So… Fall is almost over, but my watchlist was kind of limited this season anyway, so this won’t be a long post today. ;-)
I don’t know if I’m out of practice or what, but I barely even looked at the new anime offerings for this fall season. My list of current series that I’m watching consists of exactly three series.
Boruto is in the middle of perhaps its most challenging arc yet, at least as far as the lead character’s development goes.
Mitsuki, Orochimaru’s created son and the third member of the new Team 7 along with Boruto and Sarada, has to all outward appearances betrayed the team and Konoha. He has gone to the Land of Earth to assist in an experiment sanctioned by that crotchety old guy, the former Tsuchikage Ohnoki.
Boruto naturally has gone after Mitsuki, with Sarada, Shikadai, Cho-Cho and Inojin. Along the way, the kids discover that Ohnoki has created beings known as “akuta” that he wants to use as soldiers, so as to save humans from having to go to war.
It’s a classic case of doing the wrong thing for the right reason, which Boruto gets immediately.
More importantly, this arc shows Boruto’s first real betrayal by someone he trusted—Mitsuki. True, it’s a throwback to Sasuke leaving the village and betraying Naruto and the original Team 7, but it’s not a cheap easy copy of that storyline. Boruto and Naruto have had completely different childhood experiences, and the tension lies in what Boruto, with his happy privileged life and many caring friends, will do when Mitsuki leaves him and Team 7.
Yeah, you knew I would be watching this yaoi series. Right? :-)
Dakaichi: I’m Being Harassed by the Sexiest Man of the Year is a pretty typical contemporary yaoi tale. Handsome actor Takato has won the title of Sexiest Man five years in a row, but he’s recently been dethroned by Junta, an up and coming actor.
Takato, miffed to no end at being dethroned, treats Junta coldly at first, but Junta is really into him so eventually he relents and…
The first four episodes were funny and sexy and I figured it would continue in this vein. But in the fifth episode, events took a dark turn with the introduction of a quite villainous third character who does something unforgivable to Takato.
I’ll continue watching Dakaichi—the series as it’s airing is almost over now, but I got a late start on it—though I suspect not with the same lighthearted enjoyment as before.
And finally… one of those truly strange series, Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san.
It’s a slice of life, vignette-type anime series about Honda-san, who, without any explanation, is a skeleton who works as a bookstore clerk.
He’s not the only oddball. There’s one clerk who wears a Noh mask, another with a Jack ‘o Lantern on his/her head, etc. I’m not sure if the producers are intimating that everyone who works in a bookstore is abnormal, but… also, were they that way when they got hired, or did working in a bookstore turn them into this?? That’s the real question…
So that’s what I’m watching this season.
A note on upcoming posts. Earlier this fall, I actually did a lot of anime watching, but it wasn’t any of the current season’s series. No, after I saw Ryo Horikawa, Vegeta’s seiyuu, at Crunchyroll Expo in September and watched the final three episodes of Dragon Ball Super there with Horikawa-san in the audience, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. With the result being… this is hard to admit to, but… in October I wound up marathoning all 131 episodes of Dragon Ball Super in three weeks flat.
I just couldn’t stop watching it once I started. I have a lot to say about the Dragon Ball universe and characters, and that will be one of the upcoming posts.
Another post will be on which series from the past few years I missed while I was away that I am planning to watch now in a “catch-up” sense. And I’ll also be writing about series that I wish would return with new seasons already.
And then before you know it, it’ll be time for the winter 2019 watchlist post! Time flies when you’re alive.
