So, change has come to this column. I have decided to drop the name Neomo, in favor of the alias I use in a lot of other social media. Nothing else has changed, and no other changes will come; it just has a different title now.
Every season I say here that I don’t want any ‘stressful’ shows, and every season I pick shows that aren’t, regardless of how good they actually are. That’s a good thing for me, I…guess? I mean we have even more big franchises coming back this season (Sword Art Online, Fruits Basket, Food Wars!, Oregairu), along with all the big movies this season (the final Evangelion Rebuild movie, Violet Evergarden, Shirobako). I feel sorry for all the anime journalists and bloggers who plan to watch all of this, while I’m sitting here at my computer desk on a cold and rainy day in the UK, still on lockdown because of the pandemic, only watching a small number of lesser-known shows. Maybe one season, I should just choose one massive franchise to watch and see how that goes…saying that though, that might not be the best idea; I might trash-talk it completely and end up facing the wrath of a large amount of fans…again…
Oh well. Here are all the stress-less shows I’ll be watching here in this Otaku Theater column. I’ll tell you this though: all of the shows I’ll be watching actually…feel like they belong in a Spring season. It’s okay if you don’t understand; maybe it’s just some weird reviewer’s vibe I’ve developed over the years. Also, this is actually be the first ever season where I don’t turn to Crunchyroll for all my shows…
Tamayomi
Studio: Studio A-CAT
Begins: Wednesday. April. 01.
(Available on Funimation)
Tamayomi is a show I’m very interested in watching. I had heard about it sometime early on in the Winter – another cute but semi-serious yuri show (maybe) and so it’s sorta curious how the theme of forming a girls’ baseball team has fascinated me. All of this makes me think back to the 2009 show Taisho Baseball Girls.
Set in the Taisho era (1912-1926), the story of Taisho Baseball Girls focuses on two schoolgirls who form their own baseball team, and prove to their families and classmates that women can be more than just housewives, and can play baseball just as well as the boys can. This is an era where, while the country was slowly being more influenced by the West, the gender divide still remained, and I think this show deserves more credit than it actually got.
With that show still fresh in my mind (I re-watched it a couple of years ago), I’m very keen to see what kind of show Tamayomi will be like, even if it is set in the present day.
Yomi Takeda is a pitcher who has a ‘Magic Throw’, a signature move that she was unable to use in a school baseball tournament, since the catcher wasn’t at her level of play. Beginning again at high school, she discovers the school doesn’t even have a girl’s baseball team. Then she finds out that a long-lost childhood friend, Tamaki Yamazaki, attends the same school.
Tamaki played catcher for Yomi when they were much younger, and could even catch Yomi’s ‘Magic Throw’. And so the mission to start a girls’ baseball team using Yomi’s ‘Magic Throw’ begins.
Curiously, not a lot of information has been released about the show. PVs in the past have been released not that often, and are usually only 30 seconds long. Maybe the studio (Studio A-CAT) wants to keep us in surprise and suspense, or…the show might not be as good as we hope it is. I mean, Tamayomi will be the studio’s first proper TV show; they have only done shorts in the past. I honestly don’t know what to think, and so my curiosity has been what made me pick this show this season. Guess we’ll all just wait and see.
The fact that this show chose to begin on April Fools’ Day may well start some silly jokes, but I don’t see how; I’ve never ever been a fan of all that.
Wave, Listen to Me!
Studio: Sunrise
Begins: Saturday. April. 04.
(Available on Funimation)
No, not another Dogakobo show…and no, there’s nothing wrong with me. They have 2 shows going this season: Houkago Teibou Nisshi and Sing Yesterday For Me, and neither of them interest me at all.
Set in Sapporo, Wave, Listen to Me! tells the story of Minare Koda, who lets out her woes and worries to a radio station worker one night at a bar after some heavy drinking. The next day, she hears her own voice being played on a local radio station. Angry at this misleading recording, she demands answers, only to be duped into starting an impromptu talk show there, which surprisingly, starts to get quite popular.
I actually don’t know much else about this, aside from that it used to be a manga. I was originally going to watch some other lesser-known show, but then I heard about this and this caught my eye straight away. The other show was about a mangaka hiding his raunchy ecchi work from his inquisitive young daughter, and the hi-jinks surrounding that, so I think I probably made the better decision by choosing this show instead…
And now for the only sort-of big franchise I’ll be following this season…
Kaguya-sama: Love is War season 2
Studio: A-1 Pictures
Begins: Saturday. April. 11.
(Available on Funimation)
I came back to Kaguya-sama because of how much I loved season 1. And I came back because I wanted to see more of Kaguya and Miyuki making absolute fools of themselves and of course I came back because I wanted more Chika. That’s just a given, you know?
Oh, we all know the plot. Miyuki and Kaguya are the president and vice-president of the Student Council of a prestigious private high school. She’s the daughter of a very wealthy family that owns one of the biggest conglomerates in Japan, and he’s the school’s top student and popular in the local prefecture. They each have huge crushes on each other but are very reluctant to admit it, so their own egos and pride get in the way, and an epic battle begins on who can lose…and confess first.
These two are just as bad as each other, and that’s precisely why this show has become so great to watch. I was a little late on the bandwagon, having missed out when season 1 aired in the Winter 2019 season; I ended up catching up with it in the Spring, and I kicked myself for not getting the chance to watch it then. But none of that matters now, as I can watch and laugh at these two dorks along with the rest of you.
But it is a big surprise that Funimation were able to bag the rights for season 2, while season 1 remains on Crunchyroll. In fact, Funimation have been able to acquire rights for a lot of shows this season, leaving the other streaming services lagging behind. Heck, Netflix have only been able to get two shows, in addition to whatever this new Ghost in the Shell project turns out to be.
So me talking about avoiding the big franchises has made me a bit of a hypocrite then. Well I’ve already said how much I enjoyed watching Kaguya-sama last year, and I’m looking forward to see if season 2 will do any better. Moving on, time to talk about the out-of-season show you guys picked for me:
Wotakoi: Love Is Hard For Otaku
Studio: A-1 Pictures
(Available on Amazon Video)
From what I gather, Wotakoi was one of those great and hilarious shows that should have gotten much more attention than it got; I wonder if we can thank Amazon and their exclusivity for that…
Narumi Momose is an office worker who hides her fujoshi otaku lifestyle from her work colleagues…or at least she tries to. Her boyfriend, Hirotaka Nifuji, is the total opposite, and he doesn’t care if the entire office knows that he is a gamer otaku. As time passes at work, the two of them discover that they are not alone at their office when it comes to their hobbies.
Wotakoi is on the shortlist of shows for me to watch off-season, and this appealed to me because it looked at these adults finding comfort in the world of otaku, instead of your average regular comedy show which is almost always set in high school. These adults are meant to be far more mature, and so the question is…are they?
This pandemic is unfortunately still affecting all of us, and the anime industry is not immune to any potential difficulties. I won’t be surprised if we end up with some episodes postponed or delayed, or we might get some early recap episodes, or maybe even some entire show cancellations altogether. The second season of Re:Zero was scheduled to air this season, only for it to be brought forward to the summer. The only thing we can all do here is just watch and see what will happen in the future. Oh, and the other thing I’ll say is to remember to wash your hands and keep good hygiene, like any good anime fan should do.