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Watanuki-san chi no is the second major TV debut for VTubers, the first being the variety show Virtual-san wa Miteiru by the short lived Studio Lide. Virtual-san was a good first try which faced criticism for its animation, meta humor and uneven comedy, but how does this second attempt fair?

One major difference that will likely spare Watanuki-san some of the trials of its predecessor is the fact that it hasn't been labeled as an anime. While the difference is somewhat trivial and has more to do with marketing than anything else, Watanuki-san is a true sitcom with more in common with its live-action cohorts than ... its predecessor (laugh track included). Its stars are VTubers, but they're acting the roles of characters, and the show lacks the meta-humor and inside jokes that led people to throw at Virtual-san the dread accusation of pandering. The animation has also taken a step up, with its warm tones and relatively fluid motions a far cry from the rather sterile environments of Virtual-san.

In other words, it couldn't get any further from Virtual-san - it even has a segment at the end of the first episode explaining who VTubers are and stating their intent of reaching a wider audience. And while this show indeed expands upon the breadth of what VTubers are showing themselves to be capable of, how enjoyable that actually is will depend on how much you a) enjoy mundane subject matter and/or b) enjoy the VTubers acting in the show outside of their normal environments.

With regards to the subject matter, Watanuki-san is a "slice of life" show with the qualification that this carries none of the usual connotations that term carries in the anime community. The visual cues, jokes, and banter could just as easily have taken place in a live-action sitcom. Episodes are alternately comedic and touching and often both as the show follows the lives of three sisters in the wake of their father's death as one prepares to move out after marriage. Its strength is in portraying these intimate moments, hinting at the depth of the characters and their relationships. How funny you find it will of course depend, but I'd say the writing is more hit than miss though the limited cast and setting - the entire show consists of three on-stage characters in a single (rather large) room - may feel a bit claustrophobic at times.

As for enjoying the cast, the show requires no familiarity to enjoy them, but fans should enjoy seeing VTubers building their acting muscles with something more serious than usual fare. Tokino Sora deserves special recognition here for her performance as the eldest sister, and it's great to see her star continue to rise. Any shakiness in their performances can be attributed to lack of experience that fans will find all the more endearing. The after recording interviews with the cast following the episodes are also a treat as you get their reactions and banter with the writers.

Also to be enjoyed is the animation quality, which is some of the best I've seen involving VTubers. The soft lighting especially gives a feeling of warmth and intimacy that enhances the already pleasant nature of the sketches. This of course has its flaws - the sometimes awkward motions of actors due to motion tracking issues as well as some of the details on their bodies (for example, hair highlights indicating lighting that don't shift when they move) can be distracting, but these are minor issues which stand out mostly because of the already high quality of everything else.

As a drama and as another feature starring VTubers I'd call Watanuki-san a success. Though this isn't what I usually come to VTubers for and wouldn't be particularly excited for the future of VTubers to be sitcoms, it's decently entertaining and gives us another venue in which to enjoy them.

Is there anything worse than bad-looking fanservice? If you said bad-looking fanservice padded with 12 episodes of inexplicable story, you'd be right, and this brings us to Popotan, an early 00's vehicle for breasts and panty shots very loosely inspired by an erotic visual novel by the same name.

I had very low expectations and ample warning for this show, expecting only said breasts and panty shots with a modicum of light storytelling to carry them. Unfortunately I was to be disappointed even in these very qualified expectations.

What Popotan is about doesn't matter - the show makes this very clear early on. Yes, there's a larger ... story about connecting with others which is given undue seriousness for such a light piece of entertainment, but what underpins it is a plot so half-baked you're risking salmonella poisoning by watching it. It's not even clear that the characters are time travelers until about halfway in, but by that point you've likely learned to take the show's storytelling in stride (or better yet dropped it). However, things just get more confusing from then on, with dramatic scenes falling laughably alongside gratuitous nudity for some extra tonal dissonance. Where did these characters come from? Who is the person they're looking for? Why do only two of them appear to be able to use magic? Why does Mai try so hard to befriend an anti-social girl when she knows that she's going to disappear and leave this girl alone, repeating the exact thing she now deeply regrets from a previous point in history? None of these and more will be answered.

Sadly, for those who can suffer a terrible story for some decent fanservice, the art of Popotan does its best to disappoint here as well. While the character designs themselves are distinct and cute, in motion here they're mediocre at best and sometimes reduced to blocky geometric shapes. Certainly some of the best animation is reserved for the frequent bath scenes, but even here the show fails to deliver consistently. On a side note - it's somewhat remarkable that for such a brazen work that features all of the characters with detailed upper-body nudity in every episode (often more than once) it's surprisingly skimpy when it comes to Mii.

As for positives? First and foremost is likely the capable voicework of Momoi Haruko as Mii, who is just as nauseatingly (enchantingly?) cute as you'd expect. You also get some nice early 00's atmosphere and a decent soundtrack. The fanservice is also decent when it wants to be, but is probably not worth the price of admission.

If you’re reading this review then chances are you have some idea what a Virtual Youtuber (hereafter “VTuber”) is. At the very least, you’ve likely seen a Kizuna Ai screenshot float across your screen at some point, and maybe even watched a video or two. For those living under a rock, some searching on Youtube might provide a better explanation than the brief one here.

In short, starting with Kizuna Ai in 2017 and expanding exponentially there’s been a trend of people who utilize VR technology to manipulate avatars to make entertaining videos. As the name suggests, these videos often live on Youtube. These people are ... the stars of Virtual-san, the first feature-length show dedicated entirely to VTubers. As with many trends there’s plenty of non-virtual money floating in the air, and popularity has combined with profitability to produce Virtual-san wa Miteiru.

(Before I go further, it may be worth noting that Kizuna Ai, who has been outspoken about staying on the platform after which she styled herself the first “Virtual Youtuber” for her videos, isn’t actually in this show, though she does sing the first version of the OP where she jokingly remarks that there “isn’t enough love” (that is, “not enough ai”).

For those who already familiar with the content (or if you’re not and are just going to watch it regardless), how does this first foray into an exclusive television feature fare? Putting the haters aside (and as the score for this show as well as the various negative reviews it’s received elsewhere indicate, there are more than a few), the answer will likely vary depending on who you are. If you’re someone who’s actively engaged with any of the wide cast of VTubers – and there are many here, including some of the most popular – you’ll likely enjoy seeing your favorites on screen. If this is your first time dipping your toes in the virtual pool, unless you’re particularly patient you’ll likely be lost.

The dividing line here is, funny enough, its faithfulness to the medium it’s reproducing. The comedic sketches which make up the show often adopt the same loose formatting as many VTuber videos, meaning a lot of ad-libbing among the more scripted segments. The directing style of some of the sketches is also loose and can also feel amateurish, with scenes oddly drawn-out even after the punchline has been delivered. Dedicated fans will likely take much of this in stride – in a medium populated by amateur talent where uneven delivery is the rule, Virtual-san will feel familiar. Whether this familiarity is a good thing is another matter and will vary by viewer, and there will be those who expect something a little tighter to suite a full-length TV show.

Something which is faithful but notably better than average is the animation – Dwango has used the Unity engine to create something which looks cleaner and smoother than many VTuber videos, and certainly better than the VRchat to which it’s sometimes compared.

But beyond the actual content of the sketches, part of the fun of Virtual-san is the look it offers at a distilled version of a growing cultural phenomenon. In addition to the main cast, we’re treated to a host of other VTubers around the edges. Whether it’s the rotating cast of guests on Tsukino Mito’s quiz show, the 30-second introductions from amateur VTubers in the “Minna no Virtual-san” corner, or those who might just walk through and say the name of the show in an eyecatch, the show does a good job in providing a snapshot of how big and diverse this trend is.

Regardless of the actual quality of the series, Virtual-san is important as a proof of concept, with a 20-odd minute show dedicated entirely to VTubers airing on television alongside other otaku fair. Yes, it’s a little rough in execution, and the often hit-or-miss subs by Crunchyroll don’t help – but much like the often rough-cut introduction videos of many VTubers themselves it’s not hard to see where its potential lies. And given that there are at least two shows and a movie starring VTubers on the way, Virtual-san looks to be just the beginning. In the end, it will likely be seen as an important first and predecessor to other, stronger works starring VTubers which are yet to come.

Starlight Review is what happens when you aim high but fail in execution. One could almost forgive the director for all of the homages to Ikuhara (though curiously I didn't catch any to Penguindrum, a project he actually worked on) peppered throughout the work, but when all is said and done these references, set among a half-baked story, may come off as clumsily endearing but end up holding it up to these other, better works and highlighting where it falls short.

Stylistically, this work comes off saturated in Ikuhara, and from episode one it takes up some very explicit imagery from Utena (the duels, the tower) ... and sets them to a very pretty orchestral score and even musical theater. An underground audition! A scoring system which rules over students mercilessly! Calls from a mysterious entity that offers to grant your wishes! A giraffe! There's clearly a lot going on here - a mix of familiar and fresh - and even if the art's fairly plain (auditions aside) and Karen could use a throat lozenge, it gives the impression that it's going to tell a big story.

Unfortunately, the story Starlight ends up telling borrows from the weaker elements of Ikuhara - repetition, awkward humor, weirdness for the sake of weirdness - with most of the strengths left aside. The story itself isn't really that big, and depending on how much you enjoy yuri and the Nanami episodes of Utena your mileage may vary on large portions of it which tend to muddle on with awkward humor and eye-rolling professions of love and starlight and promises. Much of the show is centered around conflicts between sets of characters themed around tensions which presumably arise between theater nerds, and while the themes of sacrifice for art and conflict between performers is the show's strongest element even these tend to lack depth. What's remarkable about Starlight is how conservative the storytelling element is - the conflicts between the side characters are wrapped up uncomfortably neatly, most within the space of a single episode, and they're back to being friends by the next. For a theater school everyone's awfully nice to one another. One also has to wonder at the consequence of focusing so much on these side characters when they all end up shuffled off to the audience for the show's finale.

The main story of Starlight is equally unsatisfying, if not moreso due to all of the attention it's given. Featuring some of the blandest character design in the story, they're also some of the least interesting - for how fraught their relationship is, the substance of it isn't developed much beyond Karen's endless repetition of their promise and Hikari's lukewarm reception for much of the show. Like other elements of the show, it's something which intrigues on first glance and tires on third or fourth.

Starlight has an interesting premise, and despite its unambitious execution it has some genuinely strong episodes. Despite this weak first entry, I'm looking forward to what the director does next.

A show that screams 'bad adaptation' pretty much off the bat, Dance in the Vampire Bund is a mix of gratuitous fanservice and over-the-top violence portrayed within a convoluted world that is explained in periodic info-dumps and vague plot points that could only be satisfied by going to the source material.

If you've come for the loli vampire queen, I imagine you'll only leave somewhat satisfied. While the politicking, romantically troubled and not-infrequently naked Mina Tepis steals the spotlight in terms of character (much more so than our generic jacked werewolf high school protagonist), she's trapped within the mess of a plot that make her intentions ... even more vague than perhaps even she would like them. What she's doing is given a lot of weight but never enough explanation or grounding to really make it compelling beyond the fact that she strikes such dramatic poses when talking about it.

After the rather lackluster first episode that isn't representative of the substance or tone of the rest of the story it's almost non-stop drama and action, taking only the occasional breather to give any sort of substance to what's going on on screen beyond all the flesh and blood. This might sound exciting to people who are here exactly for those reasons, but more often than not it's just confusing as we whip from one shocking plot revelation to the next, adding yet more characters and intrigue in order to keep the viewer watching.

The charitable reading of this work is that the is has to fit a much better-paced manga into 12 episodes, but even so this knowledge would not save it. Beyond the story itself, the art is lackluster and often leans on long shots with low detail in order to save on budget in a way that's reminiscent of the earlier episodes of Bakemonogatari but without the charm of the dialogue or characters. The character design itself isn't particularly attractive but does communicate quite clearly the intent to make them look so.

Watching Bund, you'll understand why that, when people think Shaft and Vampires, they don't think of this. However, beyond that and a few moments of some of the more graphic fanservice I've seen, there's little worth watching this show for.

As an anime, Girls und Panzer has a relatively simple formula - win the tournament, save the school. Given the conclusion was already pretty much foregone in the show there wasn't too much tension as to how the plot would ultimately resolve, but what it lacked in story it made up for in a cast of entertaining characters and exciting, highly-detailed battle scenes.

The film does everything the show does - quite literally, in fact, as the set-up is the exact same premise, boiling down to about an hour and a half of tank battles and half an hour of emotional fluff. This may seem lazy ... to some, but if you were sitting down to this show expecting something other than the thinnest pretense to feature lots of explosions and character service I don't know what you were watching to begin with.

As far as providing character service and explosions goes, the movie does a decent job with both. All the favorites return and characters such as Katyusha and Anchovy get a surprising (and welcome) amount of screen time, but given the need to cram so many characters into two hours there are many others who are reduced to a few soundbites. Things like Yukari's sneaking missions or... whatever the other characters did are notably absent. The opposition, unlike the teams in the series, isn't given any sort of obvious characterization and functions only as another obstacle for the underdogs to overcome. Belying the prodigious amount of art featuring her the head of the new opposing team is relatively nondescript beyond her character design - other than being a loli who's good at doing tank stuff and likes a certain stuffed bear there's little else to say about her and she gets relatively few scenes.

The battle scenes - making up the bulk of the film - are good-looking and well-executed. There are some new tanks introduced as well (one of which causes a lot of big, nice-looking explosions), although unlike the show we aren't given much background information about them.

Beyond the characters and the battles there's relatively little to say about the movie - the focus of the remaining half hour is largely the characters feeling sad and, unlike the show, the planning process for the battle is relatively short. There's some bonding between Miho and her sister but here too the film treads lightly and mostly functions as a 'feel good' bookend to the events of the show. The battle between schools ends somewhat abruptly and the aftermath is some brief scenes set to music while the credits roll - but then, given the thin excuse for a plot, were you expecting anything else?

If you've gotten further than the description of this show, you're probably wondering how low of a MAL rating you're willing to tough out for 12 episodes of loli fanservice. If it's fanservice you're looking for, you're in luck, because there's tons of it. Unfortunately, besides the plethora of pantie shots, skirt lifts, ridiculous outfits designed to facilitate these things, and brief moments of semi-nudity, there's little else worth mentioning about this show except how bad it is.

There are some shows that take a ludicrous premise and make it work - where they could have just gone with predictably lewd, they surprise with at ... least a modicum of character depth or stories that consist of more than just an excuse to see the characters wearing (or not) various outfits in a variety of ridiculous situations.

This is the show that Lotte no Omocha wants to and fails to be. Rather than a simple ecchi comedy, it attempts to craft a love story between characters who are at once both vapid and painfully tedious. Watching them fumble their way through twelve episodes of overly dramatic and predictably resolved conflicts is absolutely uninteresting, as the writers failed to give them any kind of depth or emotional IQ. Lotte acts out and storms off, her harem friend says 'hime-sama' a number of times with a very concerned look before saying and doing the exact right thing, causing Lotte to tear up and say 'Naoya' a few times before apologizing and leaving the viewer wondering why they were fighting in the first place.

Lotte functions only as the troubled loli character - she has trouble with things like wetting herself, making friends (she has none to start off with), and is in a big fight with her mother over an inexplicably unresolved problem. These things are also treated with the utmost seriousness and lots of very sad music. Naoya, despite being 23 and the father of a child (apparently raised by himself) since he was 13, is confused and flustered by things like having an erection or falling in love yet doesn't think twice about the fact that he was hired to get a blowjob from a 10-year-old fantasy creature from another world. The rest of the characters are barely worth mentioning except that their main function is to provide the viewer with a wider variety of panties and breasts to look at as this trainwreck plays out.

All of this is brought to life with generally mediocre-to-cheap-looking animation that makes heavy use of montages and flashbacks as you can see the animators sweating their budget.

This is a show that's actually worse than the already weak premise. No amount of Rie Kugimiya or pantie shots made it better, and there's no reason why you should subject yourself to it.

Oreimo was the first anime to break my heart, but a little more than a year, all 12 novels and (some of) the PSP game later I've finished my rewatch of the series and wanted to talk about what's kept me returning to the series, and why I ultimately decided to keep the second season at a 6.

Oreimo is at its heart a sibling romantic comedy, one that's deeply colored by the author's very obvious wish-fulfillment as well as his putting his experiences and perceptions of otaku culture into literature, and then on screen. At its best and most accessible, the viewer, like Kyousuke, is ... treated to a whirlwind tour of eroge, cosplay, shopping in Akihabara, vending at Comiket, idols, fujoshi, figure collecting, and more. The way these desires are treated is almost loving in detail, shown in the great amount of detail put into everything from the changing OPs and Kirino's games to the R18 Meruru doujinshi being sold in some fantasy equivalent of Toranoana. The exploration of Kirino's interests mirrors the writer's (and many viewers') own wrestling with socially complicated desires, and her relationship with Kyousuke is one big imouto eroge fantasy, complete with route selections and chase scenes.

All of this together provides what I think is some of the lasting charm of the series, and the second season compliments the first well in that respect. There's more eroge, more idol concerts, more comiket - all depicted in the show's decent-to-good art and sound quality. However, this comes with a greater focus on character relationships as the complications from the first season are developed in the second, with mixed results. Part of the strain comes from the general trouble of trying to adapt the books to screen - the relatively mild amount of cutting and rewriting they did in the first season is greatly upped here as they struggle to adapt the rest of the series to 12 episodes.

As a result, the character relationships tend to feel a bit more cramped and their actions and personalities a bit more exaggerated than in the novels. Large portions of the story related to Ayase, Kanako, and Kyousuke himself were cut, leaving a still-enjoyable but heavily edited story that feels a little less massaged than the first season. There's also a distinct harem-y flavor to the whole thing for which your mileage may vary.

Ultimately, the flattening of characters comes not only because of compromises in bringing this to screen but because, at the end of the day, the characters are written in part to illustrate various facets of otaku culture as stressed in season 1, and to compliment and complicate the relationship between Kirino and Kyousuke as stressed in season 2. They exist as it were as so many various routes in one of Kirino's eroge - the many tempting choices still revolving around the true sister route, and though who Kyousuke actually ends up with and how his relationship with Kirino and the rest works out is largely left up to the OVAs the work is faithful to one of the golden rules of sibling romances - there can be no sibling love story without suffering.

Oreimo season 2 is a decent sequel to the first season. It feels different and not always in a good way, but if you enjoyed the first season it's worth a watch.

I was recommended this show by a friend who has traveled much further down the moe rabbit hole than I have, so I went in with two basic assumptions: this isn't a show about war, and it's not about life in a post-apocalyptic world. While I think these were safe assumptions, I ended up being very wrong.

This is a show about cute girls doing cute things. It's also a show about those same girls reliving war trauma and debating whether they should torture war captives in the remains of a world still being destroyed by humanity. That uneasy coexistence is part of the beauty of ... So Ra No Wo To, allowing it to go beyond being just another genre show.

Some of the initial appeal of this show came from the idea of 'playing' with war, sort of the same way Ro-Kyu-Bu! 'plays' with basketball - taking a very 'masculine' and serious activity and making it cute. But sort of like Ro-Kyu-Bu!, the cuteness provides an entry point to a pretty substantial (if very different) story. There's still a lot of 'fluff' here - not filler, but enough touching character interactions and cute for the sake of cute that if you're not patient or into it to begin with you'll probably be drifting away from the series (and off to sleep) before you're too far in. But there is a point at which the brutal conflict and dying world intrude upon the precious way of life these characters have built - this isn't where the show 'gets good', but rather, you realize that all the sweetness of the initial episodes is in fact a fragile and embattled alternative to the ugliness of war, where those who have experienced and committed horrors can recover in a world that was denied to them.

The more general messages of 'peace' and 'common humanity' can feel heavy-handed at times, especially towards the end, sort of like a beautiful melody played a bit too loudly if not off-key. The main character suffers from a bit of the same, her spirited naivete sometimes tending towards typical moe blob problems, but overall the series creates characters that are charming while also being complicated in ways you don't often see in these sorts of shows.

Great art, incredibly catchy ED - this show far exceeded expectations, and I'd highly recommend it as a wonderful piece that's tended to get overlooked.

Gochuumon is a show I first picked up on off of some crossover art with Sora no Method, which in retrospect might have been a missed red flag given how that series has played out. But after a few episodes, reams of fanart of the most adorable and youngest of the main characters, and with its banging OP theme implanted firmly in my music line-up, I was hooked.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a case of jumping the gun. The more I watched, the more I realized that the initial flash that had pulled me in was just that - frontloading the series with ... catchy content to give the appearance of a better show. Lots of shows do this, but the 'slump' in this case was half the series, and by the time it felt like it had found its stride there was a handful of episodes left. The high-energy theme belies a show that's happy to meander through 12 episodes not doing much of anything, rarely very funny and rarely very cute but enough of each that you probably won't drop it.

It's not a bad show, and it certainly has its moments - Chino, the daughter of the owner of the Rabbit House cafe, is great as the eternally nonplussed companion to the endearingly scatterbrained Cocoa. Their sparring relationship as 'sisters' is one of the better dynamics in the show, and is perhaps the 'story' of Gochuumon in a similar way to how Nano and Mio coming to terms with who they are are the 'stories' of Nichijou. The atmosphere, too, is - to risk a metaphor - comforting like the scent of coffee wafting through Rabbit House must be. Between the gentle pianica of the ost and the many shots of characters strolling cobblestone streets, you get a sense of the sleepy European town they apparently set this in (albeit one where characters eat cake on Christmas).

Unfortunately, both the story and the atmosphere get crowded out by so-so humor, extremely iffy art, and a cast that is far too large for its own good. The humor is played more for cuteness than for actually being funny, resulting in lots of mediocre jokes told poorly. Most of the side characters are made up of a few jokes played on repeat - the infatuated kohei, the spacey, awkward writer, the other sort of spacey and uncomfortably invasive mothering girl - though they manage to massage Rize's tsundere role over the course of the series.

This is a show that seems destined to be forgotten among the hoards of moe filler, occasionally recalled for its odd title, great theme, and a few characters that will perhaps live beyond the series itself. Perhaps the few interesting moments I mentioned make it worth watching - perhaps it's also worth mentioning that there's a decent amount of fanservice which, while often crass and silly, isn't unwelcome if you're partial to the characters - but in the end there are plenty of other shows that have all the ingredients that Gochuumon has and managed to do it better.