As I’ve progressed through the start of the winter anime season, I’ve noticed that I’m watching more shows than I normally do. Shows I wouldn’t normally have tried, plus of course, the many I would have. It’s lead to some nice surprises, but also some confirmation that some of the shows that I thought would be bad, are in fact, bad.
Thank you for joining me once again, as I look into four more new series that have aired this week.
First up we get this season’s Doga Kobo series, so we’re almost sure to get something that’s really cute and often heart-warming or funny.
Gabriel Dropout is a series that subverts the classic roles of angels and devils, as characters that were born in heaven and hell, come to earth to continue their training.
The main character, Gabriel White Tenma was top of her class in Angel School in heaven. She was the very role model of what an angel should be. She helped clean her local area, her room was spotless, and she would go out of her way to help anybody who needed help.
That was, until “The incident”.
She was sitting next to a computer playing an online game, and she saw that people were dying. As ever, she wanted to help them, and the best way to do that was to start playing a priest. Soon, she was healing everybody, but it wasn’t enough. As ever with games like this, she got hooked, and before she knew it, she was a slob!
Her responsible neighbour Vignette Tsukinose April is always dutiful to look out for her slovenly friend. She’s always on at Gab to clean up her mess, to wake up early and leave for school at a reasonable time. She’s a nice and friendly neighbour to have all things considered. The only problem is that she’s meant to be a devil.
The role reversal continues into the other major characters as well. We are introduced to a very fiendish devil girl called Satanichia Kurumizawa McDowell. She really wants to be evil. She delights in littering, she loudly announces that she refuses to do homework, and imagines pulling chairs from under people. Sadly, the only thing that she is terrible at, is being terrifying. She’s adorably maniacal. Rather than fearing her, you just want to coddle her and tease her.
Which is why I can sort of understand the feelings of our fourth character, Raphiel Shiraha Ainsworth? Raphy is another angel that was sent to live amongst humans along with Gabriel, and Raphy has a very twisted personality. She lives to be entertained. She sees Satanichia and doesn’t see a lost lamb needing direction, but instead sees a new toy to be played with.
As with most Doga Koba series, Gabriel Dropout brings cute characters and shows us them doing cute things. There isn’t much new brought to the table here, but as a tried and tested formula, they’re again using it effectively. This will be a nice show to unwind with after a tiring Monday at work, and you can watch it on Crunchyroll.
Next on our menu for today is ACCA: 13 Territory Inspection Department. It is a series about a bored pretty-boy inspector visiting other government organisations to make sure they’re fulfilling their duties correctly and without corruption.
So we have a bureaucracy series… Just what I want after working day after day for a governmental body, an anime about the same thing.
One thing that would help ACCA keep my attention would be if it was either a comedy or a full on action series, but it really isn’t. In the first episode our lead guy Jean Ottus wanders slowly from place to place, smoking more than William B. Davis in The X Files, and talking with other uninteresting people.
There appears to be some amount of politics happening in the background, but it was so low key it didn’t really leave an impression. In fact, the lasting impression of the series I have, were of him wandering around smoking, and that his colleagues were just talking about cake at all times.
I could be missing the point, and this could just be a low-key start to an excellent series, but in a season where there’s a lot of series grabbing for my attention after great first episodes, ACCA doesn’t really excite.
ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department is airing on Tuesdays on both Crunchyroll and Funimation.
Coming to us from that section of Japan that brings us clichéd light novel concepts, comes the manga adaption, Hand Shakers.
Not a series about celebrities and their sweaty, bespectacled, otaku fans attending the handshaking events that somehow exist, but a story about supernatural fights between people who hold hands with other people.
It doesn’t start out spectacularly, as we get random shots of people, mostly shown through fisheye lenses, and then the most easily distracted director changing shots and using strange angles even more than you would expect to see in a SHAFT series.
At times is looks like they’ve animated the series in 4K, and then realised that they don’t want to broadcast the entire screen, and just pan around a video showing things that aren’t the focus.
The focus, should be on the main character, and eventually we get just that, but immediately regret it. It’s not so much he’s boring, it’s that he’s forgetful. He fixes things, and if flashbacks are to believe, he has a dead sister, and that’s about all we know about him.
He’s also invited to some university to fix something, and that’s how he gets involved in the hand-holding game. In a scene that is as predictable as it is CG-filled, he finds himself with a beautiful companion being told never to let go of her hand, whilst fighting a guy who is using his companion to summon bad CG chains.
If I’m being vague, it’s because it didn’t leave a huge impression on me. This is a show that commits the worst sin, it’s forgetful, but hey… Jiggle physics is fun.
Hand Shakers is airing on Crunchyroll and Funimation on Wednesdays.
Finally today we have a show from the clever people over at Kyoto Animation, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid.
Kobayashi is a standard office worker who spends her days working hard in front of a computer, earning a living, but with nothing spectacular of note. She goes out drinking with colleagues, and is generally straight faced and normal.
Her life changes when she goes out drinking one night and gets totally slaughtered. She inadvertently ends up saving a dragon, and promising that she’ll take care of the dragon, offering it a place to live.
The dragon is so happy about the chivalry shown by that young human girl, that she decides that it is her duty to take her up on her kind offer, and to not only live with Kobayashi, but to service her, and since Kobayashi was drunkenly talking about maids all night, she decides to act as her live-in maid The dragon is our other lead, Tohru.
Kobayashi’s first sober meeting with Tohru was a very key moment of the episode. To open your front door in the morning to be confronted with the giant face of a dragon, only for that dragon to transform into a voluptuous but cute maid is a strange thing to imagine. Needless to say she is a bit hesitant to the idea, but after understanding that Tohru means well, and other than a few oddities, she sees the positives over having a cute maid to welcome her home.
A lot of the comedy in Dragon Maid is about Tohru’s lack of understanding with human culture, be it the serving of a giant dragon-tail steak, or the washing of delicate laundry in her mouth (albeit with disinfecting saliva).
The rest of the comedy is actually through Kobayashi herself, and her duality when it comes to when she’s sober, and then when she lets herself go and gets drunk with a co-worker. It turns out that Kobyashi and her colleague Makoto Takiya, are both maid-obsessed otaku. It’s always the quiet ones you need to be careful of, after all.
Visually, Dragon Maid is a beautiful series, with the simplicity of the world bringing out the detailed and wonderful character art. The minor details bring out the best in the medium and it’s a feast for the eyes.
A lot of people were a bit unsure when it was announced that Kyoto Animation would be adapting a comedy slice of life series, but having seen previous comedies from KyoAni like Lucky Star and Nichijou I knew it would be just fine.
You can join the Dragon-based comedy on Crunchyroll and Funimation, on Thursdays.
Today’s episodes have been quite a mixed bag, with two disappointing series being sandwiched by two standout comedy series. Whilst I’m not sure I’ll continue either of the two disappointing dramas, the comedy series are likely shows I’ll stick with to the end.
There’s just one more group of episodes for me to look at this season, but I’ll save that until next time. Be sure to follow my channel and join me as I take a look at them, and an overall review on everything I’ve watched so far.
