So, this little report is going to do a bunch of things, as I gear up for another fun time at Anime Expo for 2022. 

I am also practicing a new way to submit my reports, so I can work out any kinks before I go, rather than relying on the kindness of strangers (and, boy howdy, they don’t get no stranger than at AX!) and lying in a pool of my own flop sweat, right?  (more…)

There is a special name for this kind of show: isekai. This is where the main character finds themselves transported to another land, whether it is a real land or some kind of video game land. For the most part, they are treated as comedic. Some are a bit rough (like “The Rising of the Shield Hero”), but this one, “How Not to Summon a Demon Lord” (“Isekai Maō to Shōkan Shōjo no Dorei Majutsu”, or “The Other World Demon Lord and the Summoning Girl’s Slave Magic.”) is deliciously stupid. (more…)

Every year, an anime comes out that really pushes the boundary between ecchi and hentai. Shows like this include “High School of the Dead”, “High School DxD”, “Ikki Tousen” and “Cat Planet Cuties”, to name a few. This current offering has done a lot to erase that line, sometimes to its detriment. Welcome to “Interspecies Reviewers” (“Ishuzoku Rebyuāzu”). (more…)

Hoo boy! Another giant fighting robot series. I keep telling myself not to watch them, as my take on the whole feel and approach to it is flat-out ludicrous. Also, I am still smarting from my decision to catch “Gundam Seed Destiny” a genuine waste of time for me and that was a bunch of years ago. However, when this show came up on the schedule, there was nothing else on tap to view and I would rather be pushed, screaming, from a plane at 10,000 feet, over a seething cauldron of lava with angry wolverines in my shorts than watch a pick-up show like “Tokyo Mew-Mew”, so there you have it. And now, we will have a level-headed discussion about “Darling in the Franxx” (“Dārin In Za Furankisu”). (more…)

This ended up being a more interesting show than I was willing to give it credit for. I have reched (reached! Reached! Or maybe I have reched a tad) a saturation point; both are equally plausible. It comes to shows like this and the mediæval approach to things. Is there some reason this cannot take place in the American Old West, or France in the 1920s or Russia when Napoleon was a foot? I mean afoot! Or maybe he is only a foot tall (well, they measured things differently.) Anyway, here we are at “Grancrest Senki” (also known as “Record of Grancrest War” or “Gurankuresuto Senki”). (more…)