Anime Review: From Old Country Bumpking to Master Swordsman

 After seeing a few clips on twitter, I decided to go ahead and give this anime the old college try. The fight scenes were really well done - they used CG, but you can barely tell to be honest. They did something extremely convincing with after effects to make the CG look hand-drawn. Not sure what the process is called, but I like it. The battles across the last couple episodes showcased it the most.

Despite pretty much all the women in the show having a crush on their former teacher, I felt like there was very little chemistry between them, and ultimately he never hooked up with any of the eligible ladies, instead spending most of his time with his adopted daughter character, basically turning this into single dad the not-so-isekai fantasy. It's a real shame, because the female cast of the show had really good character design! I especially liked the short haired girl hauling around a zweihander and using it properly!! I felt it was really ironic that the reason he got sent to the city in the first place is because his parents back in the sticks wanted him to give them a grandchild, but instead of getting together with any of the women, he just adopts a random kid who was in over their head.

The focus really is on the old country bumpkin himself, and he's a bit of a Hary Sue. I wouldn't call him an overpowered protagonist, but he's certainly got skills which surpass the other folks in this universe. Rather than a 'Master Swordsman', he felt more along the lines of a master martial artist; instead of specific sword-oriented special abilities, he's just really good at reading the environment and his opponent, and then using his sword in *just* the right way to strike at their weaknesses. I appreciate this take on a swordsman type character. Although there were definitely a few instances of him doing some outrageously out of character stuff (like cutting down a tree in one strike). Overall he felt like just a normal old guy who's good with a sword, which when you get down to it, is the point of the series I suppose.

Overall, I didn't hate this show, but I didn't love it. The characters were pretty bland and one-sided. The villains were very typically tropey. In the end, I kinda just didn't mind this show, but I don't think I'll think of it a season or two from now.

5/10

Mii-chan Wants to Be Kept: Vol. 1 Manga Review

Cat/Girls are cute too

I’m a sucker for cute anime cat-girls, but Mii-chan isn’t exactly what I was expecting...

In this series by Waka Takase, our protagonist Natsume-kun, works in a supermarket, where he gets pushed around by the ladies at his job; but, he’s generally a good guy who’ll pitch in and help out when things get tough – as a result, he’s always exhausted and burnt out.

One day, on his way home, he takes in a stray black cat for the night, even though his building doesn’t allow pets. When he wakes up in the morning, he finds the cat’s gone, but an extremely beautiful (buck-naked) black-haired girl is sleeping in his bed.

The series is only mildly NSFW

As it turns out, Mii-chan, is a seventeen year old runaway cat/girl, who is a human during the day, but turns into a cat at night. The details have yet to be really explained; is it a curse? Is it just in her nature? Not too sure. Will I read on to find out more? Probably.

I really enjoyed the book for the first 90% of the volume. The interactions between the two main characters are pretty funy. Mii-chan’s cute, and the MC dude’s not annoying (honestly the most important thing in any of the manga where the MC is meant to be a self-insert protag). It’s also really funny how he’s got such a soft spot for Mii-chan as a cat, but is really hard on her in her human form.

<<Moderate spoilers for the end of volume 1 to follow, but I think it might affect whether some people pick this book up.>>

Toward the end of the volume, Mii-chan has a conversation with another Cat/Girl, and in that conversation, it’s revealed that one aspect of their “affliction” is that unless they have sex with a guy before they turn 18 they’ll eventually be stuck in their Cat form forever…

I’m generally not too stuck up about stuff like this, but this seemed so contrived and deliberate I got a bit annoyed – especially since the MC is in his early twenties; maybe the age-gap tension will turn into a plot point. I guess it’s always possible Mii-chan chooses to stay with Natsume-kun, but in her cat form, since he’s pretty obviously got a thing for cats. Who knows? I think that’d be kind of a funny possibility. I’m interested enough to see how it plays out that I’ll probably pick up the rest as it comes out. So far, Japan has 3-ish volumes worth of chapters and the manga is still ongoing.

This is one of those weird series where I enjoyed it, but the hook might make it super annoying. Also makes it very hard to recommend, so if this is your kind of jam, go for it.

Volume 2 is due out in August.

Mii-Chan Wants to Be Kept is published by Seven Seas Entertainment.

Purchase at Barnes & Noble for $13.99

Just Another Life Update???

 I feel like this blog has fallen casualty to posting only life updates as an excuse for why I don't post anything else anymore.

To be honest, I've not had much energy for writing, blogging, etc. in a long time. Very few views to the pages/posts with virtually no interaction on any of the reviews - even ones I cross-post from Twitter, or other places.

I mostly just dusted this off today since I got a new keyboard and wanted to see how well it performs for writing. Honestly, 5 Stars. It's one of those Huntsman Mini's, and with my laptop now on a swing-arm desk, I can blog from the comfort of my very cush arm-chair.

Is this peak performance? I think it's very well possible.

Recently, I've been exploring Substack; there's a nifty group of people over there doing what appears to be something quite similar to blogging... I guess I might start cross-posting over there and see if anything changes.