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Feb 10, 2024
Abandoned by her own parents and with a bounty on her head, pitiful 8-year-old Femicia is forced to run far from her hometown to survive. She embarks on a journey, now truly alone. Weak, poor, homeless, and rummaging through dumps to survive.
This is a fantasy anime that follows the unusual POV of an abandoned child. It is so adorable, but so tragic, it's hard not to root for her happiness.
To address the elephant in the room, it's unadvisable to come into this show expecting a typical 'isekai' experience.
- It is not a power fantasy.
- It does not try to immediately hook you
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in. No overpowered abilities, exciting quests, nor ambitious goals. At least not in the considerable starting portion of the anime.
- There is no 'isekai protagonist' here. - The protagonist's characterization and behavior is that of a genuine 8-year-old child. The 'past life' is just a little nagging voice in the child's head.
The unfulfilled expectations caused by the genre might be one reason why this show isn't having the best reception.
With her handy guidebook on hand, the little girl goes on an adventure and explores the world, taking in plenty new sights and having plenty new firsts. Along the way, she will have small discoveries, encounter terrifying situations, and maybe even make a new friend.
Because of this slow and personal way of writing the story, the show feels very humanly personal, as we closely and organically follow the life of a weak, scared little child doing her best in a world that seems to be against her.
The world also opens up at a slow pace to let us, the viewer, soak in the intrigue of these new experiences alongside the child. This uniquely personal fantasy experience is precisely what makes this anime feel so special and magical. Even more so combined with the beautiful art, soundtrack and execution.
Truly a hidden gem of the season. A stunningly beautiful OP and ED as well.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Dec 19, 2023
Because actively avoiding all flags is never enough to escape the spotlight when you're a main character.
This was an enjoyable show that never tried to take itself very seriously. It focuses on a relaxing power fantasy experience, following a protagonist who dislikes the spotlight but can't seem to catch a break. It is comfy and relaxing, and also has its share of epic fights and wholesome moments.
A good bunch of the episodes feel low-energy, repetitive, or boring and pointless. So much so that at one point I had given up on it and fast-forwarded an episode to get through it. But I was
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lucky I stuck around, because after the slow-burn came some really interesting developments.
The mechanics of this game world are pretty interesting. Though it's not foolproof and properly thought out (like how the protagonist has such a huge unique advantage for doing something that shouldn't be that unique), it is still pretty fleshed out and quite interesting to follow along. Especially so when all the meticulously gathered gear, skills, and items finally come together in battle.
I enjoyed watching the protagonist actively avoiding special events and duels - opposite of what you would normally see in this sort of VRMMORPG setting where players normally have a hunger for quests and events. In trying to avoid trouble, he ends up getting dragged into even bigger and more major events. This simple method of comedy makes the overpowered main character trope more tolerable using comic relief, as he gains all the attention and renown against his wishes, ironically as a result of his consistent efforts to avoid it.
Also, the Fairy Queen is very cute... Kemomimi too. So fairies in this world double as kemomimi-havers...
From here on I'm going to be more in-depth about my opinions on the show's writing, so there are likely going to be some spoilers to elaborate on the points. Though I'll try not to spoil more than what is needed.
THE WRITING:
The show is on first impression extremely average. But personally, there are many significant times when a little hint of genius peeks out from under the show's hood, with random bits of mature writing, patient foreshadowing, random events with hidden purposes, humanising monologues, and organic, cathartic payoffs.
On that note, what probably makes this isekai stand out the most positively for me is how it handles 'payoff'. It is never spoonfed; what is going to happen next isn't as clear-cut and pronounced as the average isekai. Instead, we are dripfed various things with no further explanation, and we are left to speculate subconsciously, and left in the dark about what will happen next. We often see him doing his thing, and the show just moves on without telling you what was the point of all that. The show patiently bides its time and waits for the right moment for everything to come together in one big moment. The way the show handles payoff is really mature and organic.
For example, Earth would spend episodes meticulously gathering items, crafting gear, and obtaining skills on his own free time. He might also obtain some random items and skills that he just stores away with no idea what to do with them. It feels almost eerie and unnatural how much emphasis the show is putting on these boring processes and unused Chekhov's gun elements, and something feels off as the show takes its own sweet time with something so boring that you want to just skip ahead.
It then feels really organic and cathartic when suddenly all the little things he obsessed over come in handy. The weird feeling finally reveals its true colors, as we are treated to an epic battle that puts all of the things he has meticulously obtained into use, as it all comes together at once for a huge payoff that you should've expected but didn't because the show had given the façade that it was incompetent.
It is this mature writing that kept me engaged and attached to the show throughout its run. After finishing the show, I no longer hold the impression that it is 'extremely average' at all. It has a unique charm that makes it stand out, albeit subtly. But it is also one that probably only avid isekai enjoyers might care about, be able to notice, and appreciate, especially given the barrier of entry that is the boring and generic first 3-4 episodes.
THE COST:
The cost of this, however, is that there are a lot of episodes where the protagonist just feels like he is doing whatever task pops up in front of him at a whim. Because he does this so much, this show often doesn't feel like it is following a story arc, and often feels episodic instead. Personally, I'm not fond of this because I much prefer shows with follow overarching stories over episodic ones, due to how inconsequential episodic shows can feel.
It doesn't help that the episodic episodes are usually the weaker ones as well - where nothing much happens, where the slow burn takes place, and which ultimately leads to the greater payoff. Although the payoff might be great, the slow-burn itself is the least enjoyable part of the show. It unfortunately isn't an insignificant chunk of it either. That is not to say that some of these episodes weren't decent, but they are just comparatively lacklustre when put against the more climatic episodes where the protagonist spends more time interacting with major characters and making a bigger splash on the game world.
CONCLUSION:
Overall, this is a very enjoyable healing show that doesn't take itself seriously. Boring at times, but at other times surprisingly interesting. And as a whole, it knows what it wants to be and does it well enough for the isekai fan to enjoy as a pleasant treat of comfort food.
Score (as of writing): 7.4
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 30, 2023
As someone who started watching anime in the early 2010s, this anime felt like a blast to the past and really reminded me of why I love anime and moe culture so much.
This anime is a love-letter to bishoujo visual novels. If you love visual novels, bishoujo anime characters and art, anime otaku culture, and maybe some old school tech stuff (?), this show is pure nostalgia and fanservice. From what I've seen, it seems that the game development setting is not the main focus and is more a means to give the viewer insights into the creation of visual novels - the main focus
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being bishoujo game history and culture. This series is one big appreciation post, both this and the manga source material, like a time capsule capturing the early era and evolution of of otaku culture, even inserting real-life anime and visual novel references wholesale and unedited.
Contrary to what the MAL page might imply, this show is an anime-original sequel or side story of the 16bit Sensation manga. (I have not read much of the manga so I cannot comment too in-depth on this though)
The manga takes place in the 90s, following a PC shop sales assistant who knows nothing about bishoujo games. She discovers and is roped into making bishoujo games as a character artist in the early years of the industry. It explores the early era of bishoujo games through a non-otaku's journey in 1992.
The anime on the other hand takes place in 2023, following a modern day bishoujo game fanatic. Stuck in an unsatisfying routine job and unable to make the bishoujo visual novel of her dreams, she makes a wish and is shot into the past, where experiences the early days of the medium she loves so dearly first-hand. It explores the early era of bishoujo games, through the eyes of a bishoujo otaku living in 2023, via time travel back to 1992.
As such, the protagonists from both the manga and anime discover and experience the early days of bishoujo games, but from different starting points.
The manga has a linear progression through time beginning with 1992, while in the anime the protagonist makes time travelling jumps from year to year against this same linear timeline. Literally "Another Layer" layered above the existing story, as the title says. This is a genius meta set-up and creative decision made to cover the series' information-heavy topics in a way that is friendlier and more familiar to the average modern day anime viewer when compared to the manga. (In the manga, there is so much text outside of panels that it feels like you are reading a comic-textbook about visual novel history rather than a manga) By having the story take place from a 2023-girl's POV instead of 1992-girl's POV, the average modern day viewer can be taken through the protagonist's jouney of exploration in a more relatable way, and the stark differences of the older era can be explained organically by the other characters. In this manner, the anime is able to very effectively show and contrast the present culture and what we have now against the surprisingly distant, different past - showing how far we have come and how different things are now - the things we have gained and the things lost to time that most of us will likely never experience or ever even hear about.
The main character is annoying and has an annoying high-pitched voice. The art style seems a little dated and slightly mediocre. However, this might just be my nostalgia speaking, but when keeping the subject matter in mind, Konoha is really the most exaggerated and exemplified vessel of a bishoujo otaku, with her otaku quirks cranked up to the maximum. The way she behaves is also reminiscent of how a specific archetype, common in visual novels or 2000-2010s animes, talks and behaves. Konoha is just that passionate annoying but lovable idiot archetype, with an unadulterated full-force passion and full-force annoyingness. This in-your-face annoyingness isn't as common now in modern mainstream anime, and it also feels especially annoying and out of place here because of how realistic the setting is. But I believe this is done purposefully because that personality itself is sort of a symbol of the very moe culture which this anime wishes to embrace, and is thus extremely thematically fitting (in addition to her optimism being narratively fitting to the plot). The same goes for the art style. It feels just the right amount of dated to really feel like maybe a 2010s anime, yet not look too shabby. Everything plays in to the nostalgia aspect. All things said and done, the more episodes I watched, the more I found myself deeply appreciating the annoying MC and the dated art style because it reminds me so much of the anime I watched in my own early anime watching days.
Enough pretentiousness from me. Getting down to the story itself, I don't really have much of value to say. The story is lighthearted and uplifting, and the storyline so far is typical time travel stuff which is entertaining to follow along. The side characters aren't memorable, but the dynamic between the main pair is very wholesome. It's too early in the anime for me to say much more though. I do feel the biggest appeal of the anime is its heavy appreciation of bishoujo culture rather than the story itself.
The OP sequence is very cool, while the ED song is a beautiful nostalgic callback to the style of OP songs for some of the most well-known classic bishoujo visual novels. The fact that the ED was composed by Shinji Orito, a founding member and composer of Key Visual Arts, probably explains why.
I don't like to give airing shows a rating, so this is a provisional one.
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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May 27, 2023
At first glance on MAL, the negative reviews of the anime stand out, but that's the surface level. In reality, only a small percentage of reviews on the website even get seen. Most people are in the silent majority who do not see a need to actively engage in internet discussions. Only the most vocal with strong opinions take the effort to post, read and react to reviews within those first few episodes when reviews are volatile and most likely to reach the front page. In other words, strongly opinionated or highly controversial takes inevitably have the greatest reach and end up forming the inescapable
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bulk of the discourse that algorithmically surfaces to our feeds, or so that's how it likely is for anime like "Oshi no Ko". ~ Mem-Cho, probably, or not
- I love how the discussions I see online about this series constantly remind me of the various topics it covers. The anime boasts its strength in its relevance to internet culture so much so that even the divisive discourse it generates itself becomes a testament to the accuracy of its themes.
"Oshi no Ko" is an anime that opens in an awkward place - an uncommon setting with a simple-minded protagonist who has an annoying hobby. But the magic already begins there, because at a glance, the opening setting has almost nothing in common with the true theme and setting of the show.
"Oshi no Ko" is an anime that covers real Japanese media-related topics in a sensational way. It delivers an engaging storyline, the direction is very apt, and the animation is absolutely amazing. I personally really like the voice acting coupled with the character animations of the main leads. But to me the star of the show is definitely the character designs and drawings, which are some of the best of this (moe) type in recent times.
The first (1.5-hour) episode especially is a packaged masterpiece of an opener for an anime. It sets up an intriguing and sensational premise, but presents a very slightly eerie and foreboding atmosphere on the side which foreshadows its true themes, before concluding itself in an extremely gripping way. The animation and direction of this first episode stand out particularly, and are what I believe cemented the anime's huge popularity so early on. I personally believe this first episode is a legendary one in anime which will stay in the minds of anime fans for quite some time to come. And this absolutely extends to the anime's opening and ending which showcase Studio Doga Kobo's superior skills in the OP and ED sequence department, both sequences being masterpieces with amazing songs and animations that perfectly fit with the anime's themes and further enhance the edgy/eerie and over-dramatic experience and atmosphere it delivers.
The anime's overwhelming impact and popularity leaves many viewers looking at the studio in charge - Doga Kobo - and getting bewildered when seeing an unfamiliar name. But make no mistake, this studio is easily well-equipped to handle this anime. Its previous shows like Shikimori-san and Maoujou de Oyasumi prove that the studio has an aptitude for moe (and in extension ""idol"") anime, for polished, appealing and on-point animations, and for lovely color designs and background settings, all of which are reflected in "Oshi no Ko". But the two aforementioned shows target comparatively niche audiences and went largely underappreciated in the mainstream market. On the contrary, "Oshi no Ko"'s sensational nature and mass appeal, coupled with the amazing character designs of Hirayama Kanna (alias "kappe") who also designed the extremely appealing characters of Kanojo Okarishimasu, resulted in the absolutely stellar visual presentation and narratively sensational first episodes of "Oshi no Ko" which captivated viewers enough to generate a buzz that broke the studio's (and possibly the animator's) name into the mainstream overseas audience.
After the first episode however, progress on the main mystery slows down as it returns to a more slice-of-life / drama type of progression, rather than keeping up the momentum and following through with one of heavier mystery and suspense. It seems that contrary to how the first episode went, the series actually intends to primarily focus on the drama through multiple very impactful character stories based on real-life scenarios, while only building upon the main mystery slowly. This is opposed to focusing on the mystery, suspense and even psychological battles which some might expect this anime to primarily focus on as a result of how the first episode went - and these unmet expectations will inevitably cause disappointment. But regardless, as the series progresses, with inspirational showings of passionate determination, harsh injustice, insightful wit and more, I believe it has solidified its identity and proven that it can stay engaging, even delivering a myriad of emotions in a similar manner to the first episode, in spite of choosing to focus predominantly on the drama and mystery second.
Despite slowing down on the mystery aspects, the pacing can actually get a bit fast as the series progresses. It becomes a recurring occurrence that certain events, especially those with long durations, aren't fully fleshed out and are instead skimmed over or conveyed as quick montages. This causes the anime to feel a bit rushed and lose its believability as it feels like matters have been oversimplified.
But in exchange, the anime budgets more runtime on the more dramatic or exposition-heavy scenes, such as the scenes that explain the cruel truths of the media industry, or scenes of characters getting burned by their mistakes. In choosing specific scenes to flesh out in detail and others to skim through, the anime is able to make a huge splash to many, being able to provide gripping or inspiring drama each week, but at the expense of feeling largely unrealistic to many others, due to its shortened, oversimplified, yet overglorified events.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if this sensationalized overexaggerated approach to storytelling which haters of the anime despise so much was very much overdone on purpose. "Framing". The direction of the anime literally following the practices preached within the anime itself. What better way to drive in the message of the story?
"Oshi no Ko"'s story is not an overly complex or overly deep one, but it is a dramatic, sensational, and thought-provoking one that successfully reflects the nature of online interactions and the media industry in Japan, and to a large extent that of the rest of the world's as well. Coupled with its amazing presentation in its art, animation, music, voice acting and directing, though the anime isn't perfect, it still definitely deserves all of the praise and attention it has garnered, and to many I believe it will easily be one of the most gripping and entertaining anime that will come out this year.
Episodes in: 7/11
Preliminary score: 9.1/10
(loosely scored on enjoyment & memorability, story & meaning, art & presentation)
Reviewer’s Rating: 9
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Mar 28, 2023
Very relaxing isekai with a focus on cooking accompanied by a generic RPG-type system and progression.
An online grocery skill is so stupid but sets the tone really well. And gotta admit it's also very strangely appealing; to have an isekai UberEats. He cooks though so I guess it's a little different.
Man's overpowered in such a silly way - all the legendary overpowered beings want to hog his food, and that's all the leverage he needs to breeze through and chill for his entire journey without lifting a finger to fight monsters himself (though he was forced to anyway lol).
The food itself doesn't look
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particularly good imo, but the step-by-step recipe narration over the well animated cooking process (which apparently is even closely based off actual cooking footage) makes it convincing and appetizing in its own way.
I'm honestly so glad they didn't include a single waifu. (Not counting the goddesses) Finally an isekai that doesn't go straight to spam-introducing waifus and building a harem.
Yes, all we need is Sui. Sui is cutest character ever conceived. Sui is love Sui is life.
NEGATIVES:
I do feel that the show gets a little repetitive, and some parts are a little too predictable and boring, as if they're there for no good reason.
One example is the shampoo selling part. It was too barebones and straightforward. Too unimaginative and unamusing that it was kinda just there for the sake of it.
Another example is the goddess offering bit - it was just repetitive and kind of extra because of how little it added and how uneventful, pointless and short the scenes were. The story could go on perfectly fine without any of the goddesses, and their presence hasn't really added anything of significance - other than being an excuse to give Mukouda and the gang even more of an unfair OP advantage, which is supposed to be funny but imo is just lame because it takes away more potential for *earned* progression.
Honestly, even the core loop of "receive quest to hunt monsters > hunt monsters > cook monsters > dissect monsters > eat monster meats" might've gotten boring by the end of the show. The different meats aren't significantly different enough to tell apart and appreciate for the viewer - it's not like the viewer can taste it, so it's all just 'premium meat' all the same to be taken at Fel's and Mukouda's word and face value that it tastes amazing. It doesn't have the same in-depth appreciation and variation in ingredients and cooking that something like Shokugeki no Souma had, so it fails to make the meals stand out in a meaningful way. And so even the meals quickly become repetitive, which is a problem when the food is supposed to be the star of the show.
On another note, while I do love how relaxing the show was, it kinda feels like something is missing from it. Maybe it's that there's too little threat to the travelling party, maybe it's that the repetitiveness got to it the longer the show ran, or maybe it's that it was *too* chill and easy - since Fel does all the heavy lifting to earn the dosh, there's no real reason for Mukouda to lift a finger to work towards anything.
I'm hoping it gets more imaginative and exciting somehow if it gets another season. I'm thinking that the RPG side is still kinda underutilised and has a lot of untapped potential that could spice things up. The more exciting and varied parts of the show which I liked the most were actually the RPG bits after all, like the skill learning, evolution, guild progression, and even the parallel hero's party which got teased.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I made quite a few negative remarks, but none of them were really noticeable to me until the lacklustre final few episodes. For most of its run, I actually really enjoyed this show. Starting with Mukouda's unluckiness and aversiveness towards trouble, and trouble coming to him instead, then watching him get bewildered by his new familiar repeatedly, then with the addition of the cutest slime in the world, then the trio growing closer with one another, the show was actually a very pleasant mix of light humour, adorableness and wholesomeness.
Looked forward to this every week and always watched it alongside my meals. Though not perfect, it's definitely a show that rounded out Winter 2023 nicely in the isekai and healing department, and was a pleasure to follow each week.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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