Anime Old Home Week! Big Naruto News, Bleach Rewatch, and More!

It's been nostalgia week for me since the big Naruto announcements. Suddenly, I find myself as I was twenty years ago, feeling like a new fan of Naruto and Bleach again with all the new news.

First, the big stuff. At New York Comic Con, it was announced that Naruto is getting a new manga. It's being authored by Masashi Kishimoto, Naruto's original creator, and the story is set between the end of Naruto Shippuuden and the beginning of Boruto, during what is known as "the Blank Period" in the timeline.

There was other news too (more on that later), but this was the main thing. After Shippuuden ended, there was a timeskip ahead to where the characters had married and had children. But we never saw what happened right after the big battle, the huge climax when they defeated Kaguya.

From what we can tell from the images that have been released, this new manga entitled Shadow Rising (folks are even trying to decipher what the name might mean, lol) covers, among other things, Naruto beginning his rule as Hokage, Sarada's birth, and a final (friendly?) rematch fight between Naruto and Sasuke.

All the other announcements paled in comparison to this one, but here they are. A new four-episode anime will be released, and it's a crossover between Naruto and a popular Japanese children's anime called Ninku. It's set when Team 7 were kids. Also, the Naruto mobile game that has been successful in China will be released worldwide. A Naruto tabletop card game is forthcoming.

In addition, there's a different four-episode anime series celebrating Naruto's 20th anniversary, postponed from 2023, that will be released by the end of 2026.

More announcements about the Naruto universe are slated to be made at Jump Festa in December.

All of these announcements and the buzz they've generated have brought the franchise back to life. It brings to mind for me that time when I was new to anime and just head over heels for Naruto, Bleach, and loads of other series, and everything anime was fresh and new to me.

It put me in that mood so much that I'm now rewatching Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War from the beginning. I've been binging it when I have a few hours here and there, and I'm at episode 18 now. It's the first time I've rewatched any of the episodes and I'm impressed by the level of storytelling and all the little details I missed the first time around.

Bleach's final two episodes will air on Oct. 19 and Oct. 26. It's going to be huge! Also, there are rumors of a new Bleach anime called the Hell Arc?? We'll have to wait and see about it...

I'm sure I've said it before, somewhere in the seventeen years I've been writing this blog - but for me, Naruto has the most complete story universe in manga/anime. The ninja world, Konoha, the Kage, the ninja training academy, all the people of Konoha, Naruto's life journey, Naruto and Sasuke's rivalry and relationship, the life-or-death battles, Gaara and his tragic story and eventual triumph... there's so much there, and when you watch even an average Naruto or Naruto Shippuuden episode you feel like you're right there in Konoha with them. You are totally enveloped in the landscape of the ninja world, in the village of Konoha and its history.

As each new anime season debuts, and the rush of new series comes in, it's easy to forget the great old stories. The funny thing is, since I've been watching the Naruto announcement videos and everyone's reaction videos on YouTube, the great YT algorithm has taken note and I'm now getting flooded with Naruto and Sasuke videos. Maybe the franchise never died and it was just me that was out of the loop?

Watching those videos, I feel like I'm back in 2007 and the world of anime has just opened up to me again. It's a lot of fun.

I'm assuming a legal way to read the new Naruto manga, which begins next year, will be available to us in the U.S., so I'm preparing myself to take on a new paid subscription, lol. I don't want to be left behind for this one. This one is worth paying for, for immediate access to this series.

As people have been saying on the internet, we Naruto fans are eating good. ;-) It's great to return to the old feelings of excitement over shounen anime, and it's good to still be an anime fan in 2026. :-)

Another Year Around the Anime Sun

It’s a new year and I keep adding new anime series to watch.

Some of it isn’t technically “anime.” As in, I’ve found another Chinese series to watch.

This is the Chinese animated series or donghua called Bureau of Paranormal Investigation, not to be confused with Muhyo and Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation which I’ve discussed before.

This donghua... is kind of a mixed bag. I haven’t researched donghua and how long the Chinese have been doing animated series, but this one feels like it’s going for a Ghost in the Shell look, which it succeeds at... sort of.

The story appears to be set in contemporary mainland China. Shen La is a special forces operative. During a mission to capture a drug lord, the special forces team enters a cave of ancient spirits. The spirits attack and Shen La has a phantom-like spirit invade his body through his eye. Only Shen La and Sun Desheng, the mission’s undercover agent, survive the attack with the aid of a tall, mysterious white-haired man.

Both men are initiated into a secret paranormal investigation bureau and, as it turns out, the white-haired man Wu Mian is one of the bureau’s directors.

Shen La develops paranormal powers after the spirit enters his eye. Most of the bureau’s agents also have paranormal abilities, in particular Wu Mian who is actually over 2,000 years old.

Here’s the official trailer, courtesy of Crunchyroll Collections.



While watching this trailer you may have noticed that the art style is kind of... well, strange. Sometimes it looks awesome, and other times it has the appearance of having been hastily thrown together at 2 a.m. under a tight deadline.

Crunchyroll viewers definitely noticed. Here are a few of their comments:

-- When the animation is both incredible and shit at the same time.

-- 2D or 3D. Pick one!

The character designs are well-rendered and the background art is often intricately detailed, but the CGI is sometimes off to the point that you’re not sure what they intended.

For example, these yellow fields of grass, which have the look of crafting felt:

The style is inconsistent in other ways, too. The bureau’s main female agent is Bai Lu. Her design looks like a hot Japanese anime girl, which is jarringly unlike the look of the other characters.

A more pressing problem is the distasteful treatment of the overweight character Sun Desheng. He’s called “Fatty” by the others and is made to serve as both comic relief and object of derision. He’s originally an undercover police officer so he’s not without skills, but he’s always the one who acts cowardly and stupid in dangerous situations, including pushing that mysterious button on the wall just as someone screams not to push it.

Despite its issues, Bureau of Paranormal Investigation has kept me hooked so far. There are twelve episodes in the first season. I don’t think there’s a second season forthcoming as of yet.

The real surprise since the turn of the new year is Boruto.

Sasuke Uchiha is the second most important character in the Naruto universe. Simply put, he’s Vegeta to Naruto’s Goku, but his rivalry with Naruto is more intense and germane to the overall story.

The Naruto anime story universe consists of three series: Naruto, Naruto Shippuuden, and Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. Naruto covers Naruto and his friends when they were kids, Naruto Shippuuden when they were teenagers, and Boruto is about the children of Naruto and his friends - i.e., the “next generation.”

It all began with Team 7.

In the first series, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are the members of Team 7 at Konoha’s ninja academy.

Naruto and Sasuke are rivals from the beginning.

Later, Sasuke leaves the village on a mission of revenge related to his clan. Sakura begs Naruto to stop him. The two boys fight nearly to the death, but in the end Sasuke prevails and walks away.

In Naruto and its sequel series Naruto Shippuuden, Sasuke disappears for huge swaths of time but his absence is always felt by Naruto and Sakura, and by the audience. He winds up on a path of darkness seeking power over others, while back home in Konoha, Naruto gains power and abilities in order to help others and to defend Konoha and the entire ninja world.

In the story’s climax, Sasuke returns to help Naruto save the ninja world from destruction. However, following the successful outcome of the battle, he challenges Naruto for leadership of what’s left of the world. Sasuke is still coming from darkness and his final fight with Naruto - which mirrors their earlier fight when Sasuke left the village years before - is one of anime’s most memorable fight scenes. It culminates in a shocking conclusion:

Sasuke finally recognizes that his path was wrong and reforms. Naruto, due to his lineage from the First Hokage, is able to have a new arm constructed. The Uchiha lineage is also special, but like the irritating little cuss that he is, Sasuke leaves the village on a journey of atonement and redemption before the possibility of a new arm for him can be researched.

Throughout the three series - Naruto, Naruto Shippuuden, and now Boruto - we’ve followed Sasuke’s journey as much as we have Naruto’s journey. He began as a simple shonen rival, a foil for the main character, but the story wouldn’t have worked without him since Naruto wouldn’t have grown as much without Sasuke challenging him as his dark counterpart. In a story universe with literally hundreds of distinct characters, Sasuke Uchiha is unquestionably the second lead as well as a fan favorite.

The big news is that a new manga story featuring Sasuke is being animated as part of the Boruto series, and in fact, the episodes are airing right now.

The story is called Sasuke Retsuden (English title: The Uchiha Descendants and the Heavenly Stardust). It’s set four years after the events in Naruto Shippuuden.

Sasuke goes on an undercover mission to track down a cure for Naruto’s sudden illness. To his surprise, Sakura later joins him on the mission. The two are already married at this point. What’s fun and new about this is that we have never seen what led up to their marrying each other. They were in Team 7 together as children, and Sakura - along with Naruto - hunted Sasuke when he was a rogue ninja. They were teenagers then, as they were when the main Naruto story ended.

Then there was a huge time skip. When the Boruto series began, Sasuke and Sakura’s daughter Sarada was a pre-teen already.

The Sasuke Retsuden arc is our first glimpse of the early days of Sasuke and Sakura’s marriage and longtime Naruto fans are losing their minds over it. The manga debuted in Japan last October and was immediately greenlit to be animated.

For the first time in ages I’m excited to watch Boruto every Sunday. The now “older” generation of Naruto and his friends are still my favorite characters and to watch an arc that is centered on the adult Sasuke and Sakura is simply a joy.

Another year around the anime sun has passed, and even a series I've been watching forever can still surprise me. I'd say this bodes well for the coming year. ;-)

2022 Anime Year in Review

For me as an anime fan, the year of 2022 had its ups and downs, with the year ending on a decided upswing.

As well as Attack on Titan (more on that below), the year began with - as always - eternally... Boruto.

I’ve complained about Boruto before... that it hasn’t developed Konoha’s new generation as deeply as the original characters, and the plot arcs aren’t as compelling, and there’s a lot of filler episodes to boot. The filler aspect can’t be helped, as the manga is being created at its own speed and there’s nothing else to be done until the manga gets ahead enough in the story.

Boruto has been in filler episodes for the entire year of 2022. Most of the year we were in a filler arc that actually began at the end of 2021, believe it or not. Briefly, this arc had Team 7 on a mission in the Land of Water that involved a prison break on an island, pirates, a clan war, etc.

So many deaths took place in this arc that it became a downer to watch on top of being filler to begin with. The final episode was a surprise though, as Boruto offered to sacrifice himself in order to stop an ongoing bloody war between factions on the island. His rationale was that both sides - including the one he’d been on - bore responsibility for the conflict and that if his sacrifice would bring an end to the bloodshed, he was willing to do it.

It was a tense and thrilling episode, one of the best I’ve seen in the series. One thing that filler arcs can do is to deepen the characters if you put them in potentially life-threatening situations, and that’s what happened at the end of this too-long filler arc. I’m not sure I can say that it was worth it, but it did bring the character of Boruto further along and showed us his new maturity and leadership.

According to manga readers, when Boruto comes out of fillers we’re in for a treat. At some point thereafter the series will time-skip ahead and the new generation will then be teenagers.

This is exactly what the parent series did when it went from being Naruto to Naruto Shippuuden. Naruto went on a three-year training journey with his master Jiraiya and returned to the village at age 16, and the series’ most satifying storylines came after the timeskip.

If Boruto follows that same formula for success then I’m all for it.

As to movies, the only one I saw in the theaters was Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. It was a fun diversion and a decent addition to the Dragon Ball universe. It was especially nice to see Piccolo and Gohan featured as the main characters as they didn’t get a lot of chances to shine in the DBS series.

I also streamed a couple of My Hero Academia movies. I tend to forget about movies based on anime series, and in fact, there have been three MHA movies released so far.

In autumn two of my favorite series came back: Bleach and My Hero Academia.

Both series returned with really intense arcs. Bleach is covering the final arc of the manga, which includes Ichigo’s true origin story... which makes it even more amazing that it’s taken ten years for the arc to be animated considering its importance to the overall Bleach story.

My Hero Academia is currently in the middle of an enormous battle arc involving all of the superheroes, the students, and a near-unbeatable villain, Tomura Shigaraki, plus Shigaraki’s entire army of bad guys. A city has been destroyed and several heroes have died and the arc doesn’t even appear to be close to its conclusion yet.

This fall I also started watching Heaven Official’s Blessing, an example of Chinese danmei or boy’s love. I haven’t finished the first season yet even though I only have a few episodes left. I think it’s because I know there’s a second season coming and my binge instinct has kicked in. I’d love to roll from S1 right into S2, but that’s probably unrealistic since there’s still no date set for the start of the second season (though a trailer for S2 has been released).

Recently I added Spy x Family to my currently watching list. I’m intrigued by this non-shonen series that appears to be wildly popular. Well, that and the male lead is quite the biseinen, isn’t he? It’s been fun so far.

As to the industry year in review... quite a bit happened.

In-person conventions returned, including Anime Expo and the San Diego Comic Con, two of the largest. Funimation’s anime catalog began to be transitioned into Crunchyroll, a process that is still ongoing.

Kadokawa bought a majority stake in Anime News Network. And speaking of buyouts - Right Stuf was bought out by Crunchyroll. Shawne Kleckner headed Right Stuf for over 30 years and this one surprised me. I know the pandemic was hard on merchants but Right Stuf was one of those vendors that always felt solid to me. They even had their own in-house production company, Nozomi Entertainment. I’m sorry to see them get swallowed up.

The biggest industry news by far was Disney’s acquisition of Bleach. Since then they’ve also acquired the second season of Tokyo Revengers, but so far, nothing bigger than that. It could be that they’re waiting to see how Bleach does before making any greater inroads into the animesphere.

With all these ups and downs, this year is ending on a high note for me as an anime fan. I’m watching a lot of anime each week, just like the old days.

Oh, and I almost forgot. Attack on Titan.

You might recall that around this time last year they announced that the “final cour” of Attack on Titan would stream beginning in January 2022.

Well, it did. Half of it. The final cour was split in two, with the last episodes set to air in January of 2023.

Like everyone else, this past winter I watched the episodes expecting to see the end of Attack on Titan. Instead, rumors began to leak that the second half would be delayed, which was confirmed at the end of the last episode that aired in April.

Other series have had very lengthy delays between seasons: Haikyuu comes to mind and there are others. Attack on Titan though is a premier title and this delay really surprised me. It’s a series that has a huge international audience and the expectation was really high that the series would be concluded this year.

I say that, and yet... here we are at the end of 2022 with Attack on Titan set to stream its final - let’s hope - episodes starting next month. Because next month it’s January again, already.

Another year in the animesphere has passed and it was a good one. Next year looks good as well, so let’s get ready for it. :-)

Anime in the Covid Year of 2020 – Attack on Titan Returns, Muhyo and Roji, K: Seven Stories, Haikyuu, and Thoughts on Boruto

It’s been a year where anime seemed almost beside the point, and yet, by the end of it — for me at least — it felt relevant again in a new way.

Back in March, the production of Boruto went dark for a few months, as workers in Japan hunkered down in the pandemic as did those elsewhere.

When Boruto started up again with new episodes in summer, I recall feeling a little guilty almost. Like, there’s a pandemic on, and I missed anime, but not to the point where I wanted animation workers to go back into production offices and get sick drawing my entertainment.

There’s never been an experience like the pandemic of this year, and some of my reactions to things were all over the place. I’ve since settled down, remembering that people in Japan - like people here in the U.S. - actually wanted to return to work, so it’s okay.

The big news about Boruto is that Masashi Kishimoto is returning to write the manga. I’ve written here before about how Boruto has never lived up to Naruto, but the totally obvious reason for that never occurred to me before I heard this news.

One of the main reasons that made Naruto/Naruto Shippuuden so awesome was its storytelling, its amazing world-building. Konoha, the ninja village of Naruto and his friends, felt as real as anything with its large group of characters and all of their fascinating backstories. Not to mention the ninja universe itself, the five great shinobi nations and their histories.

When the Boruto manga began, I recall reading that Kishimoto was going to be less involved with it, but I didn’t really get that he wasn’t writing the story, and nor was he doing the art.

Well — no offense to the people who were, but — now I understand why Boruto’s storyline moved so slowly and had so much filler (or what felt like filler).

The fact that Kishimoto is taking over again would be cause for unmitigated celebration... save for a rumor I heard. The rumor is that the two most important characters in the Naruto/Boruto universe are getting killed off.

If this turns out to be true... let’s just say that I will genuinely freak out. Although it makes sense in story and mythic terms to have Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, the two main figures in the backstory of Boruto’s universe, die so that Boruto and Sarada and others of the new generation can step up, for me personally that would leave too big of a hole in the whole universe. It would basically hollow out Boruto for me, because the series has for too long traded on our nostalgia for the old characters and their history without building its own standalone resonance with solid storytelling and character development. Without Naruto and Sasuke, Boruto would be like an aftereffect in the Naruto universe, one without a lot of meaning for me.

I can only hope that Kishimoto doesn’t do it.

On a lighter note, Muhyo and Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation had its second season on Funimation this time instead of Crunchyroll, so what I call my “emergency Funimation subscription” came in handy this summer. (I keep a paid subscription year-round to Funimation for those occasional anime series that Crunchyroll doesn’t license.)

Muhyo and Roji is one of those anime series that is enjoyable and not too cliffhangery when a season ends, meaning you can look forward to it coming back at some point without being anxious about it. It’s weird that Crunchyroll had its first season, but Funimation got its second season. Apparently, both companies will be under Sony’s umbrella soon, so I suppose it doesn’t make much difference either way in the ultimate sense.

In this covid year of 2020, a lot of us ate comfort foods while stuck at home. The same principle was followed for entertainment. People watched their favorite movies and TV shows for the enjoyment of the familiar.

I did the same with one of my favorite anime series, K, or rather K’s final iteration—K: Seven Stories, a post-series set of six episodes that beautifully finishes the K universe.

K: Seven Stories is a send-off or coda that brings closure to the entire world of K in a way that respects each character and each clan in all their quirkiness. The characters that intrigued you the most while watching the two TV seasons and the movie K: Missing Kings are explored in greater depth. Knowing how the main story ends, the opportunity to see these characters in their full humanity adds poignancy to the viewing. Even Gojo Sukuna, the young brat in the Green Clan, gets a full episode where we see how he longed for a sense of family and found it in the Greens, the most oddball clan of them all.

The final episode of K: Seven Stories is wonderful. It presents a mysterious situation where characters you know are dead are somehow alive again, and everyone is enjoying themselves in a sort of timeless Groundhog Day world where each day is fun and there are no lasting consequences for anything you do.

Eventually, of course, everyone tires of it, and begins to seek answers and a way out. The final scene brings the curtain down on K as the mysterious observer who has briefly appeared in all six episodes reveals his/her identity as the one behind the timeloop. The universe of K ends with its most emotional episode, one that has the characters affirming life even with its painful losses as something beautiful to be treasured. I love K. It’s a seriously underrated anime series, one that I wish more anime fans would watch.

That being said — a weird thing happened recently with K’s producers, the Go Hands animation studio. Some Go Hands designers were found to have plagiarized character/costume designs from other sources for its upcoming Tokyo Babylon 2021 anime series based on CLAMP’s original Tokyo Babylon series from the 1990s.

This amazes me for two reasons. First, K had awesome character and costume designs, meaning that Go Hands is perfectly capable of doing great original designs themselves. In fact, one of the distinctive things about K was that director Shingo Suzuki was also credited as K’s character designer — which I imagine has to be the only time in anime when those two very different jobs were performed by the same person.

The second thing that makes this odd is that CLAMP has always been known for fantastic character and costume designs. Couldn’t they have asked CLAMP to do these new designs?

Go Hands is hardly the first case of plagiarism in anime and manga — it happens occasionally and it’s always unfortunate. Hopefully they will get beyond this, and we’ll all get to see Tokyo Babylon 2021 sooner rather than later.

Haikyuu returned this fall. I enjoyed this season, though I’ve lost track of which level of the tournament they’re at given the huge gaps of time between each season.

Haikyuu finally got hit by the curse that hits many anime series at some time or another: the badly animated episode. A few weeks before the season ended, there was one episode where the character faces looked a little off, and the comments ensued on Crunchyroll as you might expect.

Production I.G. is known for its quality animation, but many production companies farm out some of their animation work overseas to Korea or Vietnam. Not to blame the overseas contractors, because who knows where the fault lay this time, but it seems production deadlines affect even the best of shows.

So now, Haikyuu is over once again, and who knows when it will return for another season. There was a four-year hiatus before it resumed again this year. Let’s hope it’s not another four years before the next season.

Onyx Equinox is Crunchyroll’s first original series. The story is based on Mesoamerican mythology and represents a departure from the site’s main focus on Japanese anime.

I have a lot of thoughts about Onyx Equinox, so I’ll be doing a post on it in January.

One of the delights of anime is the short-episode series, like Yamishibai (returning in winter 2021!). It’s hard to resist a series with a good premise that gives you five-minute episodes. Who doesn’t have five minutes to watch anime?

With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day Is Fun has even shorter episodes — about a minute and a half apiece. Astonishingly, not only is it very funny, but its more serious episodes actually have me tearing up.

It’s about a young woman and her overeager, happy-all-the-time dog, and her evil but somehow adorable cat. As one Crunchyroll commenter put it, after watching an episode about the young woman’s former dog who passed away, “GREAT, NOW I’M CRYING INTO MY FOOD.” That's a tribute to the power of anime, seriously. What other form of entertainment can do that to you in 90 seconds flat?

And finally — Attack on Titan is in its last season.

Attack on Titan is unlike any other series, defying easy categorization. It’s shonen, sure, but its alternate Earth setting and those amazing, horrifying titans put it into a category of its own. Not to mention how the show’s popularity basically saved the U.S. manga localization industry in the early 2010s, and by association, anime in the U.S. as well.

The fact that Attack on Titan is ending makes me a little nostalgic. It was around the time of Attack on Titan’s initial popularity that I began to feel out of step with anime in general. My posts on this blog were spotty from 2015 to around 2018, when I came back to anime with renewed enthusiasm.

This is the 11th year I’ve been writing this anime blog. I don’t know what the future holds for this blog or the editing work I do in this industry. Like many, I suspect, this covid year has led to some soul searching for me as to how I want to spend my time going forward.

But for now, there will be no big changes. I’ll continue to blog here on anime and manga as my work schedule permits. I still feel that anime is relevant in my life, and every year there are series that surprise me. Anime can still surprise me with its variety and artistry, so there’s life here yet. And thanks for continuing to read this blog – it is much appreciated. :-)

My Top 5 Anime Opening and Closing Songs

One of the things that hit me early on as an anime fan were the great opening and closing songs for anime series.

It was my introduction to J-pop music. Since then, through the years, I’ve had too many favorite opening/closing songs to count.

I read somewhere that the songs used for anime opening or closing numbers are actually popular hit songs in Japan. I don’t know if they are popular first and then get licensed for anime series, or if it’s the other way around – they become hits after people watch the anime.

In any event – the music used for anime opening/closing credit sequences is an added source of pleasure for me when I watch anime. The right song, along with a credit sequence that captures the series’ atmosphere, can put me in a mood that lingers long after I’ve finished watching the episodes.

Here are a few of my favorites.

Number 5:



Naruto Shippuuden – Opening 1
Song: Hero’s Come Back
Band: Nobody Knows
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1hz_dnQWvs

Naruto and Naruto Shippuuden had a lot of great opening and closing songs. This one, “Hero’s Come Back,” was perfect for the start of Naruto Shippuuden, which takes place after a three-year time skip when Naruto is away from the village training with his ninja master Jiraiya.

The song and credit sequence truly set up the theme of a hero’s return. I remember watching the first episode of Shippuuden and being excited to see what the characters looked like now that they were teenagers and no longer children.

I especially like the confident look in Naruto’s eyes at the end as he strides forward to join Sakura and Kakashi. That look tells you everything about how much he matured when he was away.

Number 4:



Mobile Suit Gundam Seed – Ending 1
Song: “Anna ni Isshodattanoni”
Band: See-Saw
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYcERWBQCXA

Gundam Seed remains my favorite Gundam series (though Gundam 00 is a pretty close second).

Most American fans list Wing as their entry point to the Gundam universe, but for me it was Seed. Seed was the first Gundam series I saw, and I watched it early on as an anime fan, so all the typical themes found in shonen mecha anime were unfamiliar to me: the violence, the harsh treatment of the young pilots, the horrors of war.

I recall being riveted... and at the same time aghast at how graphic many of the scenes were. At that time I still had the bias that anime was just another form of “animated entertainment” – which for me as an American meant Disney and kid’s stuff. Gundam Seed made my jaw drop many times and changed my mind about that pretty quickly.

I love the haunting tones of this song. They often started playing the opening notes of it during the final scene of each episode, and it was a great way to finish the episode while maintaining the melancholic mood.

Number 3:



Kuroko’s Basketball – Ending 3
Song: “Walk”
Band: Old Codex
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBA48XcpcV8

J-pop music is sometimes compared to 1970s American bubblegum pop music – a comparison that seemingly condemns both as being something that’s inferior.

There’s absolutely a place in life for happy upbeat music. I always looked forward to hearing “Walk” at the end of Kuroko no Basuke’s second season episodes because it never failed to lift my mood. The driving rhythmic beat, the group harmonies in the chorus, the music playing over still shots of the characters that captured their unique personalities – “Walk” is just pure fun in music form.

Number 2:



Mobile Suit Gundam 00 – Opening 2
Song: “Ash Like Snow”
Band: The Brilliant Green
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d_for2jnQ0&list=PLXDqpIyz4Nl03V9d9ItqJbTOZl-yZeYh_

Something I realized when I became an anime fan was just how much awesome music there was in anime – not just the opening and closing songs, but the soundtrack and incidental music in each episode.

I’ve never made a study of J-pop, but then – I don’t have to. It’s music that does the only thing music is supposed to: it makes you feel things. It does that very well, and when it’s used effectively to complement the action on the screen, it adds another dimensional layer to the experience of watching anime.

“Ash Like Snow” is an example of a great rock song, period. If it had English lyrics instead of Japanese lyrics it would be a hit here in the west. Listening to it makes me realize there are countless J-pop songs like it that I’ll never hear because they’re not attached to any anime series, and that kind of makes me sad.

The song fits the Gundam meta theme of the futility of war, “ash like snow” invoking images of nuclear winter:

Ash like snow
It’s falling down from your sky

Ash like snow
Ash like snow
Ash like snow
Let me hear why I have to fight

... And finally, Number 1:

This was my favorite opening song for this series, and here it accompanies one of the best AMVs I’ve ever seen.

That’s my opinion... and the opinion of over twenty million others.



Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – Opening 4
Song: “Period”
Band: Chemistry
You Tube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vx69Pe7Ncs

Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood remains number one on a lot of fans’ top ten lists even now, and for good reasons. If you’ve seen the anime—you know why.

Hiromu Arakawa’s manga story received a beautiful execution in anime form. When non-anime fans ask me what the best anime series is in my opinion—Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is still my answer, ten years after it came out.

As of today, this AMV has logged a staggering 20,067,325 views on You Tube. Cut together from the opening credit sequences, it’s a fan masterpiece, evoking feels and chills (especially the final shot).

If you’re an FMA:B fan, I hope it does for you what it does for me: bring alive the genius that is Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood all over again.

Winter 2020 Watchlist - The Return of Haikyuu

After a few dry anime seasons - dry for me, anyway - I find myself watching more anime than ever. I wasn’t looking forward to anything this winter other than the return of Haikyuu, but suddenly my watchlists on Crunchyroll and Amazon Prime are flooded with an episode or two of something to watch nearly every day of the week.

But first... the holdovers from fall 2019.

What to say about Babylon... A series that started off as fantastic has now unraveled into a morass.

I really hate to say that about this series, because it was dark and fascinating at first. A new ward in Tokyo adopts a law that makes suicide legal, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. What prosecutor/investigator Zen Seizaki discovers is a conspiracy behind the law involving the ward’s mayor and a mysterious and ultimately terrifying woman - the true villain of the piece – Ai Magase.

There was a break between episode 8 and 9 that lasted one month. Last Monday was Episode 11. The series is listed at MAL as being 12 episodes long. We haven’t seen Ai Magase since Episode 8, the setting changed from Japan to the U.S. for some reason, and the show has gotten lost in philosophizing about good and evil in the abstract, seemingly forgetting its own plot.

I don’t honestly think they can wrap up the series in any real or satisfying way with only one episode left, but I’m invested enough to watch on Monday to see if they can do it.

And then there’s Boruto. One day, I’m going to write a whole post about how Boruto trades too much on our nostalgia for the original characters in Naruto without forcing us to care enough about the new generation of characters... but that day is not today.

Before I talk about Haiykuu... I’ve picked up two other series this season that are nice surprises.

Case Files of Jeweler Richard looks like it would be a light repast, something like the European pastries and royal milk tea the show’s lead character enjoys in his parlor. It is, however, deeper than that.

The fey and lovely Richard is a British jeweler par excellence. He speaks many languages in dealing with his international clientele. One day he’s saved from being attacked by drunken louts by a young Japanese man, Seigi Nakata, who becomes his employee.

Each episode focuses on a single kind of jewel and what its significance is, as a mystery gets solved. Pretty standard stuff, except that the stories so far have been more serious than you’d expect from the set-up. The first episode dealt with Seigi’s own grandmother, who raised him and supported him by – being a thief. The second episode featured a young woman, engaged to a nice young man, who is in severe conflict. It turns out that she is gay, and accepted the engagement in a desperate and doomed attempt to deny her sexuality and the hard road in life it often leads to in Japan.

At the beginning of the episode, Richard cautions Seigi that he is never to show discrimination or judgment toward any of their customers. This is obviously tied in to what the rest of the episode is about, but still, it seems like more than you’d expect from this kind of series.

Oda Cinnamon Nobunaga. With a title like this, you know first off that it’s a comedy. I was expecting it to be one of those satirical anime series where each episode is 8 or 10 minutes long like Skullface Bookseller Honda-san, but actually each episode is the standard 24 minutes or so in length.

Oda Nobunaga, the fierce Warring States general, the scourge of the era, has now been reincarnated in modern-day Japan as a dog named “Cinnamon” by his young female owner.

He’s not alone. The other Warring States generals are here too, and are also dogs: Date “Boo” Masamune, Takeda “Lucky” Shingen, Uesugi “Julian” Kenshin. They and Oda meet up at the local dog park to relive their old battles and reminisce about the past.

It’s light and funny, in part because each sketch or story only lasts a few minutes, followed by some quick funny bits, and then another little story. For a series that only has a single punch line (they’re dogs now!), the producers know that for it to work, they have to keep it moving, and they do.

And now, finally, after a one-season delay, Pet is streaming on Amazon Prime.

Pet was worth the wait. It’s an exploration of what could happen if people had the ability not only to reach into another person’s mind, but also to change their memories. The first episode leaves you a bit puzzled, but the second episode lays out exactly how the “crushers,” as they’re referred to, do it, and it’s a really wild ride.

I never did a review of Haikyuu when the first season came out way back in 2014, so I think I’ll do it now.

Haikyuu is the story of Shoyo Hinata, an enthusiastic, ever-striving volleyball player for Karasuno High. Despite his shrimpy height, he has outsize skills, particularly in jumping insanely high.

His uncomplicated optimism keeps him moving past obstacles, including the people who don’t believe in him. And his radiant smile could power a thousand suns.

As in all shonen sports anime - he has a rival, of sorts.

Tobio Kageyama is already a star in the high school volleyball world, but he has a problem. He’s not a team player, and in fact suffered a dark moment of humiliating rejection from his teammates at his former school after they tired of his self-centered arrogance. When he comes to Karasuno, he’s pretty dismissive of the chibi Hinata, but the odd couple soon becomes the cornerstone of the team’s offense.

Haikyuu - for whatever reason - had a four-year hiatus between this season and the third season back in 2016. I’ll be honest and say that I barely remember what happened in season three, as I don’t follow the manga. It’s not the only anime production that has had a huge gap between seasons (Attack on Titan had a similar long break), but from the more casual fan, in other words, someone who likes Haikyuu but who doesn’t wait with bated breath for each episode - the producers expected an awful lot of patience here.

In any event... Haikyuu follows the basic shonen sports story template to a T. A scrappy but underperforming high school team learns to work together, with each individual player fighting to overcome his own personal obstacles, until they begin to achieve hard-won successes and ultimately advance to the final round tournament of whatever sport it is they play.

Kuroko’s Basketball is by far still my favorite anime in this genre. Plus, the character designs are way more attractive in that series. ;-)

Haikyuu is geared toward more of a younger audience, in my view. The tone is clean and wholesome in that particularly Japanese way of encouraging boys to do their best, play fair, and support others in order to win. As a shonen sports anime, it’s a model of the genre, following the template nearly flawlessly.

So why am I not as enthusiastic about Haikyuu as I am, say, Kuroko’s Basketball?

Well...

Because it’s VOLLEYBALL.

Forgive me if you’re a fan of the sport, but I don’t find volleyball that compelling. As opposed to basketball, which is inherently exciting, volleyball just doesn’t do it for me. I am completely willing to own this as a personal fault. It’s the reason that I simply like Haikyuu, rather than love it.

In addition to all the new series for winter 2020, I should mention that Crunchyroll is adding value these days in terms of extra episodes of older series, OVAs, and movies. In the past few weeks I’ve enjoyed a number of Naruto Shippuuden movies, Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet OVAs, and best of all - K: Seven Stories, a short anime series in the K universe I never thought I’d get the chance to see. I’m not sure why this explosion of bonus extras is hitting Crunchyroll right now, but it’s really a lot of fun. Keep it up, Crunchyroll. =D

Seiyuu Appreciation Day - The Other Guys

In the current endless run of flashback fillers in Naruto Shippuuden, we're seeing more of Neji now than ever before.

I miss Neji. :-(

Look at Neji's picture above. Now imagine you hear his voice.

...

Were you able to hear him? Neji's seiyuu, Kouichi Toochika, has a very distinctive voice - soft-spoken with a certain husky timbre.

Neji is only one supporting character in the Naruto universe and he even got killed off - but I can still hear Neji's voice if I call up the character in my mind.

Most of the time in these seiyuu posts I talk about the big-name seiyuus, the stars, because they're the ones I see most in anime. But sometimes you'll hear a voice in a supporting role that really catches your attention.

One such supporting character was Kensuke Fukui, the point guard for Yosen in Kuroko's Basketball.

Fukui only has a few lines in several episodes when Yosen battles the main team Seirin in the semi-finals. I didn't even know the character's name until I looked him up for this post - I only thought of him as "the point guard from Yosen with dishwater blond hair and a nice voice." Since that's a mouthful, it's good that I know the character's name now. ;-)

The seiyuu voicing Fukui just had a really nice voice and I noticed it. Warm, masculine, sexy. I looked up the seiyuu and found to my surprise that Kaito Ishikawa has played two main roles in series that I watched, and I didn't recognize him.

First, he was Tobio Kageyama, the second main character in the volleyball anime Haikyuu.

Kageyama is one of the best male tsunderes I've seen in a while. ;-) I mean, look at that expression. XD I couldn't believe Ishikawa played Kageyama and I didn't recognize him as Fukui, but the next surprised me even more:

Ishikawa was Ledo in Gargantia! I didn't recognize him from that role either! And Ledo was a difficult role. You'll recall that the character comes from a different universe and has to learn the language, speaking it hesitantly and with an odd cadence at first.

Ishikawa also played Nine in Zankyou no Terror and has done main roles in other series. So even though I didn't remember his voice from the two big roles I'd heard him in, I heard Ishikawa's voice in this small role as Fukui in Kuroko's Basketball and enjoyed it enough to notice and look up who the seiyuu was.

Often you'll see big-name seiyuu playing special characters in an anime, like in the last Shirobako episode when the director finally comes face to face with the elusive mangaka whose manga MusaAni is adapting. I didn't have to look it up to know it was Takahiro Sakurai playing the mangaka, since I can recognize his voice. =D

But seiyuu who play big roles will also play smaller roles without any fuss or fanfare, like Kaito Ishikawa playing Fukui. Actors love to ply their trade, after all, and every role is another chance to do what they love best.

Thinking of warm and distinctive masculine voices makes me think of Kenji Hamada, who plays Teppei Kiyoshi in Kuroko's Basketball.

Hamada's voice is so distinctive, I've recognized him in two small roles in other series since I first heard him in Kuroko's Basketball.

And then there's Hasumi Itou, whom I've mentioned before, who played Kaoru in Hakuouki, Chizuru's cross-dressing long-lost brother who we see in makeup and a kimono for many episodes until he finally reveals his evil little male self. ;-) Itou is the seiyuu who did that weird, unforgettable scene where her voice slid from fake-female to low-male without a hitch, just a pure slide from one to the other.

Aside from Hakuouki, Itou only has one other credit, as Aoi Toosaka in Fate/Zero. She is definitely a seiyuu to keep one's eye on.

Of course, one of my favorite seiyuu who never gets a main role but is always one of the other guys in a series, is Nobuo Tobita.

Tobita was the star of Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam decades ago, and since then has only done supporting roles. But his beautiful gentle voice remains one of my favorites and hearing him is always a treat.

Finally, talking about supporting seiyuu and being one of the other guys wouldn't be complete without mentioning Shizuka, who finally got a voice acting job in last week's Shirobako episode. Shizuka, you'll remember, was the only one among her college friends who hadn't succeeded in the anime industry yet.

In honor of Shizuka getting her first role, here's a photo of Shizuka's seiyuu, Haruka Chigusa.

In the episode, Aoi Miyamori is in the recording studio when Shizuka walks in to record her role. Miyamori is shocked to see her friend, then nervous for her as she reads her lines, and then finally cries in relief and happiness when Shizuka finishes the acting job without a hitch and to the director's approval.

It was all done without words and was beautiful to watch. Ah well, might as well show you Miyamori's seiyuu's picture as well. Here's Juri Kimura. :-)

Again, if you're not watching Shirobako, you're missing a gem. =D

Notes on Winter Season 2015

My work schedule has stepped up again, and I realized I haven't discussed the winter season shows much if at all. So this is a belated, almost at the end of winter season recap before the spring shows start.

First, I've been impressed by Durarara's second season so far. All the main and supporting characters are back, and the show has gone through several mini-arcs already.

It's hard to believe that the first season was five years ago. Durarara's first season was very stylish and cool (and unpleasantly violent toward the end), with a great ensemble cast. The anime's second season is more serious in feel than the first but still exhibits the same quirky off-center humor. The only real complaint I have is that there hasn't been a direct confrontation between Shizuo and Izaya yet. The producers have to know that's what most of us are waiting to see. ;-)

Wow, did this one ever fall off my schedule. I watched the first few episodes of Sengoku Musou (Samurai Warriors) and then life happened or something because I simply forgot to keep watching it. It's actually pretty good if you're in that want-to-watch-samurais-doing-anything sort of mood, which sometimes I am.

What's interesting about Sengoku Musou is that it has the same wildly anachronistic fantasy costuming as Sengoku Basara, where the out-of-place over the top crazy outfits were part of the joke, but - I think Sengoku Musou is actually meant to be serious.

I may go back at some point and finish the series. I should probably brush up on my Warring States history before I do, because I was getting lost trying to remember who was on who's side and who was who's enemy.

Another one I stopped watching is a series that's very popular.

Parasyte was a quality show that just didn't hook me in (and yes, I got to the point where the big surprise happens with the main character's mother). Sometimes shows that others get into don't attract me the same way - different strokes.

I'm enjoying Kuroko's Basketball's third season, though the suspense is not quite the same as in the first two seasons. It's obvious who the final two teams will be in the Winter Cup tournament, so it's a matter of waiting until the last semi-final opponent is eliminated and the two finalists can get down to it. I've heard there's a lengthy flashback arc coming involving the Generation of Miracles back in their Teiko days, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing that. :-)

And speaking of lengthy flashbacks...

I don't mind filler episodes as much as most people do, so long as I enjoy the characters and the universe. But Naruto Shippuuden is pushing it at the moment.

The filler arc we're in now is actually very decent: it's a flashback to the second Chuunin exam, which took place while Naruto was off training with Jiraiya. All of his classmates who didn't get to advance to Chuunin level (since Konoha was invaded by Orochimaru during the first Chuunin exam) are participating in this second exam, which takes place in the Sand Village under the authority of the new Kazekage, our old friend Gaara.

The episodes in this filler arc have varied between very good to rather boring, depending on which Konoha team is being featured in the episode. And not to mention - this entire multi-episode flashback arc is taking place in the middle of the final huge showdown battle between Naruto and Madara, so one can't help but be impatient for it to be over sooner rather than later.

I have no idea why I'm still watching Death Parade.

After you die, in the Death Parade universe, you wind up at a bar where a white-haired bartender makes you play a deadly game with another person who just died. Depending on how you do in this game, you either get a second chance via reincarnation (leaving the bar through the elevator to the left), or you're sent to the void and given no second chances (the elevator on the right).

The games are all sadistic and everybody's story is sad. The characters selected to play the game were usually as much victims when they were alive as they were perpetrators. Plus, even when they're made to realize what mistakes they made in their lives, they're dead now and can't do anything to change it or make amends. And then one of them gets a do-over and the other gets nothingness.

It's one of those series where the cool production design and premise engage you, before you realize how much of a downer each story is going to be.

Actually, I know why I'm still watching the show. I find it hard to resist series that have a creepy premise and where each week's episode is a separate self-contained little story. Yamishibai is a good example of this, a better example than Death Parade. Still, there aren't many episodes left of Death Parade, so I will probably watch it to the end.

The final two series are really my favorites of the winter season.

Shirobako, the show about four college classmates who go on to careers in the anime industry, is just quality and class all the way. Each episode has been excellent, with two being particularly memorable - dealing with the contributions of older artists and waxing poetic about the rewards of a life spent in anime.

I can't say enough about Shirobako. If you're not watching it, you really should give it a chance.

The last show may come as a surprise.

I've finally read up on everybody's disappointment with Sailor Moon Crystal: the poor animation quality, the changes from the manga, etc.

I really hadn't noticed the animation quality until one episode where the Legendary Silver Crystal or whatever it is, the jewel that's supposed to be the key to everything, literally disappeared in one shot and then reappeared again. I thought I imagined it, and then I read the comments afterward and everyone noticed it. What's weird is that Toei Animation has twice the amount of time to do each episode, two weeks instead of the usual one, and yet apparently this keeps happening.

No matter. Usagi's huge red bow could disappear and reappear and it wouldn't faze me. I've fallen in love with the Sailor Moon story.

Unlike most who are watching Sailor Moon Crystal and getting disgruntled, I didn't grow up watching the original Sailor Moon. So I'm not comparing the new adaptation with fond memories of watching the original series after school with cookies and milk, or with my friends; it's completely new to me.

I am charmed by the premise of magical girls with superpowers, who are still girls that can fall in love. I was enchanted when I found out Usagi's and Tuxedo Mask's history of being lovers, one from the moon and one from earth.

It's about friendship and love and adventure, and beautiful jewels and magic wands, supernatural cats that can talk, and a mysterious handsome boy who is gentle and caring. It's a wonderful story to watch, animation glitches and all.

People are sniffing and saying they'll go back to the original, that that's "their" Sailor Moon. For me, I'm happy to claim Sailor Moon Crystal as my Sailor Moon. =D