Anime Review: Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyōbi

Toying around with Christian imagery and ideas is not a foreign concept to anime (with Evangelion being the most extreme example) but it is often a gimmick or confusing at best. I attribute this mostly to the awkward handling of Western religions in general for Japan, but whatever the cause it is usually either a bit cringey or silly (or both). Fortunately, that isn’t the case here but that may be because other than some lip service there isn’t really anything terribly religious going on. Instead, we get an often clever, challenging, and curious take on death and ethics and so on, mired at times by a confusing delivery that’s trying too hard and a short length that leaves things a bit curtailed though not wholly unfinished.

Anime Review: Nogizaka Haruka no Himitsu

Time and time again, I feel like I end up defending myself a little bit in these reviews, desperately scrounging at times to justify why I watch (to completion) and subsequently review (no small effort) so much transparently commercial otaku-bait. I get it: the anime genre itself is, on the whole, fairly niche and uniquely pandered to. Most production companies know they aren’t going to score widespread appeal and so deliberately opt to zero in on their reliable base market of late-teen-to-twenties males who already watch and, perhaps most importantly, buy anime merchandise. It’s why anime home releases are so expensive. And so it’s also little surprise you see so many clichés that never seem to die. I’ve been wallowing in the weeaboo now for about fifteen years and I’ve pretty much seen it all. There are countless samey-shows and me-too series. And yet, here I am… about to spend ~3300 words on yet another one.