Day Three of our Seven Days of Summer brings us the first shoujo of the list – and the first show you could easily marathon in an evening:
My Little Monster (Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun)
anime
Beat the Heat, Soak in the Stream: Seven Shows to Marathon This Summer (Day Two)
Shifting gears a bit, we move from bicycles to motorcycles as the Seven Days of Summer continues with:
Durarara!!
Beat the Heat, Soak in the Stream: Seven Shows to Marathon This Summer (Day One)
Happy First Day of Summer, everyone! Time to bust out that grill, weed that garden, throw on that swimsuit, and OH GOD SUNLIGHT WHY.
If you’re anything like me, summer is also the season of the binge-watch. No school, longer days, most of your U.S. shows are on break – heck, even the Summer anime season tends to have fewer series. It’s like the universe is ASKING you to marathon something!
That’s why, in honor of the new season, I’m releasing my Seven Days of Summer: A guide to the top binge-worthy anime series to enthrall and entertain you and your friends on these long hot days and short warm nights.
So let’s get the ball rolling with this delightful sports gem, an ongoing series and one of my current favorites…
Quick Dip: Anime Weekly Roundup (6/14-6/20)
The saga continues.
Here There Be (Mild) Spoilers: Remember, these posts look at some of the common trends and threads in the currently streaming anime that I’m watching (full list is on the sidebar). I keep things vague but if you’re a plot purist, you may want to skim past.
Who stumbled? Who soared? The answers to your burning questions below the jump.
Sailor Moon Newbie Reviews: Episodes 11-12
The Sailors set sail on more ‘ships than one this week.
I’m starting to look at Sailor Moon as a kind of magical girl sitcom, where its strength lies not in its story but in its humor, complications, and–most importantly–character interactions. And, like so many shows both before and after it, SM relies on the pairing tactic: throwing two characters into a room (or boat) together and seeing what happens next.
The Sensei Next Door
I used this during the Weekly Roundup, so in case you were curious:
osananajimi [oh-saw-nah-nah-jee-me]
幼馴染 (sometimes spelled 幼なじみ)
noun.
(1) A childhood friend(2) An annoyingly difficult word to say and spell. It has the same number of “na"s as "banana,” but like banana, you’ll never quite know where to end it.
(3) The right angle of a love triangle, and/or one half of an unrequited love story, and/or wuv, twoo wuv, which wiw fowwow you fowevah!
Simply put, in anime, if an
osanajimiosananajimi shows up, there’s a 98% chance things are ‘bout to get RULL shippy. (This is slightly less true if the osanananajimi is the same sex as the main character, but only slightly.)Sometimes they are the main character’s old crush and this is their second chance at romance. Sometimes they’re the platonic bestie who just can’t seem to get the MC to notice them. And sometimes they just drop in for a couple episodes to make life hard on the MC and his/her new OTP.
Whatever the case, adding an osananajimi is an effective (and sometimes lazy) way to inject some backstory and conflict into a series… er, assuming the MC doesn’t just trail off into the old Batman theme song whenever s/he tries to talk about them.
Osanananananananana JIMI! ♪
(Yep. That’s in your head now. You’re welcome.)
Quick Dip: Anime Weekly Roundup (6/7-6/13)
Look, Ma, a recurring segment!
Here There Be (Mild) Spoilers: Quick reminder that these posts look at some of the common trends and threads in the currently streaming anime that I’m watching (full list is on the sidebar). I keep things vague but if you’re a plot purist, you may want to skim past.
This week’s roundup of winners and losers below the jump.
Sailor Moon Newbie Reviews: Episodes 9-10
The planets are finally starting to align.
This week Hino Rei stormed onto the scene as Sailor Mars, and her timing couldn’t have been better. While I did warm up to Ami a lot this week, her character seems to be a blend of intelligence, naivete (she’d never played video games OR gone window shopping until she met Usagi), and just plain niceness, which makes her great back-up for Usagi but doesn’t really create much tension.
And as fun as this show is, it’s in desperate need of some tension. Our villains haven’t been a real threat recently, and while Luna and Usagi do squabble some, they’ve gotten so used to each other that it’s all pretty good-natured bickering at this point. We needed Mars to bring some proverbial as well as literal fire to the show, and it looks like she’ll do just that.
While Usagi and Rei are very different girls, they’re both strong-willed and stubborn, which should lead to some conflict–and, hopefully, to character growth both in and out of their scout uniforms. And while I’d rather their entire relationship NOT be built around Tuxedo Mask, I must admit that a little romantic rivalry WOULD be pretty entertaining. Just… keep it as a side dish instead of a main course, please.
Quick Dip: Anime Weekly Roundup
In which the Josei takes a look at the week’s new episodes and crowns the winners, losers, and uncertain in-betweens.
Here There Be (Mild) Spoilers: My “Quick Dip” posts will touch briefly on the shows in the stream (see what I did there?) that I’m currently watching. (For the full list, check out the “Currently Watching” section of the sidebar.) While I’ll keep them vague to avoid giving away anything major, there will be screenshots and comments, and therefore possible spoilers. Read at your own risk.
This week’s roundup below the jump.
Sailor Moon Newbie Reviews: Episodes 7-8
Luna caught her first water-type!
Like most origin stories, Sailor Moon is really a pair of tales: one is about the junior high student Tsukino Usagi, and the other is about the hero-in-training, Sailor Moon. Usagi hangs with her friends, struggles with her grades, and argues with her mom. Sailor Moon hangs with her magic cat, investigates mysteries, and works to resolve conflicts.
Both make a lot of mistakes, to be sure, but one is portrayed in a much more positive light than the other, and it’s no surprise that the Sailor Moon stories interest me more than the Usagi ones. So watching her spend an episode getting mad at her friends and Luna for not helping her become a STAR! is much less interesting than watching her help a jazz musician defeat a bat-lady.
Fortunately, the creators must have sensed that the Usagi Show was flagging and picked this exact moment to bring in a new character.
But we’ll get to that in a minute.
The Josei Next Door 