Intrepid Anime

  I started watching this when it was airing, but didn’t get around to finishing it until it’s already an entirely new year. Where did 2022 go? I regret putting this off. I wasn’t immediately grabbed by the premise, or how the plot got set up in the first few episodes, but it got so much better and better as things progressed. I don’t want to spoil anything in terms of actual events that take place in the series, but I think it’s OK to say a few things that were NOT in this show. If you look at the genre tags and find “romance” missing, don’t worry, you’ve not made a mistake. When I saw this pop up in my feed initially I thought for sure it was going to turn into some weird romantic love triangle thing between the country girl and the two male idols, but I was very, very wrong. Hopefully that’s not a spoiler, just a set of expectations. “Heroine Tarumono!” is a unique slice-of-life, drama/comedy, and I suppose you’d call it an “Idol” anime, but I’m not too sure how it fits into t

Pretty sure that if you used both hands, and feet, to add up all the isekai series that came out in 2022 you’d have to have at least one friend to help you. ‘Beast Tamer’ which just finished airing last season was certainly an anime of 2022. In this anime, the eponymous “Beast Tamer”, gets kicked out of the hero’s party for being the weakest link, since he doesn’t contribute much in combat. He just does ALL of the legwork, scouting, packing, hauling, etc. He’s basically their scout/errand boy, but they kick him to the curb because he’s “holding them back”. He gets his revenge by building himself a harem of monster girls chosen from the ultimate-species: cat-girl, dragonoid, a couple fairies, and a fox (not a spoiler because they’re all in the credits). I suppose taming monster girls is at least a step forward from buying up slave girls, but still, premise-wise, having the protagonist literally owning his fellow adventuring nakama is kinda weird. Even if they all join of their own volit

  I’ve been expanding into a variety of new anime genres recently, and the premise of ‘Bibliophile Princess’ sounded like something I’d like. It *sounded* like it’d have all the elements of a nice cozy series about a girl who loves to read. For me, that’s an easy hook. She loves books. I love to books. We have so much in common. Wham! Easily relatable protagonist. But, ultimately, I found myself just as annoyed with this series as the heroine constantly seemed to be. All she wanted was to be left to her books to read. That’s all I wanted for her too! And yet. And yet… our heroine, a hopeless bookwork, gets continuously distracted by the various episodic problems created by the multitude of other women fighting for the prince’s affection despite the fact that none of them have even the slightest chance with him.  The prince makes it pretty clear, early on, plainly, in front of everyone in the court, that he's in love with the heroine. Nobody has a shot with him. But, they continue t