First Look: Summer 2024 Anime Reviews: Shy S2, Senpai is an Otokonoko, Dead Demon's Destruction and Mayonaka Punch (Patreon)

I feel bad y'all won't be getting the review "previews" for October, and I've had plenty of time to write them so they're all done, so while I'm briefly crashing in one of the only places that has wifi in town, I'm going to post the whole thing as a public post and do the tumblr ones later!

Mayonaka Punch

Masaki runs a successful YouTube (or ‘NewTube’ as they call it) channel with her two friends, however arguments and tension arise, and she ends up punching one of her friends during a stream. She’s dropped from the channel and the internet turns against her, dashing hopes of starting over with her own channel. Meanwhile, a vampire, Live is dreaming about a beautiful woman offering blood to her, and she sees the girl of her dreams is Masaki and must have that girl, Masaki and Live run into each other, and Masaki decides to start a channel with the vampire as the star, with the condition being Live gets to suck her (blood. We think) dry if they reach one million subscribers..

Canceled Youtuber x Loser Vampire yuri. This is the kind of shit I watch anime for.

Do you support women’s wrongs? Are you an appreciator of female characters who are loveable shit heads? This is the show for you! I love that Masaki is absolutely in the wrong, her punch is never justified and the show never pretends it is, she’s unabashedly selfish and the show loves to point that out, yet she still has a lot of pathos, and you really begin to root for her and her budding friendships (or possibly more with Live?) The four vampires Masaki teams up with (and one vampire desperately trying to keep them in line) are all unapologetic disasters, and they make a fantastic ensemble comedy.

The dynamic between to group and the way they form strong bonds with each other through the chaos is fun to watch, and almost every vampire gets a nice focus episode where you come to feel for them. Fu’s episode is a highlight here, being so devastatingly sad and sweet I believe people who say they cried. While the show never gets that intense again, we do get to see these ridiculous assholes put themselves in wacky situations for the sake of clicks, from stranding themselves on an island or getting in an ill advised garlic eating challenge.

the core relationship is obviously Live and Masaki. Live is downright horny for Masaki’s blood, from the moment she imagines Masaki coming to her in the nude, and the blood=sexual lust metaphor is thinly veiled. Masaki is completely willing to take advantage of the down-bad vampire, even seductively baring her shoulder at one point to make Live do what she wants.

But of course, it’s not all horny antics…we slowly watch Masaki warm up to Live, meanwhile Live come to love Masaki as a person, going into a deep depression when Masaki’s and she are separated for a while, only to be all blushes and on her way to confessing before Masaki cuts her off. Masaki helps Live and the other vampires come together, and the vampires help Masaki out of her creative breakdown in return.

And Masaki really is going through it, getting so much criticism from and hate from the internet she doesn’t feel she can show her face again. She did do the bad thing, but it’s hard to not feel sorry for her when all the criticism beats her down, and the show subtly gets across that the performative internet outrage accomplishes nothing but being detrimental to the target’s mental health. It’s great that Masaki is by no means the “perfect” victim, but the show still invites you to empathize with her. The way the comments are represented as swirling around her head wherever she goes, forming a cloud of smog she can barely see through—it really is like that.

But it also doesn’t group in all the negative criticism as vile bullying either, showing how some people can just think their comments aren’t that serious, and think of it as playful ribbing that gets lost over the internet…the show seems to understand internet (or at least YouTube) culture a lot better than a lot of anime do, showcasing the way it brings out creativity and comradery and also the way it can make you forget the joy of creating in your desire to please the fickle masses, and the way it can twist and misconstrue things.

I thought the finale was very strong, but I’ll admit a tiny part of me was hoping for romantic catharsis between Live and Masaki or at least something more explicit and charged than what came before, and yeah, I didn’t get that. But I fully expected not to get that, as the many hits I’ve taken over the years as a yuri soldier have toughened me into the cynical woman I am todat aaaand the show makes it pretty obvious they’re trying to leave room for a sequel, so that softens the disappointment a bit. I’ll also admit I was a little disappointed some angsty backstory that was teased ended up…not amounting to much, to put it in a non-spoilery way. I think the direction the show chose to go in was for the best and perfectly fitting for the story it was telling, especially considering the time constraints, but man, I am a sucker for some angsty gay backstory so I couldn’t help imagining could-have-beens.

However, it was a great series all the way through, and I’d love to get that sequel, even if I’m not holding my breath for all my yuri dreams to come true. It’s a solid, funny, well-animated good time with some messy, relateable adult women, many of whom are incompetent vampires, and honestly, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Dead Dead Demon Destruction (this one is going to have a lot of images I didn't have time to find)

A giant mothership is hovering over Tokyo. The aliens haven’t done anything or even made themselves known yet, but Japan and America are already trying to blow that UFO up, and show off who has the best weapons, causing many civilian casualties along the way. While all this happens, two girls are just casually living their lives. But are they as normal as they appear?

De x 8 can be really tough show to watch—not because it’s bad, it’s very good, but because of how depressing and visceral it is it can get genuinely uncomfortable. This tends to be balanced a bit by the goofy antics of Ouran and touching friendships (and possibly? More?) of the very likeable cast of teenagers…but you also feel a huge sense of dread about their safety as things ramp up.

The anime goes hard on criticizing the military industrial complex, Japan’s government, America’s government, xenophobia, treatment of immigrants, rich people, and conspiracy theorists. All things I also hate, so that’s great!  What hurts is how you could easily see the events happening—waging war on the aliens despite no provocation, people forming groups to hunt down and slaughter them, even some of the protestors using their movement to cover their own selfish motivations, countries taking the opportunity to vie for power, rich government officials lying to their people and abdandoning them…

It's very bleak, and there was one episode that had me just feeling sad, especially comparing it to current events and wondering if I should keep watching. But what kept me watching was the focus on normal people trying to live their lives despite all this, and the kids doing their best. And especially the “I’d burn down the world for you” intense emotional relationship between Kadode and Ouran, the two teen girl leads.

Ouran is the lead, and she’s a chuni beyond chuni, acting spacey and cheerful and saying some pretty vald things—critiques of capitalism, war, government surveillance—but then following it up with something wild like “and that’s why I should rule the world”. You get the sense she’s cloaking an awareness of how shit the world is and exactly who’s making it shit in humor, and as the show goes on and her wild backstory unfolds, it becomes clear why that is, She, at least, is definitely queer (Kadode is more ambiguous, but she’s definitely soul bonded with Ouran) and the depths of her determination to keep Kadode safe in a world that wants to destroy girls like her would make Homura Madoka Magica blush. (I will admit I was a little let down with the resolution of this plotline though)

There’s also a gentle empathy for marginalized people underneath all the horror—the girls befriend an alien trying to survive in the guise of a human, and it doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the first person our alien fully reveals all to is the (probably, they seem to still be figuring out their identity, but they definitely present feminine and specifically came to Tokyo because their small town wouldn’t be okay with how they like to dress) trans person of the group, Makoto. The way Makoto immediately shields them from others when they make the reveal saying “Don’t let them see, it’s not safe” and how it’s followed up by the alien ressuring Makoto that their friends will be okay with it if they need to take their wig off to swim makes the metaphor extremely clear, and it’s always nice when a series can explore a thing both textually and metaphorically. Through the kids, we get kernels of hope in this story, a reassurance there are kinder people in this world, and maybe that kindness can spread in the future.

As depressing as the story can be, what it has to say is important and it doesn’t hold back in making you see what it’s going for—from the “Cool Japan” logo flashing right before the  Japanese government gives a weapons demonstration that will later kill citizens and destroy innocents, to the American president giving a Trump impression in perfect English (and let me tell you it’s startling to be watching a show in Japanese and suddenly Donald Trump impression) (the American tourists were clearly va’d by someone super fluent, and it’s incredibly funny how much of their dialogue has “fuck” in it and seeing the subtitles skip over that. Also much of their dialogue is treating the devastated Japan as a tourist attraction and saying how funny it all is. Logan Paul has entered the chat.)

 It very clearly hates America and recognizes it as a colonial powere and has a lot of disdain for it, which is a correct opinion, but the show is just as hard on it’s own country, seeming to say the government would happily get back on the colonizing horse if they had an excuse.

A small thing I appreciate is far from the usually anime aesthetic where everyone is blandly cute, the anime gives a ton of people ridiculously cartoony features that make everyone distinct—and being goofy looking is not meant to indicate a character is stupid or ugly—Makoto’s a super sympathetic character with giant buck teeth and one character that’s even pointed out as hot has like, a pig snout nose. It also really sells that one character genuinely is an ikemen.

Soooo a lot of good stuff going into this story. Let’s talk about some caveats.

There’s a continuing storyline between Kadode and her adult teacher, who takes her to his place to have sex with her. When he does, she ends up ditching him because of her feels for Ouran (gay) and I thought that would be the end of it, but nooope he’s a groomer, they pick up dating again when she’s in college, literally months after the previous encounter. The dude is absolutely presented as a scumbag, he cheats on his girlfriend, he seems generally apathetic, his clear discomfort with Kadode calling him “sensei” shows that he knows what he’s doing is wrong …and ultimately the relationship is shown to be unfulfilling, with Kadode directly stating so and that he’s just advantage. That doesn’t stop it from being uncomfortable though, especially since it’s confirmed he and Kadode have sex (unless she’s lying? Unclear) and honestly, I felt it dragged on way too long. The first encounter pretty much demonstrated everything we needed to know about the whole thing in my view, so why?

And of course there’s a ton of potentially triggering content in a story like this—from genocide to suicide to child murder to almost anything you can think of. Also like, a very mild sister complex. One where it’s conceivably platonic, and it’s not like he goes after her boyfriend Yuri Forger style, so it doesn’t bother me too much. OH and a good dose of fatphobia.

The ending…is another big sticking point for me. It feels a big disconnected from the rest of the series, mainly focusing on a character we don’t care about, spending very little time with the characters we do, presenting an interesting status quo and immediately abandoning it, and while earlier episodes of the series implied that certain actions have consequences, it was suddenly like, actually they don’t! The ultimate ending hinges on a decision from a character we don’t care about, again. It felt almost like the author really wanted a happier ending but knew that wasn’t in line with the story he’s told so far, so he did some dues ex machina. I think the most satisfying way to see it is look at episode 1-16 as their own story, and then treat episodes 17-18 as their own separate thing, a potential ending but not the definitive one. At least that’s what I did.

Overall, De x 8 is a show with a lot to say and it gives you plenty to chew on. While it is sometimes depressing to the point I’m not sure I’ll rewatch it, the moments of ordinary joy and small human/alien journeys are the core of the show, and what makes it shine. I definitely encourage you to give it a watch.

SHY Season 2

The second season of Shy was a disappointment. While the first was a little rough around the edges at times but had charm and a strong emotional arc, this season’s conflict was extremely repetitive and dragged out. The show is suddenly about ninja family drama, which would have been fine if the ninja characters added something new to the mix, but they really don’t. Fights go on and on with the same sentiments repeated by multiple characters. The comedy sometimes feels awkward when the next minute the show tries to get you to take the villains seriously. The show has a big cheesy save-this-person-with-the-power-of-friendship anime finale…only to suddenly decide next episode “whoops they weren’t saved after all that was all for nothing tragedy time now” YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS SHOW, it isn’t a tragic twist, it just feels like you wasted our time.

The anime’s strained resources are really showing this season too- it held together reasonably well in the first season despite being a clearly modest production, but is more and more off-model throughout this season, with a lot more obvious shortcuts.

It’s such a shame, because Shy was a female superhero show with so much potential and endearing characters and huge yuri undertones, so I wanted it to do well. There are still moments of charm, but if the writing stays this level, not even a hero can save it.

Senpai is an Otokonoko

Aoi falls for an older girl, Makoto, and one day she confesses love to her senpai. But then Makoto reveals that he is an otokonoko- a crossdressing boy. Much to Makoto’s surprise, this only increases Aoi’s attraction, as she’s 100 percent supportive of crossdressing and ecstatic about getting to enjoy both the “boy” and “girl” versions of her senpai. Complicating things is Makoto’s best friend Ryuji, who has a huge crush on Makoto even though he won’t admit it to himself. Meanwhile, Makoto is dealing with an incredibly transphobic mother, so he hides himself at home and lives in fear she’ll find out that he’s crossdressing at school.

This is a sweet, heartfelt, queer show with some very good kids and a lot of sad and happy feels. Prepare for heartstrings to be tugged.

 I grew very attached to the main trio in various ways, but I was especially surprised at how much I liked Ryuji—his struggle with his internalized homophobia and his yearning for Makoto literally made me cry at one point, which is rare for me with media. Plus, he’s just a sweet kid and good friend who puts up a laughably paper-thin brusque front, and you want good things for him. And that’s true for all the characters.

Makoto is obviously the focus with the Gender of it All, and you see him struggle to navigate a world that sees gender in strict binary terms and tries to limit the ways he can live. The show strikes a good balance in showing the heartbreaking obstacles Makoto deals with while also showing the joy he finds in unexpected acceptance, affirmation, and connection. It’s sad when he tries to force himself to be ‘normal’ but it’s all the more heartwarming when his loved ones support him being who he truly is. A big focus of the show is Makoto trying to figure out if he wants to “live as a girl” as the show puts it, or if his relationship with his gender is something else.

Aoi is a character who starts off as a comedic genki girl, and to some she even came off as a chaser, but as her layers peeled back it becomesclear that’s not the case.  I liked her from the beginning despite her being A Lot but I was concerned she might boil down to the unfailingly cheerful Person Who Supports Makoto—but she gains a tremendous amount of depth once her backstory and personal struggles start to unfold. Honestly, she really resonates with me as an ace person and her storyline seems primed to head in that direction, but I’m not naïve enough to think I’m going to get an actual asexual storyline where we examine how some people simply don’t feel romantic and sexual attraction in the same way and can still be fulfilled…and yeah, judging from the few spoilers I’ve seen, it’s not about that. It’s a bit disappointing, since it would really fit in with a show so focused on non-heteronormative sexuality, but y’know. We’re used to it. I never expect much. I will be interested in how it unfolds in the movie and hope whatever story they choose will at least be well told.

So basically, the show not only presents a love triangle where you want all of them to be happy (sadly poly will not be the answer) BUT a love triangle where each person thinks it would be better for other person to end up with their crush because they all love each other and want each other to be happy, but think very little of themselves. Amazing. A love triangle that’s truly all love but in the most hurtful way possible. Aoi, Makoto, and Ryuji’s bond is really the star of the show for me more than any independent relationship and (though if I had to choose the platonic relationship between Aoi and Ryuji is actually the cutest to me).

There’s not many caveats to this show, obviously both the transphobia that’s examined and Ryuji’s internalized homophobia can be rough (I wish someone would directly tell him he’s not gross). I did find the pacing to be way too rushed in early episodes, but it evened out as it went on.

For something that’s neither good or bad: one thing that was noticeable about the show is it really avoided any queer terminology, in a way a lot of modern queer manga doesn’t. Again, this isn’t a bad things, and I honestly wouldn’t have noticed if one of the characters hadn’t met an older queer person (which is great! Love it when older queer people help the younger generation and show them they’re not alone)—yet this person doesn’t share any kind of specifics and how they identify is kept ambiguous, despite the fact they clearly have been to drag clubs at the very least (as a blink and you miss it thing). In some ways, this might be purposeful, it felt like the story wanted the characters to be applicable to a lot of queer experiences, and one of the main points of the show is Makoto’s uncertainty about his own identity and not feeling comfortable in certain categories. Labels don’t work for everyone.

However, a few more specifics felt like it would help with understanding the characters. Does Ryuji know other gay men exist? Does he think he’s the only one? I honestly have no idea. There is a possibility of these kids getting to know a wider community that seems tantalizing but unlikely to be capitalized on and sometimes the show’s desire to be nebulous about all this feels like a missed opportunity.

Overall, I think this is a touching, worthwhile show about affirmation and love and the complexities of being queer in a limiting society. And of course that means a bunch of homophobes review bombed it because they apparently just now realized queer stories have always been a big part of anime. Knowing this makes it even clearer that shows like this make an impact and deserve support, and I’m really glad a movie to wrap things up has already been announced. Give this show a watch, and maybe bring some tissues.