Ain’t gonna lie, I’ve been busy the past bunch of months. Getting one car fixed, then the other one, getting my vaccines done, and all kinds of fucking around. Sometimes it’s more important than watching anime, and that’s just what being an adult is about. Eventually I gotta stop, decompress, get my Vitamin Anime, and chill out so I don’t go crazy. Everything in moderation including moderation.

Shit happens, and you gotta keep up with it. Therein lies the secret to making adulthood tolerable: Leveling up faster than life. And adults face a lot of work, and most of it is unnecessary. You have to figure out which work is actually important and stick with that. Gotta pick your battles.

This list might be shorter than in previous articles, but this also doesn’t include the current anime I’ve been keeping up with. Oh yeah, I should also add this bit of information: The .avi files encoded in XVID from 15-20 years ago? Those do not do well on a 4K display. Just sayin’.

Petite Princess Yucie
Saint October
Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn
Natsuki Crisis!
Mamotte Shugogetten
Ground Defense Force Mao-chan
High Guardian Spice (dropped)
World of Narue
Yamibou: Darkness, the Hat, and the Travelers of the Books

“Petite Princess Yucie”
26 episodes, 2002-2003
Remember when Gainax was a thing, when they were actually making anime and not just coasting on the popularity of Evangelion until they completely fizzled out as a studio, when a lot of their talent quit and went on to form Studio Trigger? Yeah, I know, that was a long ass time ago.

At some point, someone at Gainax said “how about we make an anime based on the Princess Maker games?” And so they did. They were probably planning to for years. The result is like what Akazukin Chacha would be like if all the nursery tale stuff was stripped out and the show reduced to a third of its original length, then a Cinderella theme was re-added.

I remember watching some of this at an anime club years ago, shortly after it first came out, and thought it was good enough. It didn’t light my world on fire, but it got a passing grade. I figured I’d keep it in mind. At the same time, it was right about the start of the big anime boom, when anime fans of the time witnessed the floodgates being thrust open, when scarcity was washed away in waves of whole series suddenly available to fans, so this got put on the backburner until recently, when I stumbled across the DVD set.

Seiyuu surprise: Yuki Matsuoka, the voice actress for spaced-out Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, plays the tsundere demon-girl Glenda.

What is it: Yucie is found in the middle of the woods, and despite being 17, she’s cursed to forever look 10. The only way to lift that curse is if she can become the Platinum Princess and get a wish granted. To become the Platinum Princess, one must attain the Crystal Tiara. To get the Crystal Tiara, one must collect the five Crystal Flowers. To get the Crystal Flowers, one must accomplish a variety of tests and prove their worth.

Wait, if Glenda is also supposed to look 10, why does she… Nevermind, I’m shutting up now before I get myself in trouble.

Most of the series is Yucie being the typical Mary Sue, doing her best at being a Good Person, trying to help people with varying degrees of success. Other characters get introduced, such as Glenda, a rival demon-girl; Cocoloo, representing the Spirit world; Elmina, the Princess of Heaven; and Beth, representing the Fairy realm. All five happen to be under the same curse as Yucie and want to become Platinum Princess for the same reason. The extra long character development here seems to be much different than the stream-of-consciousness plotline from the likes of “SoulTaker” from about the same era. This character development accounts for at least two-thirds of the series, which only goes hard in the last 5 or 6 episodes.

Getting it: This came out on DVD a few times. At first, it was released on individual discs (VHS-style), then ADV made a thinpak set of it, then another complete collection a few years later. They’re all out of print. There are a few sets floating around via the usual used markets, if you’re not afraid of shelling out a few extra bucks. I found the 2006-vintage thinpak set from one of my usual gettin’ places. There are a few batch torrents out in the wild if you’re stingy/impatient.

4K TV test: Not bad, not bad at all. For something that aired almost 20 years ago, this fared rather well. It’s watchable. The aliasing is kept to a minimum.

“Saint October”
26 episodes, 2007
I’m not sure where to begin on this. As anime goes, there are better shows out there, that’s for sure. Where 2007 brought us gems such as Lucky Star and Seto no Hanayome, 2007 also gave us Saint October. I’ve heard it wasn’t a great anime, and that much is true. But it’s not really bad either. It never had a chance of stealing the spotlight from other shows of the time, and it knew. Nevertheless, I decided to dig it up, check it out, and see how it goes.

What is it: This mixes tarot cards with gothic lolita fashion and I guess that works. Kotono is an orphan who works for a detective agency and the show starts with a serial kidnapping case. The Reverse Company, which is like a proto-Amazon, is looking for a certain boy. The boy somehow activates some kind of ability in Kotono, enabling her to transform into “Loli Black”. Her best friend Natsuki is rich and can turn into “Loli White”. Misaki is a hardcore survivalist, able to live outdoors and eat wild animals, is in a romantic relationship with an actual bear, and is able to turn into “Loli Red”. Misaki does a lot to carry this show and gets my vote as Best Girl.

The show plays out like a low-key Sailor Moon with Rozen Maiden’s aesthetics, and at first it doesn’t take itself seriously. One of the henchmen, in the first episode, is a parody of Tuxedo Mask. Another is some kind of plant-like monster, and nobody at Reverse Company is bothered by it; it’s just another coworker to them.

Most of the characters’ eyes don’t have pupils. The character design is very soft and simple. One could go as far as saying low-effort, if they’re feeling snarky. Something else this show has: Dedicated spots for commercial breaks, even in the DVD version. I like that.

It turned out to be surprisingly watchable. The episodes were still 25 minutes but don’t feel long. Whereas I had to really push myself to get through 4 episodes of BetterMan in one sitting, Saint October was easier to do that with.

A lot of series start silly and then turn serious later on. This is no exception, turning serious about halfway through. Kotono reaches a moment of self-doubt, the kind someone would have if they realized they just killed someone. Because that’s what happens if an antagonist receives Kotono’s “Judgment” a second time: They disappear. Done. Gone. (Well, sort of. Ultimately, no one really “dies” in this show.) And of course, as the show goes on, the plot thickens, new revelations occur, things get explained.

Getting it: Torrents. This was never licensed in the US. There was a DVD release in Japan; I don’t know any further than that. The only real working batch torrent is for files in 480p in 4:3, and that’s as good as it’ll get. Whereas Lucky Star and SnH eventually got blu-ray releases in some capacity, this probably never will.

4K TV test: It works. A little choppy at times, seems like the framerate lags in places. I don’t know if it was an encoding thing or a source material thing. I can’t really complain about that.

“Pandora in the Crimson Shell: Ghost Urn”
12 episodes, 2016
What if I told you there was a manga that was written by Masamune Shirow (Ghost in the Shell) and drawn by Rikudou Koshi (Excel Saga)? Nononono, come back, hear me out. Stop looking at me like that. I’m serious. I’ll admit, the idea of a mashup of GitS and Excel Saga sounds like a fanfiction fever dream. But they actually made that. No, really. And an anime to go with it. Check it out, I have proof. See?

What is it: This takes place in the future with advanced technology with androids and full-body cyborgs. Nene is one such full-body cyborg, having attained her body in order to escape an otherwise incurable disease, and she gets mixed up with Uzal and Clarion on Cenancle island where large disasters happen all the time to comedic effect, much like in Excel Saga.

Clarion is a tsunderoid. MOSAIC.WAV made a song about that a long time ago. Nene gets her Pandora Device abilities by putting her hand near Clarion’s groin, where a secret compartment opens up. It’s okay; they’re cyborgs. The reporter who keeps falling off of high places reminds me of Excel. Possibly a descendant?

If you’re thinking this would be like GitS by way of Excel Saga, you’re not wrong. That’s kind of what’s happening here. It’s got the sci-fi technobabble stuff of GitS and the comedy elements of Excel Saga, each side toned down a bit to make room for the other. Being a 12-episode series from 5 years ago, based on a manga that’s still running, of course the ending of the anime is going to feel incomplete, so instead of trying to resolve any major plot point, it just builds up to a dirty joke.

Getting it: It’s easy enough to find, being a very recent anime (at least compared to what else I’ve listed here). You want it on Blu-Ray? Funimation has it for a bit more than the price of a couple 6-packs of pretentious craft beer. You want it streaming? You got it. You want it dubbed in English? It’s available in dual audio. You don’t want to pay anything? You know where to look.

4K TV test: Given that it’s from 2016 and natively in 1080p, it looks good.

“Natsuki Crisis!”
2 episodes, 1994
Here’s a quick blurb of an OVA, with a good bit of fighting in the hour it takes up. I picked this purely by chance and curiosity; I had it on my home server for quite some time, and selected it for testing out some video player software.

What is it: Natsuki is in the karate club. A rival appears! They fight! They become friends. Another rival appears! More fighting and they’re over-dramatic about all of it.

This was primarily based on a manga and a fighting game. I’ve always been wary of fighting anime based on fighting games. And with this having only 2 episodes, it doesn’t really get the chance to really build up steam.

Getting it: Downloaded fansubs. No US release, and no release on DVD anywhere, not no ways and not no hows.

4K TV test: It’s watchable, if a bit blocky in places. I’ve seen worse. Much worse.

“Mamotte Shugogetten”
22 episodes + 8 OVAs, 1998-2001
Ever watch an anime that instantly reminds you of a younger time, a more innocent time? Yeah, that’s how I felt when watching this. Instant nostalgia. Anything from the late ’90s as a whole are like that, especially 1998 and 99. I was younger, lighter, and my car was newer and not rusty. But, I’m still alive, and so is the car I had back then, through no small effort of my own.

What is it: It’s like “Ah My Goddess” but with more comedy and maybe a lower budget. Except instead of calling a wrong number, middle-schooler Tasuke is given a magic ring that summons the moon goddess Shaorin who has no idea how anything in our world works. Only those pure of heart may use this magic ring. Much like in AMG, another goddess (Ruuan) appears with different intentions and gimmicks. Plot points and comedy elements continue thanks to Tasuke’s dad exploring China and sending back whatever other artifacts he looted (including the magic ring).

Divine harem anime comedies aren’t anything new. This wasn’t the first or the last. I like the aesthetics of this show. It has a certain style that only really manifested during the late 90s. It has that 90s style without going overboard with it. It says 90s without screaming it. Big 90s anime eyes, but not TOO big. It still has that crazy 90s anime hair. You know, unnatural hair colors in styles that would be impossible without whole cans of hair spray and complex support structures. Here, it’s just crazy enough that you know you’ll never see that in real life, except maybe at an anime convention, and only by a really dedicated cosplayer. It’s a soft 90s. Toned down and refined.

The music is typical of 90s anime. The opening theme “Saa!” is upbeat, jazzy. If I were to host an anime cocktail party, I would put that in the playlist.

It’s a cute show; I’ll give it that. But there’s no getting around that when any kind of entity lives for thousands of years, eventually they’ll see some shit. Shaorin and Ruuan are no exception to this, as shown in some of their flashbacks. (Yeah, what Shaorin experienced in the past would fuck up my opinion of Christmas too.)

Ruuan has the Hot Sauce and she knows it.

The OVAs, which came out a couple years later, have a slightly updated look to them, and are a bit more dramatic. There are 8 OVAs, each a solid 30 minutes, which means it’s 4 hours of the main characters trying to hold each others’ hands. It doesn’t feel like they really add anything to the plot. In retrospect, I could have probably stopped watching at the end of the TV series but I told myself I’d watch the OVAs too.

This is something I would have gladly watched at an anime convention or anime club meeting back in the day, and probably did in some capacity. I probably have a VHS tape or two with some of this. Were I to stumble across a LaserDisc set of this, I’d probably go for it. This took me longer to watch than I thought it would, but then I was taking it easy.

Getting it: Never licensed in the US, so of course downloading it is the way to go. This was fansubbed a long time ago. The only working torrent I could find of anything translated was of .avi files that can be played on almost anything this side of the year 2000, and were intentionally sized with the goal of being able to put 3 or 4 episodes on one CD-R. That was done by necessity back in the early 2000s, when not as many fans had broadband internet, the speeds weren’t as fast for those who did, hard drives not as big, and making backups involved burning it on CD-R, 700MB at a time. The 175MB file sizes were done for that necessity, and they could get away with it because computer monitors and TVs had lower resolutions.

But when it comes to 4K, the .avi files of old just can’t seem to be stretched any further. The artifacts and blockiness isn’t as apparent if I leave it in windowed mode on my TV, but then it looks like a postage stamp on an envelope. Maybe if I watched this on a monitor with a lower resolution. I did find a version based on the BD release in Japan but in acquiring it, I downloaded a 56GB torrent to discover it wasn’t translated. Yep, I got what I paid for. The .avi files? Better than nothing, I guess. And the more I watched it, the more I got used to it.

“Ground Defense Force Mao-chan”
26 episodes (15 minutes each), 2002
From Ken Akamatsu, the creator of Love Hina, comes a story about some elementary school girls tasked with defending Japan from overly cute alien invaders. It very much looks like Love Hina, to the point that one would suspect that characters from Love Hina are making an appearance. As it turns out, that becomes a joke later on.

What is it: Japan is being invaded by aliens! Except the aliens look so adorable and harmless that no military wants to do anything to them lest their show of force would incite public backlash, so the only way to fight cuteness is with cuteness. If the aliens get defeated by 8 year-old girls armed with giant plastic toys, that makes it okay.

The soundtrack is light and lively piano music. The opening theme is good on its own; the ending theme “It’s My Style” has been one of my long-time favorite theme songs in general. The episodes are short; maybe 15 minutes. The DVD case says “suitable for all ages” and it’s the truth. The show itself is very kid-friendly. Would I be okay with a child watching this? Yes. The girls’ transformation sequences reveal nothing objectionable. This is a very low-stakes, low-pressure show. While many shows start off light and turn serious later, this stays light all the way to the end. Even the villains are only villains in name; they still go out of their way to avoid hurting anyone. They’d rather scuttle their mission than make 8 year-old girls cry.

So about that Love Hina connection. In particular, Episode 20, the required hot-springs episode, is a big seiyuu joke. Someone who looks and sounds too much like Love Hina’s Naru makes an appearance, and Silvia, also voiced by Yui Horie, makes a bunch of jokes in that vein. The hyper-resemblance between Kagome and Naru is not lost on the other characters either.

Getting it: This was put on a set of 4 DVDs by Pioneer a long time ago, and went out-of-print almost as long ago. It shows up on the used shelves and ebay frequently enough. Or, you could download it if you really had to.

Funny story about how I got mine. I think it was back in 2006, and RightStuf had a crazy sale on Pioneer/Geneon titles: 25 discs for $100. That’s $4 per disc. That means I got this entire show for $16, new, in 2006. That would have otherwise been well over $100 at full MSRP because that’s how DVDs were sold then. The catch was one had to order exactly 25 discs, all of them Pioneer/Geneon, in order for the sale price to be valid. The first half was easy to pick out, which includes Mao-chan. The other half took a bit of thinking and lowering my standards expanding my horizons. For example, I hadn’t planned on getting all of Gad Guard but it was part of the sale, helped pad out the order, and I wasn’t against having it in my collection. All told I’m quite happy with what I got.

Back in the day, Pioneer/Geneon was always (or at least usually) respected for the video quality of their releases. This was no exception and looked great when it came out. Alas, their US distribution arm imploded long before everyone had access to the high-resolution displays we have now. On a 4K TV, this anime is starting to show its age. The flaws are there if you look for them. If you can accept how old this show is and not look for flaws, or watch this on something that tops out at 1080p, the video quality will be more than adequate and watchable.

“High Guardian Spice”
12 episodes, 2021 (dropped after 2 episodes)
Oh shit…. What have I gotten myself into….
You’ve heard the jokes about someone who got way too drunk or stoned for their own good and woke up to find themselves in an awkward or difficult situation? No, that didn’t happen here. I’ll admit, I watched this willingly. Or at least the first few episodes. I couldn’t finish this. I gave it a few episodes to get itself together. I know I said I’d only post reviews of shows I watched all of, but this beat me. I lost. For something I only saw 2 episodes of, I sure have a lot to say.

I am here to neither defend nor bash this show and yet I somehow do both. I’ve seen better shows. I’ve dropped better shows. I’ve roasted better shows. This was hard to watch even with the assistance of stiff drinks. Just the first episode alone required alcohol to get through. That is not something I’m proud of. I don’t know how much alcohol I’d actually need to get through the whole series or if my body could take it. Watching this was the anime equivalent of trying to eat a dog biscuit and no amount of alcohol can get that taste out. But y’know, I’ve said this in earlier posts and it bears repeating here. My bill-paying job has me working with evil shit that can melt my face off and make me die a horrible death. If I’m going to worry about something, it’s going to be about not letting evil shit melt my face off and making me die a horrible death, as opposed to getting butthurt over a cartoon. I have my priorities.

What is it: In a nutshell, I’d say that it’s what would happen if someone freebased all of Steven Universe, Harry Potter, and Little Witch Academia, then tried to make their own magical girl show, while having more resources than experience in making a cartoon.

This is Crunchyroll’s effort at making what they call their own anime. It’s a logical step from their current business model, if a clumsy one. If you can get past all of the animation errors, then maybe you might be able to enjoy this American take on the magical girl trope.

You may notice I use the word “cartoon” for this. For what’s being discussed, I shall pull out of my ass a rushed and slightly inaccurate look at the word “anime” itself, its history and core meaning. It’s a borrowed word of French origin, a shortened version of the word “animation”, and is the easiest to write out in Japanese, needing only 3 simple katakana. Therefore one could argue that the word “anime” encompasses all animation, not just what’s produced in Japan, while “cartoon” would also encompass all animation, including what’s produced in Japan. Two words with the same meaning. Eventually a variant of a word can become its own word with its own definition if used as such for long and intensively enough, and now “anime” is generally reserved for Japanese animation, while works produced in and for other countries are called “cartoons”. Nothing we didn’t already know; I’m just including it for easy reference.

That said, this is not an anime. Parts of this may have been produced in studios that also make anime, but that doesn’t make this an anime. This is a cartoon. Crunchyroll’s disclaimer says it’s for mature audiences only but do not be fooled. Nothing about this is mature. This is a kid’s show. This is written like a kid’s show. This looks like a kid’s show. This is a kid’s show that’s designed almost exclusively for kids. This doesn’t have the double entendres, that extra layer of spiciness, that make other shows so memorable. All of the jokes are kid-safe. This is something I may have enjoyed more if I was a fraction of my current age, but not with my extra decades on each side of the year 2000. This is something a parent would pick up the DVD from Walmart so the kids have something to watch for the next few hours in the back seat of the family SUV.

Is anyone old enough to remember the convention scene back in the mid-90s, when Apollo Smile called herself a live-action anime girl, and fandom as a whole didn’t take too warmly to that claim? To be sure, I think a lot of fans back then were just jerks to her, and I don’t have anything against her aside from her almost taking off my friend’s head in an impromptu axe-swinging demonstration in the middle of the dealers room at Anime East ’95. (Okay, that was serious and could have ended badly.) But that’s beside the point. The point is, HGS’ chilly reception is much like that. Much of fandom finds HGS’ claim of being an adult-oriented show a dubious and dishonest one. Like someone claiming their early 2000s base-model econobox with a head gasket leak and rod knock is a high performance sports car. There’s a lack of realism and honesty, and it’s reflected in the ratings.

Yeah, I’ve heard about the misandrist attitudes of some of the creative staff. You know what, whatever. I’m not going to worry about it. Maybe they’re serious about it, maybe they’re not. Unless they pick up weapons and come at me directly to take my life, which I know they won’t, I’m not going to worry about it.

I’ll cut this show some slack though. The animation quality in HGS isn’t as big a deal as many make it out to be. Here’s a cold hard fact that a lot of anime fans know but hate to admit: Japanese studios have been taking shortcuts, making mistakes, and generally making anime as cheap and as fast as possible for as long as they’ve been making anime. It’s not going to change any time soon. That’s just how it is, and that’s how it will be. Most anime isn’t made to cinematic masterpiece standards so CALM THE FUCK DOWN and stop malding or shitting your pants over the lack of animation quality in HGS when you know goddamn well that anime studios in Japan have been pulling the same shit for longer than you and I have been alive. Now as for the animators using stock images for backgrounds and objects, well, they should have known better. Especially in light of how long the show itself was in production. But at least they did fess up to that, and how the budget was a lot lower than other shows. I’ll let it slide.

This show could be made so much more tolerable by adding the word “Thigh” to the front of the title and adapting the story as such.

High Guardian Spice has the vibe of a show that if it was made when I was a kid, it would have aired in a weird timeslot on USA Network or Nickelodeon or some obscure UHF channel, and the only way to watch it would have been to either skip school for the day, or wake up at the crack of dawn, or set the VCR to record it, if one had such a luxury. Or, if it did air at a more reasonable time, I’d watch it if the alternative was something I’d already seen or would rather not see. Such as, if no other activity was available and I had to choose between watching HGS or a rerun of Brainy Smurf being an insufferable jackass for a whole hour, then I guess I would have watched HGS. But I’m an adult now, with resources immeasurably greater than what I had when I was about 10, so it’s unlikely I’ll ever be in a position where HGS will be my best option for any kind of entertainment.

Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe HGS really will pull itself together later in the show. Maybe my grizzled ass is just not in the target audience for this. I don’t know. I just couldn’t get into it. What I do know is we’re at the bitter tattered end of 2021 and I have access to more anime than I can ever watch in my lifetime. To be sure, I’ve gladly watched some crappy shows in my day, but what I choose to watch on my time is exclusively my business. Something’s gotta give.

Getting it: Currently streaming on Crunchyroll, English-dubbed only. Nobody’s bothered to make torrents of it. If you have the base account, expect commercial breaks at hard intervals with no regard to context. Right when least expected and suddenly “WATCH COMMERCIALS NOW”. I get the gist of commercials and their purpose, but TV stations have been careful about putting commercials in between scenes for a zillion years. Crunchyroll? Right in the middle of someone’s dialogue lines. Fuckin’ rude.

On a 4K TV, the picture quality is clean, no blockiness or compression artifacts, even when playing in the free account. It should be, it was made really recently. It’s like it was made with 4K displays in mind. I’ll give it that much credit.

“World of Narue” (Narue no Sekai)
12 episodes, 2003
Another anime with aliens. Cool. Filed under “knew about this for a long time but finally getting around to watching it due to finding the DVD set”.

What is it: Narue is an alien but doesn’t look like it because in this story, aliens and humans are similar enough to have children, so a lot of people think she’s not really an alien, and just a weird schoolgirl in her chuuni phase. It’s pretty damn clear from the start that she’s the real deal and just does a good job of hiding it from others. This anime is about Kazuto and Narue’s budding romance. Aaaaand Narue constantly flashing her panties, for that bit of light fanservice, common from the early 2000s. This show also has sentient starships that can take human form. How close are they to human form? One episode has a human marrying a starship. I’m sure all the Kancolle/Azur Lane fans can feel vindicated by that.

Overall, I liked this show. The character design is soft and simple, calmed down from the more manic designs of the 90s. Narue herself has a very unique and distinct hairstyle that I haven’t seen on any characters since. While the anime came and went in 2003, the manga for it ran all the way to 2012, of which only 4 volumes were published in the US.

Getting it: Long out of print in the US. Either find the DVDs in the used market or download it. This was originally put out by Central Park Media back in the day, then license-rescued by ADV in 2009. At least both versions are reasonably priced. I stumbled across the whole CPM-era DVD set for really cheap due to the outer case being beat to shit and having one of those godless-couchfuck security tags stuck to it with industrial-strength adhesive. Which is kind of unfortunate, because it looked really nice. (At least the discs were okay.) If you didn’t care about it being translated, and region coding isn’t an obstacle for you, there is an R2 set available in Japan. If you want to download it, there’s not much to choose from. I think I spotted one barely-seeded torrent from almost 10 years ago that was a rip of the US DVD (not sure which one). Depending on your combination of luck, patience, and internet connection, you might be better off throwing a couple dollars at someone on ebay for the DVD set.

4K TV: CPM knew nothing of progressive scan. Video quality is harsh and strained. Pixelization, chromatic aberration, interlacing artifacts, grainy video, typical of CPM releases from back then. This would kinda make sense if they put as many episodes as possible on each disc, but there’s only 3 episodes on each one. It’s not unwatchable, it’s not the worst ever dished out by CPM, it’s just enough to make it hard to ignore. My BD player and TV are doing their best to keep up with it. I don’t know if it’s because the as-aired version was in 4:3 and the DVD is playing it in 16:9, stretching it. As gnarly as CPM’s release may look on 4K, it’s still somehow better than the fansub .avi files I scooped up when the show first aired all the way back in 2003. I don’t know if ADV’s version would be better; I certainly hope it would.

“Yamibou: Darkness, the Hat, and the Travelers of the Books”
13 episodes, 2003
Also from 2003, is this odd show. Some shows have a cut-and-dried plot, others seem to go out of their way to make things as obtuse and entangled as possible and Yamibou is one of them. Alright, we got the Hat part, the travelers of the books part, and a lot of this show takes place in the dark, so I guess the title checks out.

Long before we had Homura being thirsty for Madoka, before Chikane and Himeko, this show gives us Hazuki and Hatsumi.

What is it: Hazuki is hot for her (adopted) sister Hatsumi, who suddenly disappears in a flash of light. Then she has to go into various book worlds to chase after her, assisted by Lilith who has a hat bigger than she is, and a lewd parakeet. If they can find Eve, who happens to look waaaay too much like Hatsumi (this gets explained), then maybe the next leap will be the one to take them back home.

In this anime, all worlds exist in books in the library of the universe. Lilith has that “hot librarian” outfit working for her. Carnelian’s designs are aggressively present. This is quite possibly the weirdest and most fanservicey “read more books” public service announcement I’ve ever seen. The first two episodes are an idea of what the show is about, the third episode actually starts to explain things. It starts weird, but the second half of the series starts to make sense (relatively). I promise. Nevertheless, this was an easy anime to watch. I was able to marathon the whole show in a single evening.

Getting it: Media Blasters has this on both DVD and BD for a fair price, in stock at finer anime retailers everywhere.

4K TV: Being on BD, it should look decent. I think this might be an upscale. It still looks good enough that I can’t complain.

Alright, that should be all for 2021. I’ll see what other older shows I can dust off in 2022 and see if they stood the test of time.