Kowloon Generic Romance - The Hit of Spring 2025

This one is a hidden gem. Don’t miss it!

I first came across Kowloon Generic Romance as a manga. I put it on my “may buy” list but never got around to it. I’ve had a fascination for the historic Kowloon Walled City for years and the idea of a romance being set there was enough to get me on board to watch the anime version.

Kowloon Generic Romance is, yes, a romance, but it’s so much more.

Reiko Kujirai and Hajime Kudo are co-workers in a real estate agency that rents out units in the walled city. They get on well and frequently lunch together.

One day, a photo falls out of Kudo’s desk drawer while he’s away.

The woman in the picture looks just like Reiko and has the same name. Only... she isn’t Reiko.

... Or is she? Reiko suddenly realizes that she has no memories of her life before working as a real estate agent in Kowloon Walled City. She knows that Kudo is attracted to her, and she’s attracted to him, but this evidence of an actual prior relationship between them is baffling. She has no memory of it.

This photo was taken by Tao Gwen, a waiter at a restaurant Kudo frequents.

Gwen knew this other Reiko, and he knows Kudo too. As Reiko and Kudo enter into a relationship, and she hears more and more about the other Reiko, her confusion only grows.

This other Reiko was sexy, flirtatious, confident - the opposite of the shy and uncertain Reiko currently living in Kowloon Walled City. As the mystery deepens, Reiko’s friend Yaomay tries to help by researching the issue.

Among the tenants that Reiko manages is young Xiaohei, who has a whole wardrobe of cute girl outfits.

In the meantime, Gwen is involved in his own intrigue. He’s involved with Miyuki Hebinuma, the owner of a sketchy plastic surgery clinic. The two have a volatile relationship.

To add to the confusion, a man named Xiaohei comes to the walled city who bears a facial resemblance to the young girl Xiaohei.

Reiko knows that Gwen - and Kudo - know more than they’re letting on. It’s always summer in Kowloon Walled City, never any other season, and there’s an octahedron sphere in the sky that everyone acknowledges is there but doesn’t talk about.

Reiko’s been warned by Gwen that she can’t leave the walled city, or she might disappear into thin air like she never existed. Will she trust what Gwen says, or confront Kudo to find out the truth?

Kowloon Generic Romance is a romance, a science-fiction story, and a mystery all rolled into one. It kept me hooked for 13 episodes and was the series I most looked forward to watching each week.

On a 1-10 scale, it’s at least an 8. It does have a slow start and the pace is languid until the sci-fi elements kick in, but Kowloon Generic Romance is a genuinely original story, one you’ll never forget. Go watch it now. :-)

Barbie - Movie Review

This blog is still on summer hiatus (I’m almost back), but I’ve posted a review of Barbie at my writing blog if you want to read it. Spoiler alert: I loved it!

Barbie From an Older Woman’s Perspective

Time for a Super Hero – Dragon Ball Super Style!

I’ve been doing a lot of catching up lately. For example, I’d only seen the first Thor movie and had to watch the second and third Thor movies before I saw Thor: Love and Thunder, because I knew the fourth movie wouldn’t make any sense to me otherwise.

So when I heard that a new Dragon Ball Super movie was coming out, I hurried to watch Dragon Ball Super: Broly because I somehow missed seeing it when it came out in 2018.

Broly’s backstory is that he is from Planet Vegeta, home planet of the Saiyans. He shows promise as a small child, but is exiled by King Vegeta who fears that he might surpass the prince (a.k.a. Vegeta, our favorite surly Saiyan).

Broly trains on a deserted planet with his father for years until they are rescued by two of Frieza’s underlings, Cheelai and Lemo. The two take the father and son to Frieza, who enlists them to fight Goku and Vegeta on earth.

Some other things happen, but it’s all in the service of getting to the Big Fight Scene. Once that begins, the plot flies out the window and fighting takes up the rest of the movie. It’s Broly versus Goku and Vegeta, Broly versus Frieza, Gogeta (Goku and Vegeta together in their transformed state) versus Broly... the movie then ends with a five-minute denouement that more or less wraps everything up.

The fight scenes in Dragon Ball Super: Broly are fantastic, but the movie lacks what really makes the Dragon Ball universe special: the characters and their histories with each other that give such depth to their relationships.

And this is what the new movie Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero has in spades.

First, a fun new villain is introduced. Dr. Hedo is the super scientist grandson of Dr. Gero, creator of Androids 17 and 18. Magenta, son of the Red Ribbon Army’s late Commander Red, recruits Dr. Hedo to attack Goku and friends, telling him that Bulma’s Capsule Corporation is a front for evil aliens. He actually just wants revenge against Goku for destroying the Red Ribbon Army.

Dr. Hedo is a slimeball, but with his own sense of morality, albeit twisted. He’s addicted to Oreo cookies and milk, which Magenta keeps him supplied with as he wins him over to his side.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Dragon Ball Super movie without Whis and Beerus.

Goku, Vegeta and Broly are training on Beerus’s planet, oblivious to the threat to earth. After Piccolo tells Bulma about the army’s plot, Bulma tries to contact the three Saiyans but Beerus carelessly tosses an empty ice cream bucket over the communication receiver’s antenna, meaning Piccolo and Gohan will have to lead the fight against the Red Ribbon Army without them.

Piccolo was Gohan’s master teacher and this relationship is what gives DBS: Super Hero its emotional depth. As usual, Piccolo feels that Gohan has let his training go despite being Goku’s match in strength and even possessing the potential to surpass Goku someday.

Now the earth is threatened by Dr. Hedo’s super-powerful androids Gamma 1 and Gamma 2, with the ultimate enemy waiting in the wings... Cell Max. Can Piccolo and Gohan and the other Dragon Ball Super heroes defeat the new Red Ribbon Army?

I really enjoyed Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. It has everything a Dragon Ball fan could want: great action scenes, nostalgic references to past storylines, appearances by old favorites like Krillin, Videl and Pan, Goten and Trunks (now teenagers!), and No. 18. (We don’t see No. 17, but I like to imagine that he’s still taking care of the endangered animals on that island.)

Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero gives you one fun scene after another with characters you know and love, and a solid story that satisfies from beginning to end. It’s the perfect end-of-summer anime treat before the fall anime season begins, so go and see it while it’s still on the big screen. You won’t be disappointed. :-)

Depressed Avengers Assemble! The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window and Anime Beyond Stereotypes

Sometimes one can get too comfortable in a niche. It can be cozy and comforting and when the niche is something like boy’s love/yaoi, there’s the added in-group cache of “no one else appreciates this, but at least we appreciate it.”

There’s a wide spectrum when it comes to boy’s love. There’s out-and-out yaoi like Youka Nitta’s Embracing Love series and many others where yaoi is definitely front and center in the story. Other manga/anime fall into the “will they or won’t they” category where the BL interest is plain but the characters (often teenagers) may not be ready to act on their desires.

And then there’s what I call not the “will they or won’t they” but the “are they or aren’t they” group. This is where the BL is teased and played up, but one or both characters won’t acknowledge the attraction between them, so you aren’t even sure whether to call it BL or not.

At some point watching the first episode of such a series, regular anime fans who aren’t okay with BL will just move on. They see what looks like a BL or BL-adjacent story and flee without giving it a chance. The problem is that you can miss some seriously good stories this way.

Which brings me to The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window. This paranormal suspense series based on the manga by Tomoko Yamashita is a hidden gem. It’s a tightly constructed mystery with beautifully realized characters that are based on solid knowledge of human psychology. There are twelve episodes total, and by the time you’re watching the second episode, you are hooked.

... But you have to get beyond the first episode to get there.

Kousuke Mikado is a shy bookstore clerk. Unfortunately for him, he’s had the ability to see spirits his entire life, which scares him to death. One day, a tall handsome man named Rihito Hiyakawa is summoned by the bookstore manager to exorcise the ghosts that are rumored to hang around the store. Upon spotting Mikado, Hiyakawa is immediately taken with him.

Hiyakawa: You are my destiny...

As Mikado tries not to look at a dark spirit standing nearby, Hiyakawa sees it and without asking permission, puts his hands on Mikado.

Mikado: Hey! Stop! Pull out! I said get out of me!

Hiyakawa: It’s all right. I’ll go slowly. It should feel good. It feels really good for me... I’m going to touch it now.

And he does. No, he doesn’t touch that. By touching Mikado’s heart, Hiyakawa can access Mikado’s “core,” which is akin to his soul, and together they can perform the exorcism more efficiently that way.

I should mention here that non-consensual touching is one of the hallmarks of bad yaoi. The dominant one is a controlling bastard, and like a M/F taken-by-the-barbarian romance, manhandles the passive one against his will.

Hiyakawa’s not respecting Mikado’s boundaries, his supernatural “entering” of Mikado which is mind-rapey, and the unbelievably on the nose double entendres (pull out... get out of me... it’s all right... I’ll go slowly) all led me to think that I knew what this series was about. And so I settled in for eleven more episodes of campy, stupid BL fun.

What I got instead was an absorbing and deepening mystery that quickly pulled me in. Hiyakawa runs what he euphemistically calls a “cleaning business,” and hires Mikado with his extrasensory ability to help him move lingering spirits on their way. Mikado discovers that Hiyakawa often assists the police with their unsolved criminal cases. In one particularly gruesome case involving body parts, the pair are led to a high school girl, Erika Hiura, who appears to have some connection with what happened.

Erika has a yakuza bodyguard, Kazuomi Sakaki. At first it appears that Sasaki controls her, but actually it’s more the other way around, as Erika is a first-class manipulator. Her paranormal ability is that she can absorb the souls of spirits who refuse to leave earth... but these same spirits are used to commit crimes.

As Mikado and Hiyakawa investigate the case, they meet a psychic reader, Keita Mukae. At first Keita seems like a charlatan as he has no ability to actually read cards, but in fact he does possess real psychic gifts that enable him to solve his clients’ problems.

(Around Episode 3 or 4, the comments at Crunchyroll turned from “ooohhh BL” to “this is really good” and “this series is underrated.”)

Hiyakawa’s police contact is Lt. Hanzawa, a gruff but good-hearted middle-aged detective who appears to know him from way back. Mikado picks up on this, and eventually he becomes curious about Hiyakawa’s past.

It turns out that Erika is being exploited by her father, who sells her psychic-criminal abilities to a man known only as “Sensei.” The odd thing about Sensei is that no one can remember his face or name after they meet with him.

The episodes build on each other in a natural progression as more and more is revealed about Hiyakawa and about Sensei. It is, however, Mikado’s past that unexpectedly provides the connection that explains everything.

In Episode 7 it all comes together, as the entire group - Mikado, Hiyakawa, Erika, Sasaki, and Keita - recognizes the real threat and resolves to do what needs to be done. All the slow building of characters and their relationships, revelations of the past, and seemingly unrelated scenes are brought into sharp focus, like a kaleidoscope that suddenly presents a clear picture with one final shake.

I liked one of the comments that somebody wrote about Episode 7 - “Depressed Avengers Assemble!” Not all of the group is depressed, but the quote captures the feeling. Even if life leaves you feeling battered, you still gotta do what you gotta do.

By the end, Mikado and Hiyakawa undergo a sort of role reversal. Mikado has developed inner strength, while Hiyakawa’s false front of confidence is dissipated and he is left vulnerable.

Yamashita’s thesis is plain as day. Each person must take responsibility for the hurt that they cause others, and if they began life as victims, somehow, in some way, they need to process those emotions in order to move on. There are no exceptions to this rule. And forgiveness and letting go doesn’t mean that you need to see that person again: indeed, you might instead leave them wallowing in anger and grief on the floor as you walk out the door with your lover, because we are only ever responsible for our own shit and nobody else’s.

There’s a maturity to this story that I admire, and as a writer, I also appreciate the tight story structure. It’s a story that respects all the characters as being worthy of compassion and redemption, but again, only with full accountability. And it doesn’t do it with a lot of melodrama and overhyped emotional scenes either, the way I’m afraid too many psychological anime series tend to do.

The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is so good that I almost found myself wishing that the BL aspect had been left out to make it more accessible to mainstream anime fans. And then I caught myself. While it’s true that the story could have worked without that angle, the yaoi attraction added emotional heft. I have no idea if Yamashita intended the BL as a simple hook for fujoshis or if she genuinely felt the story wouldn’t have worked without it, but as a m/m romance writer myself I shouldn’t be assuming anything, nor should I question the validity of any writer’s choice.

... As it is your choice to see The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window - and I hope you’ll consider it. I believe you’ll find it worth your while.

High Guardian Spice - My Review of Crunchyroll's Most Maligned Series

Back in 2018, a trailer for Crunchyroll’s first original series made a huge splash in the anime community – but not in the way the series creators intended.

In August of that year, the creators of High Guardian Spice put out a short video. It was their introduction to Crunchyroll and the anime community. As I recall, they didn’t say anything that was directly inflammatory. The problem was that they focused on the fact that their team members were diverse and that High Guardian Spice would break new ground for characters that had been underrepresented in animation thus far.

The response from the American anime community was predictable.

The executive producer, Raye Rodriguez, is a Cuban-American transgender man. The rest of the creative team were white women. This was the “diverse” team that they touted.

It was more than a simple misstep. The trailer was their one chance to present the series in its best light, but they badly misjudged the anime community and the backlash was huge.

Fast forward to October 2021, when Crunchyroll announced the release of all twelve episodes of High Guardian Spice. I’d actually thought that the project had been dropped since I’d heard nothing about it after that first trailer, but it turned out that all the episodes were completed back in 2019.

The fact that Crunchyroll released all twelve episodes at once was seen as a bad sign by many anime fans. The premise - four girls studying at a magic academy to become ‘guardians’ - didn’t really appeal to me. I don’t watch a lot of shojo series. But I was curious about the much talked about diversity of the show’s characters, so I committed to watch the entire thing.

Rosemary and Sage are two teenage girls who leave their village to attend High Guardian Academy in the city of Lyngarth to train to be guardians. They briefly stay with Sage’s cousin and her wife before moving into the academy’s dorms, where they are eventually joined by Parsley, a girl from a blacksmith family, and Thyme, an elf girl. (Yes... like the old Simon and Garfunkel song.)

From the above description, you may already have images in your mind of what the characters look like. If you’re picturing typical anime characters, however - you’d be wrong.

The anime community - already irked by what they viewed as SJWs pushing their agenda on everyone - reacted badly to the character designs. I have to say that I agree about the character designs. It was another misstep to have them look like American cartoon characters rather than anime characters.

Particularly Rosemary, who is the show’s protagonist.

Despite the kid-like, cartoon look to the story, most episodes opened with a mature content warning, which made no sense since there was no sex or violence in the first few episodes (there was no sex in the series ever, actually). One commenter speculated that the warning was there because of Sage’s lesbian relative, or maybe because of a scene a few episodes later when Professor Caraway, a formerly female friend of Rosemary’s mother Lavender, is introduced. The professor, now a transgender man, explains that he takes a magic potion every month to maintain his new masculine body.

If you’re getting the sense just from what I’ve said so far that High Guardian Spice is a mixed bag, well, you hit the nail on the head. So it might be more helpful if I answer a question that you can use to decide whether the series is worth your time.

Question: The show currently has a rating of 1.8 out of 5.0 possible stars on Crunchyroll. Is High Guardian Spice literally the worst series ever, like, so bad that you could watch it to make fun of it in a nasty way?

Answer: No, not by a long shot. It has its moments and is genuinely enjoyable at times. Overall, it’s a solid C- on an A-F grade scale. For me, its flaws tip the scale to not-watch rather than watch, but that might just be my personal tastes speaking, as I prefer shonen to shojo shows.

Maybe a pros/cons approach would be better. What works and doesn’t work about the series?

Pros: The character development was decent. The art direction was good. What action scenes there were, were executed well. Though some have criticized the voice acting, I didn’t find anything to complain about in that regard.

There were diverse characters, more in the LGBTQ sense than race, but it was a good effort.

Cons: The first seven episodes were too slice-of-life and slow moving. There is literally no story to speak of until Episode 8, when an enemy of the four guardian girls is finally introduced.

Also, there is no explication of the world the girls live in. What is the government in this medieval European-looking land? Is it a monarchy or something else? What role does magic play in society? What do “guardians” do, actually? None of this is explained.

High Guardian Spice is a genuine oddity. Part of me wants to defend it at least a little, because its creators are clearly talented and their aim of wanting their story to be more inclusive was sincere. But I still don’t understand who the series was intended for. Was it meant for children, teenagers, or adults?

Putting aside all the questions that High Guardian Spice leaves me with... maybe I’ll end by talking about a scene I truly appreciated, a scene that moved me.

One of the four girls’ classmates is a boy named Snapdragon. Normally gentle and soft-spoken, he is bullied over having cross-dressed as a mermaid at a school event, and responds by pounding the snot out of the bully.

Professor Caraway speaks with Snapdragon and draws out what lay beneath his reaction. For the first time, the boy talks about how he doesn’t feel right in his body – that his shoulders are too boxy and his hands are too big. He also recounts how his brother said he was "girlish" and that in response, his father told Snapdragon to be "a fierce warrior." (There have been hints before now that he is trans, so this doesn’t come as a surprise to the audience.)

When the professor tells Snapdragon about “transition magic,” through which he could transition to being a female, the relief on Snapdragon’s face is a revelation. It’s a moment anyone can appreciate - that moment when a kind authority figure tells a young person something that could change their life for the better.

I’m not sure what else I can say about High Guardian Spice. It’s not the train wreck people have said it is, but it’s not the best thing you could watch this year either, in my opinion. If you do watch it... I sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Pet - Review

Pet is one of those stories that draws you in by seeming to be one thing at first—only to turn out to be something brutally, disturbingly different.

Based on a manga series, Pet starts off by introducing two young men, Tsukasa and Hiroki, who are employees of a very special company.

Tsukasa, dark-haired and serious, is the more mature one, while the blond sunny-spirited Hiroki depends on him like an annoying little brother.

They have psychic abilities that allow them to enter the minds of others and change their memories. In the first episode, this is seen as a cool sort of paranormal trick. But as the story progresses, the dark side of what they do quickly becomes obvious. Basically, Tsukasa and Hiroki and others like them are hired soul-killers.

Every memory in a person’s mind can be changed by these “crushers,” as they’re called by the Company, including turning cherished remembrances of a loved one into memories of violence and emotional abuse. What one person did to you can be switched to another person in your mind, thus altering your thoughts, feelings and attitudes, and your course of action towards the person you’ve now been made to believe abused you in your falsified memories.

The Company is an underground criminal enterprise. It’s a little unclear, but the nominal head of the Company appears to be Japanese while the real power resides with a Chinese gang, the Chen Group.

The paranormal ability to enter others’ minds and crush them is the result of older crushers training young children, usually orphans or otherwise vulnerable children from bad family situations.

One of Tsukasa and Hiroki’s fellow crushers is Satoru.

Satoru is taken in as a child by Hayashi, an older crusher with the Company. Hayashi becomes a surrogate father figure to him, as well as to a young Tsukasa.

When the Company tells Hayashi that he has to give up one of the boys, he lets go of Tsukasa and remains with Satoru.

Hayashi has a gentle air, with sort of an aging hippie peacefulness to him. When he disappears from sight, both Satoru and Tsukasa are told that Hayashi is in China, whereas in actual fact he remains in Japan, holed up in a tiny flat.

When Hayashi reemerges from hiding years later, Tsukasa, now a grown young man who has missed him as desperately as Satoru has, ostensibly drives Hayashi to see Satoru, all the while waiting for the older man to show him the affection that he used to. But Hayashi, in a lapse of sensitivity, can only talk about Satoru. Where is Satoru? Is he all right? Are you really taking me to him?

What unfolds next is the start of Pet’s darkest plot twist. Tsukasa’s carefully controlled personality crumbles before our eyes in slow motion, leading to tragic consequences. In a world where one’s reality can shift without warning, where psychic attacks can alter the memories of every relationship you ever had—Hayashi is made to recall that Tsukasa, too, is a crusher.

The visuals in Pet are amazing, particularly when the crushers enter a person’s mind and are swept up into their dream/nightmare landscapes. The animation in those scenes is fluid and filled with startling images, like hallucinations given form.

Pet is a dark exploration not only of abuse of power in general, but more specifically abuse of power over children. The fact that of all the young crushers it’s Tsukasa who breaks, when from the beginning we’ve seen him as the strong one who can hold himself together, only brings home the lesson with more force. A child never forgets.

The Way of the Househusband - Manga Review

In last year’s Anime Expo report, I mentioned that The Way of the Househusband got the biggest crowd reaction at Viz Media’s panel. The huge crowd laughed the most at the idea of a big-time yakuza going straight in an unexpected way—becoming a househusband.

Since then, The Way of the Househusband’s first two manga volumes have been released. The series is a huge success both in Japan and here in the U.S. Viz, fully aware that they have a winner, is busy cranking out the volumes to meet the demand (volume 3 is due out in May).

So what makes The Way of the Househusband so funny?

The main character, Tatsu, is a reformed yakuza who still goes through life in every possible way from his perspective and experiences as a gangster.

After taking down entire opposing clans in a single night, Tatsu retires from yakuza life, marries a cute woman who works full-time as a designer, and keeps house for her.

It’s a one-note joke, but a really funny one. The main thrust of the humor is found in Tatsu’s approach to his new life, which is one of extreme intensity no matter what he’s doing: preparing an Instagram-worthy bento for Miku, going bargain bin shopping at the department store, even doing yoga with the other housewives.

His terrifying visage is a running joke that leads to misunderstandings.

The story works in emotional terms because Tatsu is a genuinely good-hearted individual. We haven’t been shown yet what he was like when he was a yakuza, but in the volumes that are out so far, every time you’re afraid Tatsu is about to backslide and do something vicious he does something remarkably kind instead. If Tatsu wasn’t lovable, the comedic moments would still be funny but kind of empty. Instead, you fall in love with Tatsu and Miku and really want to see their relationship succeed.

They haven’t shown yet how Tatsu and Miku met and courted—and I can’t wait to see it when they do.

There’s not much else to say about The Way of the Househusband except—it’s hilarious and fun, so go buy it and read it. =D One warning: you’ll finish each volume in about fifteen minutes flat. Seriously, I ran through these two volumes like candy, and like candy, it left me immediately wanting more.

Oh, and seiyuu Kenji Tsuda has directed a live-action promo featuring himself as Tatsu. It's seriously funny.



In case my embed skills have failed me... the link is here.

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

"Everything You Left Behind/Became My Everything" - Given and the Power of Music

What comes to mind when I say the words boys love?

Is it the now it’s humorous, now it’s angsty worlds of Junjou Romantica and Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi, or the adult dramas like Youka Nitta’s Embracing Love series?

How about the bright comedic fun of Love Stage or an older series like Gravitation?

Whatever you thought of—Given is something entirely different.

Ritsuka is a talented teenage guitarist. He’s good enough that he’s in a band with two twenty-somethings: Haruki the bassist, and Akihiko, the band’s drummer.

Lately, Ritsuka has lost his edge. After starting out as a teen phenom with his guitar playing, at 16 he’s lost his enthusiasm and doesn’t know why.

A mysterious transfer student starts following Ritsuka around, asking him to teach him how to play the guitar.

This transfer student—named Mafuyu—is a little weird at first. He has a deer in the headlights stare and doesn’t express himself easily. He owns an expensive electric guitar, and Ritsuka wonders why he has it if he doesn’t even know how to play it.

Eventually—maybe out of boredom—Ritsuka agrees to teach Mafuyu a little guitar. Mafuyu tells him there’s a melody that keeps running through his head, and one day, he sings it in a wordless la-la-la way to Ritsuka.

Ritsuka is amazed to hear the quality of Mafuyu’s voice. He invites Mafuyu to session with him and the rest of the band.

Given is not for the impatient. The story moves an inch or two per episode, with Mafuyu’s past being revealed little by little. It’s a tale of young love and the loss of a loved one to suicide, which explains Mafuyu’s numbness and inability to show emotion.

As Ritsuka gradually realizes his feelings for Mafuyu, none of the hijinks one usually sees in teenage BL stories happens. There’s no mixed signals, no stupid misunderstandings that blow up into crises. Even the female classmate who’s attracted to Ritsuka and divulges Mafuyu’s past to him, hoping to get him to reject Mafuyu, is later ashamed of what she did.

Every character in the story is treated with dignity, including Haruki and Akihito, the twenty-somethings who each work three part-time jobs to support themselves as they pursue music as a career. Haruki is silently attracted to Akihiko who still lives with his ex-boyfriend Ugetsu, but without the relationship part anymore, as Ugetsu now dates another.

Mafuyu joins the band as rhythm guitarist and vocalist. For their initial performance as a foursome, he’s tasked with putting lyrics to the melody he’s brought to the band. He tries to find the words, but finally tells them he couldn’t.

On the night of the performance, the rest of the band assumes they’re going to play the song as an instrumental, but as the song begins Mafuyu opens his mouth and starts to sing.

It’s an astonishing vocal performance, raw and emotional. The slow build over nine episodes reaches its climax in this song, and all one can do is watch, open-mouthed and in tears, with chills running down one’s spine, as Mafuyu finally expresses all his feelings about his lost lover.

Given is only eleven episodes, but the manga story is continuing and a movie is in the works for 2020. With its unusual—for boys love—gravitas and adult-level regard for its characters, I’ll be there to watch whatever comes next.