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Out of the five music videos released to celebrate TOHO Animation’s 10th anniversary, I found Neko to Wakai se na (AKA Don’t Reconcile with Cats) to be the weakest entry. It lacked considerably in the animation and music departments and the video’s plot was a bit of a miss. I do admire that they hired voice actors for a 5-minute-long music video though.

STORY:
Before I talk about the story, I just wanted to say that this is my interpretation of what happened in the video. Due to the absence of a synopsis and subtitles for the video, I’ll try my best to explain what happened in ... the video.
The story focus on Yuuki (the red-haired guy) remembering his childhood friend Mao (the blue-haired guy). The video shoes Yuuki walking around his town and each landmark he encounters makes him remember his childhood and his interactions with Mao, and how the two stopped being friends due to a fight, something which Yuuki came to regret in his present life.
Overall, it was a bare-bones story with very very little development. My main complaint is that the story starts at a very random point. I think it would’ve been better is the video started with how they first met. It would’ve given the characters better development. What I do like was the fact that voice actors were hired for the video.
With regards to why the video is titled “Don’t Reconcile with Cats”, I’m guessing that Mao wasn’t exactly human, but was actually a personification of a stray cat Yuuki befriended. Mao means “cat” in Chinese. But I dunno. The video never elaborated on this, so I’d probably be wrong.

CHARACTERS:
From what I gathered, Yuuki used to be an energetic and adventurous kid who loved to explore the town. He also used to be pretty impulsive and quick to anger, something that he began to regret as he grew up due to his fight with Mao. Mao, on the other hand, was the calm one of the duo and tried to keep Yuuki away from danger. Overall, the characters were really basic and arguable lacked the depth as compared to the characters from TOHO’s other 10th anniversary music videos.

ANIMATION:
Neko to Wakai se na was directed by Mizuki Itou, who also worked on a 5-minute-long OVA called Takano Intersection. The OVA won the prestigious Mainichi Film Award for Best Animation in 2022. Sadly, I haven’t seen it, so I can’t compare his two works.
Neko to Wakai se na’s animation tried to emulate a more watercolour design to give a more nostalgic vibe. I personally didn’t enjoy it due to it coming off as stilted quite often and the flowing animation made the characters off-model to a point it became distracting. In other words, the animation was the weakest point of this video for me.

MUSIC:
The song used for the music video is called “Semi” by a band named Hentai Shinshi Club. They also sang the ending song for third movie in the Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution trilogy. The song “Semi” alright. Nothing really memorable. It’s the kind of a song you can put on when you’re driving. The song tries to make the video more emotional, but fails to do so due to the underdeveloped characters and distracting animation.

VERDICT:
3/10 (Genuinely Bad)
Likes: The fact they hired voice actors for a short music video.
Dislikes: The animation, underdeveloped characters, and the very vague story.

I’ve had my Netflix subscription for about 4 years now. One conclusion I’ve come to during this time is that a marriage between anime and CG would lead to a very toxic relationship. And when you have Netflix certifying said marriage, it will lead to a bloody godawful divorce with no one winning anything substantial in the divorce proceedings. This has been evident in a vast majority of CG anime till date with no such anime becoming a commercial or a critical hit. Unfortunately, Yakitori continues this trend.
Yakitori is a 6-episode anime adaptation of a novel series by the same name, which was written by ... Carlos Zen (who also authored Youjo Senki) and illustrated by so-bin (who also illustrated Overlord). While I was turned off by the animation, I was hopeful that – due to the involvement of so-bin and Calos Zen – the anime would be pretty decent. Sadly, due to Netflix’s involvement, a rather underwhelming premise, unlikeable characters, a lack of character development and backstories, and a very short run of just 6 episodes, this anime was a disappointment.

SYNOPSIS:
In the not-so-distant future, Earth gets colonised by a group of aliens called the Trade Federation (these aliens are basically sapient cats, dogs, rats, and other animals), and have rendered humans as third-class citizens. Humans now face discrimination, a shrinking pool of work opportunities, become a food source for the alien elite, and are increasingly marginalised.
Enter Akira, our hot-blooded hero whose whiny attitude would make even urge Eren from Attack on Titan to slap him across the face, who is also a victim of the aforementioned marginalisation and faces workplace bullying and expulsion from his school (both of which were his own faults, mind you). One fine day, a chap named Pupkin visits his workplace and offers him a job in the Trade Federation’s military. To be more precise, he is scouted into an infantry unit which goes by the name of “Yakitori”; Yakitori is Japanese skewered chicken, and the unit is named as such due to having a 70% mortality rate. Even so, the pay is pretty good and Akira is convinced to join the unit and goes to London, where he would board a spaceship to Mars.
In London, Akira meets his future colleagues: Tyrone, Amalia, Erland, and Zihan. The crew hit it off pretty quickly – Not! Right off the bat, they (mainly Akira and Amalia) began to bicker about the most trivial of matters, from their attitudes to why on Earth is the rocket playing Mozart’s music in the background. While I do understand that a ragtag bunch of misfits (and multinational ones, no less) will have to bicker and gradually become true companions as the story progresses, the sheer inanity of the fights, the insufferable personalities of Akira and Amalia, and them telling off their other three colleagues really soured my mood. What’s worse is that they saw very little character development and their brattiness constantly put their unit’s lives at stake. Anyways, on Mars, they are assigned to work under the orders of Rimul, a dog alien who is an officer in the Trade Federation’s military.
The remainder of the story focused on their training, the history behind the formation of the Yakitori, the unit trying to put down a rebellion, a glimpse into war crime proceedings (which was actually pretty well-done albeit over-the-top), the internal politics of the Trade Federation, and the unit becoming more coherent and following their superiors’ orders. Oh, and the anime also blessed us with a bunny clone of Hatsune Miku, who was used by the Trade Federation to give orders to the Yakitori unit. And no, I am not making this up. Also, the Hatsune Miku clone would give orders to the Yakitori in Japanese in the English dub… And the whole team (including Akira, who’s Japanese) were able to understand her A-OK?! I have no idea why they didn’t bother dubbing her too!
Overall, Yakitori was not a pleasant experience for me. My biggest problem with it were the characters who were stereotypes at best and obnoxious twits at worst. While the premise of an alien race that look like Earth’s animals colonising Earth and enslaving humans is a rather silly promise, that is not an excuse. There are several anime that have silly premises but are well-received. My guess is that these anime strengthen their characters, animation, music, etc. to mitigate the shortcomings of the premise. That was not the case in Yakitori; the animation was uncanny, the premise was weak (save for the war crimes trial), a complete absence of character backstories, a lack of character development, and the characters were predominantly bland and unlikeable. Speaking of which…

CHARACTERS:
1) Akira Ihotsu: The main character of the story and one of the most selfish and bratty protagonists to grace our screens in 2023. Akira was expelled from his school for attacking his teacher for refusing to let him go to college, and he was also involved in fighting with his co-workers for not doing their duties. While the anger was a bit justifiable, violence is rarely, if ever, the answer. Even after getting scouted into the Yakitori, he simply refused to work in a team and his selfish attitude constantly dragged his team down and even nearly got them killed. Also, the blighter’s really rude to his teammates even when he’s not provoked and has been racist towards them (especially Tyrone and Zihan) a couple of times. Sure, he does prove his military prowess occasionally, but what good would that do if you’re a rabid dog biting your enemies and allies alike 99.99% of the time?
2) Amalia Schultz: A British, female, and slightly less insufferable version of Akira. Many of the complaints I had about Akira can be copy-pasted to Amalia. She’s also quite pompous and talks her colleagues down for not liking Mozart. Thankfully, she lacked the racist bone present in Akira and did call him out for verbally assaulting Zihan.
3) Tyrone Baxter: The muscle of the Yakitori unit and originating from the United States. He and Erland are by far the nicest characters, as well as the one who tried to break the ice when the unit was first formed. Unlike Erland, he’s no pushover and grew less patient with Akira and Amalia’s antics. He’s also experienced in fighting and sometimes leads the Yakitori in their operations.
4) Erland Martonen: A tech geek from Sweden who plays the role of the pacifier in the Yakitori. Unfortunately, he’s also a pushover and his efforts to calm the team down often backfire. Overall, a nice but forgettable character.
5) Zihan Yang: The everywoman of the Yakitori from China and my favourite character in this anime. She’s the brains of the team and is by far the most level-headed and pragmatic member who mainly prioritises completing the missions. Like Tyrone, she’s no pushover and tries to develop a sense of teamwork in the Yakitori. Unlike Tyrone and Erland, she has (rightfully) no tolerance for her team’s antics and is very blunt about her colleagues’ shortcomings.
6) Rimul: A dog alien who is an officer in the Trade Federation’s military. He’s also responsible for leading the Yakitori unit. He also plays a more fatherly role for his subordinates and becomes sceptical about his leaders’ agendas. He’s probably the only character in the anime who saw some shred of character development. He’s my second favourite character after Zihan.
7) Vasya Pupkin: The guy who scouted the Yakitori unit. A mysterious character whose objectives are yet to be clarified. Even so, he has aided the Yakitori in several ways across the story. If the anime gets a new season, I would be interested in seeing how Pupkin’s story goes.

ANIMATION:
Yakitori’s animation was weak, period. The animation and the character designs were uncanny and disorienting. Before I picked up the anime, the trailer which showcased what it would be like put me off immediately.
The studio behind the anime is Arect, a studio which specialises in CG and is known for its contribution in the Aikatsu series. Yakitori is their second venture as the main animation studio. Their debut was with Bright: Samurai Souls, a Netflix-original anime movie which suffered from the same exact problems Yakitori faced and suffered from even worse animation.
While Yakitori’s animation is better than Bright’s, that doesn’t mean it’s good. Sure, if a kid gets a 27% score in his maths test while his classmate scores a 3%, both have still failed the test.

MUSIC:
The music score of Yakitori is alright, just forgettable. The opening theme is kinda catchy; it was done by Ken Ishii (a famous DJ inspired by Detroit techno) whose most famous work was Extra, a music video which won MTV Europe’s Best Dance Music Video award in 1997. The ending theme was also done by Ken Ishii; it was a remix of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music), which is one of Mozart’s most famous works. Still, my biggest gripe is that why bother having a bunny Hatsune Miku in the anime but have none of her songs. Why on earth was she in the anime then? Why bother leaving things half-baked?

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Yakitori is just one of the many reminders to why CG, Netflix, and anime can’t go hand-in-hand. The anime had potential (heck, it was written by the same bloke who wrote Youjo Senki), but it was very poorly executed. Apart from the animation, the unlikeable and forgettable cast of characters only made the anime a chore to watch. The only three saving graces in it were the war crimes trial scene, Hatsune Miku as a bunny, and the fact that the whole bloody anime was just 6 episodes long.

VERDICT:
3/10 (Genuinely Bad)
Likes: Zihan, Rimul, Bunny Miku, and the war crimes trial scene.
Dislikes: Most of the characters (especially Akira), the animation, and the premise.

Last March, I came across a YouTube Short titled “This is NOT Actually an Anime Series” by Kito Senpai. The video introduced it as a music video animated by TOHO Animation and Wit Studio with the music composed by Hiroyuki Sawano and sung my Motohiro Hata. The YouTuber went on to praise the video for its gorgeous animation and soundtrack. Curious, I decided to look it up and found its entry on both AniDB and MyAnimeList. I then found the video on YouTube and gave it a watch to see what’s it about.
COLORs is a 3 minute long music video which was released on TOHO ... Animation’s 10th anniversary along with 4 other shorts:-
1) Tentai Kansoku (Astronomical Observation)
2) Himitsu no Hana no Niwa (Nana’s Secret Garden)
3) Neko to Wakai se na (Don’t Reconcile with Cats)
4) Detarame na Sekai no Melodrama (The Melodrama of a Trashy World)

STORY:
The story is about a girl who falls in love with a guy who happens to be a cross-dresser and a part-time idol. The first half of the story is a slice-of-life which revolves around her trying to understand her feelings and trying to find ways to get closer to the guy, but starts to get increasingly disheartened as the guy drifts further away due to his double life. The second half of the story sees a tonal shift away from the first half’s slice-of-life and the guy’s role in the story is further expanded.
I’m honestly conflicted about what I have watched. While the first half of the video had a fairly decent premise and reminded me of many animated music videos I have seen in the past, the second half felt like a confusing and a convoluted mess and left me with way too many questions, with absolutely none of them being addressed throughout the whole course of the video (somewhat justifiable due to the short runtime). Also, the lack of dialogue leaves most of the interactions up to interpretation.
I’m hoping this video was just a preview and that we would be given either a proper anime series or a feature-length movie which would answer my questions, as well as give us some backstory about how the girl figures out the guy is a cross-dresser and that what motivated him to do so. At the very least, make the progress of the story more fleshed out and coherent! The video’s sudden genre shifts are something that do not go well in a 3-minute short.

CHARACTERS:
As far as the characters are concerned, I find the male lead to be pretty interesting, mainly due to the reasons why he began to cross-dress and become an idol as well as his roles later in the story. The female lead, on the other hand, felt kind of bland and lacked the quirks the guy had. Honestly, it felt like if you cut her out of the picture, the progression of the story would’ve been left unchanged.

ANIMATION:
The video’s strongest points are its music and its animation. The studio behind COLORs is Wit Studio, the same guys behind animating the first 3 seasons of Attack on Titan, the first season of Vinland Saga, Seraph of the End, Ousama Ranking, Vivy, Spy x Family, and many more. The animation is fluid and crisp and just really pleasing to look at and is synchronised quite well with the song.

MUSIC:
The music of the video (also called Colours) is composed by Hiroyuki Sawano, a veteran composer in the anime industry who is well-known for working on the songs on many anime (OPs, EDs, and OSTs) such as Blue Exorcist, 86, Attack on Titan, Kingdom, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, and so on. The singer is Motohiro Hata who has also sung for Naruto Shippuden and Teasing Master Takagi-san. The song itself is pretty good and catchy, but not ground-breaking.

VERDICT:
4/10 (Below Average, But Not Bad)
I’ll be blunt, the animation and music of the video are its biggest saving graces. The story, especially the second half, were difficult to wrap my head around. As I said before, the story would have been far better had this video been either a proper anime series or a feature-length film. 3 minutes is way too little time to shove so many plot points into. Superb animation and music can only take you so far with a confusing story. Rather, the effort feels wasted.

Likes: The animation and the music.
Dislikes: The second half of the story and the lack of explanation to what’s going on.

It was the summer of 2022 and I was scrolling down and checking out which movies and shows are coming to Netflix soon. That was where I came across this anime called Romantic Killer. Never heard about the anime before, didn't see it in any of the seasonal charts, and didn't even know it's based on a manga. Based on the anime's description given on Netflix, being about a girl who's an avid gamer and comes across a mysterious game. At first, I thought said game would happen to be a portal to another world where she gets her own harem, is some assassin, and ... stuff like that. I was expecting it to be a run-of-the-mill isekai and would take some inspiration from My Next Life as a Villainess.
Apparently, that was not the case at all when the preview was released. There is no isekai, no assassinations, no resurrections, nothing of the sort. Heck, it’s not even shoujo; it’s a shounen anime. Oh, and it’s a romantic comedy set in modern-day Japan. So, what on earth is Romantic Killer all about?


STORY:
The story is about a high school girl named Anzu whose life centres around her “Three Greatest Desires):
1) Video Games
2) Chocolate
3) Her Cat (Momohiki)
As a result, she has had absolutely no interest in anything else. And yes, you guessed it right, not even romance (it’s in the name). And since this anime is a romantic comedy, some wacky hijinks are to be expected, as well as getting introduced to some potential love interests. How that starts is uh… well, here’s the gist:
So, one fine day, Anzu is minding her own business playing a visual novel (VN) she recently ordered and was complaining about all the common and clichéd tropes the VN was playing… Then BAM! A weird yellow creature in a wizard’s garb pops out of the TV! Now this yellow creature is named Riri and he is a Love Cupid and his job is to spice up Anzu’s love life by turning her life into a real life dating sim. Why? Two reasons: to help solve Japan’s declining birth rates and for his salary (Yes, cupids in this anime happen to function as an organised door-to-door marriage bureau who will barge into your house if your love life is non-existent. Let that sink in.).
However, there’s a huge problem in kickstarting Anzu’s love life: her Three Greatest Desires. How’s that solved? Well, Riri confiscates all of them. At this point, you might be wondering “Wait, if he’s confiscating the cat, how’s he gonna be fed?”. Don’t you worry, dear reader! Riri has a solution to that! He uses his magic to send Anzu’s parents overseas and sends the cat with them. Now Anzu is all alone in her house and all her chocolate and video games are gone and is left at the mercy of a supernatural marriage consultant shoved down her throat. Riri, marvellous work for promoting parental neglect and putting your client (who also did not want your help) under an informal house arrest. Well done! Will definitely reach out to your agency whenever I plan on getting married!
And with all that the plot of the story finally begins. While the start of the story was bumpy to say the least, the rest of the anime had slightly fewer random moments, which I’ll get to in the characters section.
For the most part, the anime first parodies common romance tropes and then plays said tropes straight to a T. Personally, I found this a bit confusing and thought it was rather unnecessary to lampshade the same tropes it was mocking repeatedly. Even so, the first two-thirds of the story was somewhat enjoyable, just nothing too unique. I did like how some of the characters interacted with one another. I did not like how Riri would show up completely out of the blue and would force me to take medicine to keep my blood pressure normal.
I felt that the last third of the story did not fit the overall premise of the story. It was significantly more serious and realistic. Not that that’s a bad thing, but it definitely stood out from the rest of the story due to its tone. It would’ve been more appropriate had the anime been much longer than 12 episodes and was far less rushed; it would’ve been even better off if it were a separate season or even show in its own right. I won’t delve too much on the last third of the anime so as not to give away spoilers.

CHARACTERS:
1) Anzu Hoshino: The protagonist of the story and the biggest recipient of Riri’s abuse. She showcases quite a handful of traits common among shounen protagonists, such as being hot-headed, passionate, a bit of a ditz, and also being a good friend to others. And while she’s subjected to constant abuse by Riri, she does fight back quite a lot (Oh, and she does go full on macho and muscular on a few occasions similar to Lt. Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist.). Overall, a decent character and has helped many of her friends to become better.
2) Riri: The Love Cupid assigned to Anzu and pretty much the one character who has contributed the most in steering the story; he can also be seen only by Anzu. As you might have guessed from my tirade earlier, I do not not like Riri at all. This ball of a sweaty blond Viking’s armpit hair is incredibly obnoxious, selfish, and needlessly complicates things for not only Anzu but pretty much everyone involved. The guy is a huge and overpowered plot device who uses various methods to keep the story going, much to many of the characters’ chagrin.
3) Tsukasa Katsuki: The first potential love interest Anzu encounters. A brooding individual who keeps his distance from others. He also happens to be popular among the girls in the anime due to his good looks, but has rejected all romantic proposals. At first, he maintains some distance from Anzu but after some unforeseen circumstances (Hm… I wonder what could have caused them?), he is forced to stay with Anzu from where he begins to slowly warm up and open up to her. Personally, he is my favourite character in the whole anime. I first thought he would be your conventional aloof character common in romance anime (similar to Kyouya Ootori from Ouran High School Host Club or Sasuke from Naruto) and he did initially play that trope straight. But after undergoing quite an engaging character development and getting to know more of his backstory, I came to like the guy a lot and was honestly hoping he and Anzu get together.
4) Junta Hayami: The second potential love interest we are introduced to. He is Anzu’s childhood friend and has had a huge crush on her since they were kids. He’s also quite popular and plays for the school’s baseball team. Oh, and he’s deathly afraid of cockroaches and cares about his friends (two traits he shares with Anzu). And yeah, that’s kinda it, and that’s my main problem with Junta. Of the 3 potential love interests, I feel he is the least developed and the most forgettable one. I think he was shoehorned into the story just as a tool to play with the whole Childhood Friendship Romance route.
5) Hijiri Koganei: The third potential love interest we are introduced to. He’s the resident rich brat (and later transfer student) who is also popular but has an obnoxious personality second only to Riri. Anzu also sees him with disdain for understandable reasons. So, Hijiri became interested in Anzu because of her lack of interest in him and tries to win her over with gifts, only for her to either return them or outright reject them. While he did start as a narcissistic swine, he does undergo some admirable character development after his dad puts him in Anzu’s public school so that he can learn to be more responsible and learn to live more independently. Anzu also contributed to his character development by prompting him to take up a part-time job as a cashier in order to buy gifts for her by using his own money (he used to use his parents’ money to buy said gifts, something which Anzu calls him out on). While he does retain most of his obnoxiousness, I warmed up to the character after seeing what he goes through. Quite frankly, I was impressed that he decided to work as a cashier and found his narcissism to hold some merit after that.
6) Saki Takamine: Anzu’s best friend and someone who definitely deserved more screen time. She’s also super popular among the boys in her school. While a minor character, I found her bond and backstory with Anzu to be quite touching. I also respect how she snubs comments from other guys. Seriously, why did she not get enough screen time while Riri gets to be a main character?!
Of course, there are many other characters in the anime, but I will not be discussing them for 2 reasons: the character section is already pretty long by now and I don’t want to give out spoilers.
Overall, the cast of characters is moderately decent. Riri can go rot in a nuclear waste-filled hell though.

ANIMATION:
The main studio behind this anime was Domerica. I swear, I searched up the company’s name while writing this review. The company was founded in 2010 and one noticeable contribution they have made in the past was working on the 3DCG animation of some episodes of Girls und Panzer.
Anyway, back to the animation. Well, it’s not bad. For a new Netflix anime, it’s not bad at all. It’s neither visually stunning like Violet Evergarden nor is it eye gouge-inducing like EX-ARM (In case you’re wondering, yes. I’ve sat through EX-ARM. All of it. And I ain’t happy about it.). It’s just that’ it’s passable. The sudden super-deformed artstyle can be distracting, but I didn't see any other noteworthy issue with the overall animation. As someone who walked into this anime without knowing anything about it, I found it satisfactory.

SOUND AND MUSIC:
The opening of the anime “Roma Kira” was performed by Yurika (who also sang for Beastars), while the ending “Romantic Love: Ren’ai Shimasenka?” was written by Ayato Shinozaki and Ryousuke Tachibana (both of whom also wrote for Re:Zero). The opening song was kinda run-of-the-mill; the vocals did remind me of the opening songs of the earlier Tales games for some reason. The ending song was performed by…. *sigh*... Riri (To be fair, it was performed by Mikako Komatsu - Riri’s voice actress.). While the song was catchy, just seeing Riri during the ending segment ruined the song for me. Apart from that the music used in the anime was adequate.
I’ll be honest, after finishing the anime, I don’t quite remember any of the music. I actually had to listen to the opening song again to recall how it was. The only one song I did remember was the ending song… for obvious reasons.

FINAL VERDICT:
5/10 (Average)
While the anime was not as bad as I thought it would be, I believe it did have more potential. My two biggest gripes with the anime are Riri and the show’s indecision with regards to parodying, deconstructing, and playing romance tropes straight. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a bad watch. The characters (sans Riri) were nice and the animation was serviceable.
If you do have some time to burn and just sit back and relax, the first two-thirds of this anime might help out. Do check it out if you’re interested.

Likes: The parody parts of the story, Hijiri and Tsukasa’s character developments, and Saki calling the boys in her class out.
Dislikes: Riri and the story juggling between parodying, deconstructing, and playing the romance genre straight.