I’ve scrapped the simulcast commentary while I’ve been gone, so these impressions might be a bit on the rough side. You can see my pre-season list here.

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The Amazing Race Australia is coming back, so I expect a lot of on-demand (and not-so-on-demand) watching on my end in my near future. I’m also a bit worried – because there are apparently 67 anime this season! – a possible things-go-belly-up sometime during the next 12 or so weeks, particularly how the JLPT potentially collides with a later HypMic episode.

I’m not going to try and take on everything – I have some freelance work I’m waiting for instructions to, as I write this – but I’ll take on as much as I’m interested in…which might not be a lot, considering I haven’t consistently followed more than 2 anime in a season for several years now. Plus, between Frieren‘s 4 episode premiere (!!!) and Kusuriya no Hitorigoto‘s triple-length premiere, I really have my work cut out for me…

Anime I want to take on at the moment (as of the time of writing this post on 3rd Oct. 2023 my time):

Strikethrough means it should have been available but wasn’t yet while bold is covered in this post.

• Paradox Live: Some opening notes on Paradox Live I kinda didn’t cover previously, but may forget by the time I get to watch episode 1: Honestly, the premise sounds like it was made for me like some media version of Amigara Fault – it’s wacky sci-fi with cool music and hot guys (…plus Anne, who is biologically male but presents femininely, so some people take Anne to be male and some take Anne as non-binary)! However, something has to lose between HypMic and its competition and I side with the former. (Also, now I do the research…Paradox Live‘s characters have individual traumas and trauma hashtags, to the point they have their own spots in the wiki info boxes and pages? No thanks. At least with HypMic, it makes sense they’re traumatised because of WWIII and Chuohku, plus some other drama-related stuff like Jyushi’s bullying…)
• Frieren (…that mega debut slightly scares me and after the 3 anime I’m covering in this episode and finishing Undead Murder Farce, I’m a bit anime-d out and need to recover)
• Helck (catch up, I’m partway through episode 7 right now)
• Migi and Dali
• SHY
• Ron Kamonohashi

SHY

I felt a bit stressed looking at the selection of anime I had to start with (because work occupied the entire weekend the fall 2023 anime season began – even the Friday, which almost everyone else had off in my region – and everyone’s been talking about Frieren and its first 4 episodes in my emails), so I threw my choices into Excel’s random number picker and got this as my first anime of the season.

I’ve heard SHY being called “Hetalia x superheroes” and that’s pretty darn accurate (even including the alien overlord, if what I’ve heard about the Hetalia movie is any indication…). It seems to be aware of everything that makes the genre tick and isn’t afraid to dismantle it a bit, but not too much. Aside from the potential PTSD angle, it’s not doing too much different to every other superhero series that exists (including anime and manga), but that difference may be critical in spreading the word about protecting one’s mental health.

Other notes:

• “Tsuruya” is a parody of Tsutaya. a video chain.
• Do heroes have the ability to breathe in space in this series? I mean, Pepesha/Spirit seems to have some powers relating to cloud warping and portal making, so I get her breathing in space and Unilord is an alien, but Shy…?
• I was wondering where I’d seen some of these transitions before…turns out it was Masaomi Ando (Astra) at the helm.

Migi and Dali

I’m wondering how this is going to go post-Nami Sano’s passing…

Basically, if you see this as “Haven’t You Heard? I’m Sakamoto but trying to be slightly unsettling to the audience” (or alternatively, “comedy but not trying to be comedy by its categorisation” if you want to take Vrai’s word for it), you’ll get the gist of this. It’s one-note but serviceable enough and it’s hard to see where this will go beyond that one note, but Sakamoto got better when its cast expanded and I have hope Migi and Dali will follow in its footsteps.

…then you see the post-credits segment and your mind may change about the entire episode. The “comedy/horror/mystery Frankenstein” feeling is definitely by design.

Other notes:

• Soramame House (literally “sky bean house”) seems to suggest Jack and the Beanstalk, a story about a child who outsmarts a giant. Hmm…
• The book Dali(…?) is holding in the OP is called “Max-sensei’s Cherry Pie”. Edit: Turns out Migi has the left side part while Dali has the right side part, so it was actually Migi.
• The OP’s name is “Yuumagadoki”, which seems to be a variant of oumagadoki (basically, an old tem for 6 pm when accidents were frequent because that’s usually around when the sun sets, if the sun isn’t already down by then in the winter). The part which deviates could be explained as a word for “evening” (read “yuu”)…but that’s just my speculation, based on what I know. Both the song and the name are quite fitting for the slightly unsettling vibe the show is going for, but the clincher is how, if you’ve watched Sakamoto, you can superimpose certain characters – and thus certain expectations – on to these new ones.
• The mother is reading a book called “Beautiful Gardens”.
• Content warning: Don’t watch on an empty stomach! (/hj) On a serious note, I ate earlier so I thought I could handle all the food scenes, but…nup. I had a tiny breakfast today, so my self-restraint is breaking down… *sweatdrops*
• …is that ED English??? Wha???
• If you check the AniList page, I’m honestly surprised the twins are voiced by separate actors. They sound exactly the same…which is probably the whole point…but as I’ve proven in the past, I’m not good at guessing voice actors, so maybe I’m not the best person to say this… *sweatdrops*
• How did the parents not hear the twins talking to each other…? *sweatdrops again*
• Also this episode made me realise, despite my minor panic that I was missing out (see the first paragraph of the Shy impressions for why), I actually caught Shy and this just in time.

Ron Kamonohashi

I’ve read 32 chapters of the manga and…I did tire of it occasionally. Sure, it’s Akira Amano, who I’m well-versed in after Reborn and Eldlive, but I also quit those partway through (the former halfway through the anime when I fell out of love with Hibari, the latter really early on in both manga and anime forms). It’s because it tries to be Quirky, like how Ron is addicted to black sugar syrup in sippy bags or likes platypi (kamonohashi in katakana means “platypus”), and…while it still tells a decent story, it sort of loses itself in its own Quirkiness, if you get what I mean.

Also, it wasn’t so long ago that I read this on Manga Plus, unlike some of the older series where I’ve had to chase up library copies over years, so my memory of it is pretty fresh and accurate to what I saw. (…and if you’re wondering, yes, the supposedly supernatural bit at the end does lead to an overarching mystery.)

Other notes:

• …Okay, I honestly forgot how talky this series is.
• “I’m so blessed to be a detective!”

Rankings

I’m bringing ranking back, baby!

Continue:

• Shy
• Migi and Dali

To deal with in a less crowded season:

• Ron Kamonohashi

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Aside from what I’ve listed at the top of the article, did I miss anything good?