Fall 2023 Anime Season

Normally, about this time of the year I’d publish my based-on-cover-art preview of the upcoming season. Unfortunately, this season, like last, is woefully short of commentable covers. So I’m just going to be dull and tell y’all what I plan to watch and why.

First is a group of shows that are special because they are based on light novels what I have read or am currently reading:

I shall survive using potions: 30-something Office Lady gets mistakenly killed by the gods. To make it up to her, she’s isekai’d into your typical medieval world. Bullies a dim-bulb goddess into giving her the ability to create any kind of potion in any kind of container. Ends up having to conceal her abilities from all the powerful people who want to control her.

What I liked about the LN plot was that, instead of just having this one-trick overpowered skill, she also has to work on not being discovered while she’s using it. The first episode tracked well with the LN. I’m looking forward to her establishing her first shop in a new country.

Our Dating Story: Cute and popular gyaru, who sleeps around a lot (and where were girls like that when I was in HS?) decides to date a nerdy virgin guy, who doesn’t want to have sex unless it’s meaningful (another type that I never met in my hormone-sodden HS days).

A somewhat typical popular girl picks insecure boy story. The LN only just started on J-Novel and the anime only just started on Crunchyroll, so the most I can say right now is that it’s a somewhat cute romcom that looks to be worth watching.

Tearmoon Empire: Marie Antoinette kind of princess reverts to her younger self after being beheaded in a peasant’s revolt. Works hard to avoid that fate the second time around. She’s almost as dense as her plot-cousin Bakarina, but fortunately for her, all the people around her are even denser.

I liked the LN enough that I bought the books instead of just reading it once on J-Novel. She surprises one of her advisors by spouting back is economic theories before he has a chance to lecture her on them in this timeline. He decides she’s a genius, and when you’re a genius, everybody assumes you’re playing 3D chess instead of tic-tac-toe.

I’m in love with the Villainess: Full up yuri romance about an OL gamer who suddenly wakes up inside her favorite game. Her favorite character in this otome game is the villainess, who shows a surprisingly human side.

Another title that I have the books for. Yes, it’s an isekai, and yes she’s totally overpowered by being a major fan of the game — to the point of writing fan-fiction about it — but it’s still an excellent slow-burn yuri romance.

Next, we have a trio of gaming anime, only one of which is an isekai.

16bit Sensation: Gaming industry illustrator wanders into a suspicious-looking shop (one that disappears a few hours later) and gets dumped back in time to 1992, the peak of the hentai game era.

Interesting idea, reasonably well executed, although I think the protagonna is a little too squeaky-voiced, and she could easily prove her futureness by showing them her 2023 ID. Still, it looks like it has potential.

Shangri-La Frontier : Straight up full immersion gaming. Guy who’s been playing nothing but garbage games checks into a top-tier VR game, pursued by a girl who really likes him.

Appears to be a fun program, despite the Loony-Tunes look of the protagonist.

Let Me Check the Walkthrough: Accidentally summoned to a game world as a hero, our protagonna has to train up the real hero.

Another one with potential. I like the idea. Unfortunately, the execution is a little over-the-top. This might be the first one to go.

So that’s it. Seven programs that I’m likely to see through to the end. There’s another handful or so that I’m not so sure of. They’ll probably end up in a TL;DR Real Soon Now.

Book Review: Tearmoon Empire

The Spring anime lists are not yet out, In/Spectre finale isn’t until tomorrow, and I am sick unto death of writing about COVID-19, so I’m going to while away the time writing a book review. BTW, if you really can’t stand spoilers in your juvenile pulp fiction, stop reading here and go read my review of Citizen Kane.

Tearmoon Empire is an example of what I call Isekai of the Future, where the protagonist has future knowledge instead of special powers. Having said that, it’s a silly, badly structured, poorly written, barely-an-isekai, with some really dumb plot concepts.

I liked it.

No, I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because its various scenes are just silly enough. Let’s see what you think.

I was going to say that the underlying premise was dumb, and then I thought about all the isekai that involved the protagonist getting summoned by magic from another world, or getting reassigned by higher headquarters with some special power. So, it’s dumb, but not that dumb.

Our protagonna is Mia, a 20-year old princess who gets executed during a revolution, on page 3, and instead of moving up to the astral plane or isekaing to another world, she finds herself resurrected in place via time slip — a 20 year old mind in her younger, 12 year old, body. Sent back in time with nothing but her memories and her diary, which also got transported. Silly? Yes, but as I said, I’ve seen worse.

Isekai of the Future

An interesting sub-genre in light novels is one where the protagonna gains knowledge of the future and strives to create an alternative history timeline by correcting her earlier, or forthcoming, mistakes.  So far, the two ways this can happen are by tapping the memories of RPG game playing in a former life (on Earth), or by straightforward reincarnation into an earlier self.

J-Novel is currently running three light novels like this, while a fourth LN I have only found in manga form:

 

	I Refuse to be Your Enemy 14-year old girl in a fantasy world, living a life that is only a couple of steps better than an early phase Cinderella, has dreams that she’s watching someone play a computer RPG, one that turns out to parallel her real life. Realizing that the in-game character that is her is on the route to the bad ending, she runs away from her boarding school, and the threat of an arranged marriage, vowing to change history if she can. This is still on Volume 1, but she appears to be making the right kind of friends.
	My Next Life as a Villainess Bratty 8-year old girl in a fantasy world wakes up after an injury, with all the memories of her “previous life” as a 17-year old Japanese girl who played a computer RPG, one that turns out to parallel her real life. Her problem is that she is not the heroine of the game, and each of the main characters has a reason to dislike her, either because of how she interacts with them, or how she treats the heroine. This is why all of the paths in the game provide a Happy Ending for the heroine, and a Bad Ending for her. This is the only one of the three LN’s on J-Novel that has run to completion of the first arc, so I can say without spoiling too much that she finds an unexpected ending, which keeps them all alive. I haven’t read beyond that, but the succeeding volumes cover how she deals with running off her RPG map.
	It Seems Like I Got Reincarnated Into the World of a Yandere Otome Game This 2014 LN (I can’t find the LN, so I’m reading the 2018 manga) is similar to Villainess — 10-year old protagonna goes through life with a sense of disquiet and deja vu, due to memories of a prior life leaking through. Upon seeing a betrothal painting of her arranged-marriage fiance, she suffers a memory cascade, revealing more details that life. It turns out that, as in Villainess, her world parallels the RPG she “remembers” playing, and that she’s the doomed rival of the RPG’s main heroine. For a LN with a premise that’s almost identical to that of Villainess, it’s fascinating to see how fast the two plotlines diverge. It’s also a little creepy to see everyone exposing their yandere side.
	Tearmoon Empire 20-year old Marie Antoinette-like princess is beheaded during a revolution, and awakens to find herself back in her 12 year old body again, with all of her memories intact, along with the blood-soaked diary she kept during the intervening 8 years. She vows to avoid the mistakes that caused the revolution. Unfortunately, the diary (which changes as her actions change the future) only concerns her own doings, and not things like lottery numbers or race results. Volume 1 is still incomplete. Her experiences have changed her personality, shocking those around her, and she is working to create a situation that will help her avoid the axe. What makes this LN particularly fun is the way everyone makes totally wrong assumptions about her motives. At one point, just for e.g., she gives her maid some walking-around money, because she deserves some time off [Use this as you see fit], which her maid assumes is some fiduciary trust [Mistress wants me to spend these funds in the most effective way possible, I’ll buy gifts for the workers].

Some people might say that these are not true isekai, because they involve her home world (not Earth). While it’s true that these books involve an inhabitant of the world under discussion gaining knowledge of the future, while remaining their own persona, they are using that knowledge to create an alternate timeline, a different world.

So far, only Villainess has been chosen to be an anime, scheduled for Spring, 2020.