These last few months, Crunchyroll’s subscription has been worth every penny, and now that they have profiles available, I’ve successfully sold hubby on exploring the service to find shows that tickle his fancy. So what have he and I been watching?

Black Clover
In a world where everyone has a certain amount of magical skill, Asta is an orphan who can’t cast any magic. But on the day when everyone of a certain age summons their grimoires, Asta manages to find a special black book and summons an anti-magic sword, making him the most powerful force for equality the world has ever seen.

This is one of hubby’s selections, but I liked it enough that I’ve hung out to watch it even though the first major villain arc had me constantly lamenting, “I can’t wait for these guys to learn how wrong they are.” Someone better pick up that phone, because I called it a hundred episodes back. Continue reading

Right, I’m doing this list because despite playing two games, reading two books, and one manga, I still am nowhere close to having a review ready. It’s not a case of not putting in the effort either. I just have a lot on my plate. For instance, this last week, we got invited to go to a local theater to watch a production of The importance of Being Earnest. I’m not a huge fan of Oscar Wilde, but I haven’t been to a theater production since grade school, and I figured, wouldn’t it be nice to do something different for the weekend?

I looked around and realized I didn’t have any theater appropriate clothing. So each day after lunch, I went shopping. The first day looking for shoes was a bust, but each day after, I got a dress shirt and sweater, new pants, and new shoes. The shoes in particular required a bike ride of twenty kilometers, because everyone local caps shoes sizes for ladies at 39, and I’m a 42. (Douglas Addams would say my feet are the answer to everything.) Then of course, there was going to see the play, and by Sunday I didn’t feel like doing anything besides watching cartoons after all that bike riding.

And so here we are, one week blown, and I’m still no closer to a review. But, when I got up this morning, I thought, Hey, why not use my procrastination to my advantage for once? Granted, these aren’t reviews because I’ve not seen a full season of most of them yet. (And the ones I have seen, you probably already know, or will know if you want to see them based on a blurb.) But hey, maybe you’ll see something you like and hop in with me.

And so here we…no, wait, I said that already. Right, on with the anime I’ve been watching! Continue reading

I’ve been away a while now, so I should explain what happened. Last month we changed internet service providers, and due to a number of paperwork and technical problems, we were without internet service for a little over three weeks. We got back online two weeks back, but I didn’t really have anything to review. I’m reading a couple manga series that I have backlogged and can’t do a proper review on them just yet, and the games I’m playing were already reviewed some time back. And so, to give y’all something new to read, I present to you my first anime review.

Parasyte: The Maxim is an adaptation of a manga I’d read a long, long time ago, but I’d only read the first six or seven issues before becoming unemployed and thus incapable of buying the rest. I remembered those first issues quite fondly, so I thought, “Hey, maybe the anime is just as good.” But it’s not just as good. No, it’s actually much better. Being confined to a single season of 24 episodes, Parasyte: The Maxim benefits from compression and trimming of the side stories that were shown in the manga. This story is more tightly focused around Shinichi Izumi and his struggles against the parasite invaders who have taken over human bodies and consume other humans to survive. Shinichi is put in this position when a parasite attacks him, but fails to take over his brain, fusing with his right hand instead. The parasite takes on the name Migi, or “Righty” in the English manga translations.

Because of Migi, the other parasites can sense Shinichi as unique, and given that he knows their secret, they regard him as a threat and attack him. Migi, being an emotionless entity, does not want to kill his own kind, but recognizes that he will die if Shinichi does. So he helps Shinichi fight new threats as they emerge. That’s the starting premise, which blossoms into something far more complex as the series advances. There’s the introduction of a parasite who is more selective in her kills because she desires to blend in with humans better to remain safe, even experimenting with eating human food to reduce the number of humans she needs to feed upon. For this change in perspective, she too is soon regarded as a threat to her kin and is attacked by other parasites. Her story is woven tightly into Shinichi’s, but represents one of the few side stories that is more fully explored, and I have to say, I really appreciated being given glimpses into her development as a character. Continue reading