one where I preferred the secondary love interest instead of the primary.

In this one, the main character is very annoying. Another where the secondary love interest is a far more compelling character. I’ll be honest, I couldn’t finish it, but it has a strong following.

This one’s kind of good, kind of meh, but has some interesting concepts.

The back half of 2025 looks like we’re going to get second seasons of a few of my previous faves. Needless to say, I’m excited and a bit cautious. Second seasons can be a bit of a crapshoot. Some are awesome, and some are let downs. Some completely ruin a series. Still, I’m hopeful.

A rare rom com involving adults instead of students.

Speaking of rom-coms involving students. This one has an interesting premise and done well.

Another rom-com where the stepchildren used to date – and may still have feelings for each other. And a bit of ecchi.

It feels odd recommending one that’s not technically anime and over ten years old, but damn RWBY is good.