The Season in Haikus - Winter 2025 (Part 3)

Hello, all! And welcome back to the latest installment of The Season in Haikus. I'm your host, Explanation Point, here to give you the rigidly-syllabic rundown of each of the season's anime, from the stinkers to the win-kers. If you're coming here from Patreon, and you like my work, please feel free to check out my full-length videos, which you can find either here or at https://www.youtube.com/@ExplanationPointAnime . I have a couple of interesting offerings for you today, from the first Covid-themed anime that's ever crossed my eyes to an incestuous isekai that actually has potential. If that sounds fun to you, read on!

Read the previous installment here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/season-in-haikus-124078366

 Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms

Est. 6/10. Skip.

Mona Kawaii (Yes, that is her actual name) is the queen bee of her high school.  Many times, babies are born.  Sometimes, when those babies are born, they have a charm about them that simply cannot be explained.  You want to do everything for them.  Love them.  Provide for them.  Carry their books.  Do their taxes.  These are the kinds of babies who will never want for anything in life, and Mona Kawaii is one of those babies.  There isn’t a man alive – and very few women, for that matter – who wouldn’t kill for the honor of licking the back sweat off her gym towel.  But Medaka Kuroiwa is different.  For some reason, he doesn’t lose his mind whenever Mona walks into the room.  He remains aloof.  Indifferent.  Almost as though he finds her. . . not entirely perfect in every way, and that simply cannot stand.  Mona is now on a quest to find some way to win Medaka’s heart (or, failing that, his penis), and to prove to herself that there isn’t a single person on the planet who can resist her innate charms.

As you can imagine, this is one of those anime where the joke is the entire show.  That said, the joke does manage to remain funny for at least the entire first episode, which is a good sign.  Throw in a couple more decent characters for Medaka and Mona to interact with, and I can see this actually going somewhere.  However, I think there was a big missed opportunity when it comes to the reason Medaka seems to be unaffected by Mona’s seductive, feminine wiles.  And that missed opportunity is that there is a reason.  Truth is, Medaka does want to fuck Mona just as much as everyone else in school does, but he can’t because he’s the heir to a cat temple out in the country, and one of the tenets of his religion is that he isn’t allowed to participate in romance of any kind, so he has to avoid Mona to try to keep himself from falling into temptation.  That’s. . . fine.  I can see that leading to quirky comedy and maybe some interesting character beats about doubting one’s faith or weighing the importance of religion versus other aspects of life.  But I think it would’ve been so much better if Medaka just found her kind of offputting.  If he didn’t appreciate her hotter-than-thou attitude, and there's no reason the show can't do both!  The fact that his reason for not wanting to pursue Mona has nothing to do with Mona herself takes away so much potential from the series.  If he just didn’t like her, that could lead to Mona self-reflecting and trying to be a different, less haughty kind of person.  It could lead to Medaka trying to be less judgmental as he sees different sides of her (emotional sides, I mean.  Not the physical sides that she’s constantly shoving in his face in an attempt to stoke his lust).  In general, it just leads to more potential for both comedy and romance, both of which are important for a romantic comedy.

There is one thing I want to praise this show for, though, and that’s the vocal direction in the dub (and I assume in the sub, as well).  Every now and then, you see some character's Japanese dialect depicted as a Southern USA accent.  For this show, that character is every character.  I think it would’ve been easy for the dub team to just not do that, even if it’s a feature of the sub, and I really appreciate the extra effort that was put into the show’s vocal presentation.  It gives the show some much-needed character and helps it to stand out among other romantic comedies.

Flower and Asura

Est. 6/10. Test.

One of the best things about anime is how you can absolutely, definitely find a show whose main focus is the thing that you are most interested in.  Do you like (stupid) dexterity-based, poetry-themed memory games?  Chihayafuru.  Do you like obscure, Indian sports where people have to wrestle each-other while whispering the word “kabaddi” until one of them runs out of breath?  Burning Kabaddi.  Do you like women wearing bathing suits and trying to knock each-other off a large platform into the water below using only their buttocks?  Keijo.  This one is about literary recitation as an art form.  Hana Haruyama loves nothing more than to read aloud.  She loves it so much that the people of her little island decided to set up plenty of public reading opportunities for her, from reading to kids at the library to. . . well, that’s the only one we get to see in the first episode, but we’re told that there are more!  Naturally, when she’s going to high school, she’s scouted for the Broadcasting Club, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Specifically, the club wants her to help them at the NHK Cup, a competition wherein students read things aloud, and whoever reads their thing the best wins.

As someone who participated in exactly this kind of competition as a Youth™, it’s a lot of fun!  And it’s great to see a show that seems to really understand the appeal of that idea.  The visual presentation of this one is great, both in terms of what is on-screen and how those things are portrayed.  It’s very March Comes In Like a Lion with its visuals; unafraid to employ stunning visual metaphor and to really show its characters feeling passion for something.  Many anime – even ones that are designed around people who really enjoy things – seem skittish to show them actually feeling that passion.  They either smile and talk about how much they like, say, basketball, or they go super over-the-top and yell to the rafters about how they’re going to be the best basketballist who has ever balled a basket and make their dead uncle proud!  But that isn’t the kind of thing that’s going to work when the theme of the show is literary recitation.  Recitation is the art of conveying emotion.  It’s an inherently intimate act, where you are taking the words of another person and using your own voice to throw them into the world.  It’s a blending of one person’s experience and another person’s artistic direction, much like a cover song or a piece of fan art.  Doing it well doesn’t just require emotion, but emotional vulnerability, and that’s something that I can really feel coming off of our main character.  She’s shy and self-conscious, but the series does an excellent job of showing how she lights up when she hears a piece of poetry that really speaks to her.  Of letting the reins come off when she thinks she’s alone and doesn’t have to worry about being “cringe” in front of her cool new broadcasting club friends.

I ultimately expect this to be around a 6/10 for a couple of reasons.  First, the actual structure of the show doesn’t seem like it’s going anywhere special.  Girl makes friends and comes out of her shell.  They work toward succeeding in their competition while growing as people and dealing with their own issues.  While the art direction is quite good and I personally enjoyed the pacing, it’s presenting itself as a very chill, slow-paced kind of show that’s going to require a lot of sustained attention, and I don’t think that attention is going to be rewarded as much as it should be.  Still, Flower and Asura is worth trying out, and I have high hopes for it.

Tasokare Hotel

Est. 6/10. Test.

In the world between life and death, a mysterious hotel exists to help lost souls regain their memories.  Whenever someone winds up here, they are treated to free drinks, a dart board, and butler service run by a man with fire for a face.  It’s astoundingly boring, but you have no choice.  Until you can regain your memories about what happened to get you here, and therefore know if your soul is bound for the land of the living or the land of the dead, you’re stuck in Tasokare Hotel.  This is what’s happened to our protagonist, Neko Tsukahara.  Unsure of what’s happened to get her stuck in limbo, Neko has decided to spend her time at Tasokare hotel helping the other guests figure out their own trauma and get their souls where they’re supposed to be.

As someone who actually enjoyed Death Parade well enough, this is another show to put on that shelf.  The mystery we’re presented in episode one sets a good precedent for the rest of the show.  A woman whose head has been replaced with the Lovers tarot card has to get help examining the various objects in her hotel room until we find out that she was attacked by her favorite fortune teller and sent to purgatory.  Combine these fun mysteries-of-the-week with the overarching question of what happened to our protagonist, and I think this show has the potential to be a very decent seasonal.  That said, it’s held down immensely by its visual presentation.  This show looks like the anime in your head when you think of “an anime.”  The art style is beyond generic.  There’s no atmosphere.  No drama in the setting.  Absolutely no passion or vision at all was put into the visuals of this show (and to be clear, I mean that on the side of the directors, not on the side of the animators, who I’m sure did a wonderful job drawing exactly what they were told to), and this is a show that really needed that.  It’s a weird, surreal, supernatural mystery.  All four of those words demand a strong sense of atmosphere!  So where is it?  Why does the art of this show feel like it would be at home in any generic, incestuous romantic comedy?

Ultimately, I think there are going to be parts of this show that really work.  For the most part, though, it’s going to be good enough to have on your TV while doing chores, especially once the dub comes out.  Definitely not something you’d need to go out of your way to watch, though.

Possibly the Greatest Alchemist of All Time

Est. 5/10. Skip.

After being erroneously summoned to another world, Takumi Iruma finds himself unable to return home.  As a way of making amends, the goddess in charge of the bridge between Earth and this new world offers him a little bit of help in starting a new life.  He’s allowed to pick something called a “Job” which will give him magical “Skills” to help him trod his own path in this mysterious, new fantasy world.  As someone who doesn’t want to cause trouble and who isn’t interested in the exciting life, Takumi decides not to become a Warrior or a Rogue, but instead a simple Alchemist.  Someone who’s able to transmute metals, make potions, and generally help people out around town with their crafting needs.  However, when he’s attacked by a giant boar in the woods, his life is saved by a giant spider named Maple who really wants to “devote her services” to him.  Badly.

The only thing I have to say for this series is that it’s doing two interesting things.  Both of those things have been done before, but they were interesting when other series did them, so who’s to say they can’t be good again?  First is the Rising of the Shield Hero thing where the protagonist is going to wind up working against the rest of the heroes who were actually summoned to help. . . what are they doing, again?  Defeating the demon lord or something?  Whatever they’re doing, the series is really implying that the protagonist isn’t going to like it.  Second, it’s doing the So I’m a Spider, So What thing where the protagonist’s story takes place one year in the past, before the other three adventurers are ever summoned to this world.  Are they going to do anything with these two ideas that’s more special than what these other two shows did?  No idea.  Probably not.  Point is, this guy is going to be (possibly) the greatest alchemist of all time, and don’t you want to see him do that?  Don’t you want to cheer him on while he puts things in his Item Box and casts Water Ball and levels up his alchemy skill?  Don’t you want to see him fuck a spider?  Come on, man.  It’s not that hard.  Just go to your favorite streaming service and watch the show.  What else do you have going on? 

Magic Maker: How to Make Magic in Another World

Est. 6/10. T- . . . uh . . . t-test.

Hear me out.

This is a show wherein a person from (presumably) modern-day Japan is reincarnated into the body of a ten-to-twelve-year-old boy in a generic fantasy world.  There are absolutely no details given about the reincarnation other than that it happened.  Now that he’s in this world, he’s saddened to learn that there’s no such thing as magic.  Monsters?  Yes.  Fairies?  Oh yeah.  Magic?  Not a chance.  However, while hanging out with his sister one day, they see a bunch of glowing orbs rising up from a local lake.  After some rigorous, scientific experimentation, they discover that the orbs are released by some female fish as a courtship display for the males.  This leads the protagonist down a rabbit hole, where he realizes that he can exhibit the same kind of light power, as long as he’s making a strong enough display of love and devotion. . . such as promising that he will never get married so that he can be by his sister’s side forever.

Long story short, his sister loves him very much and never wants to leave his side, to the point where she says she’s going to marry him (as many children do).  When she says that she’s afraid their eventual marriages will separate them, her brother vows never to get married so that they can always be together, and that selfless, intense love that he has for his sister is what activates his magic powers.  Now, I can hear those gears turning.  This is an isekai.  A brother/sister pair.  Strong declarations of love between siblings.  Ah, yes.  You’ve seen this kind of thing before.  But hold on, dear friend, because I will make the argument that this show can go in two directions, and both of those directions are worth watching.

First, the show could stick with its prima facie premise, where the sister’s love for her brother is legitimately familial and she just can’t express that in the proper terms because she’s a child.  In this case, I think the show has a great framework for exploring different kinds of love, and could be setting up some very heartwarming scenes in the future where these two cement themselves as a lifelong team.  If it decides to do that, we’re looking at a fairly strong, 7ish/10 isekai series with comfortable pacing and charming characters.  Second, the show could do what it seems like it’s going to do and commit to the “your incest is so strong that you’re literally creating magic in a world that had none” bit, which sounds amazing.  Like, have you ever heard such potential for Grade-A trash?  Darling in the FranXX could never.  Combine that with solid visual presentation, fairly decent dialogue, and a good soundtrack, and I think I’m confident saying this is a show you should check out.  Is it going to be anything great?  I doubt it.  Is it going to be anything?  Probably.

Anyway, I'm Falling In Love With You

Est. 6/10. Test.

Normally, when a show is going to be bad, it’s pretty obvious from the jump.  You can tell by how the dialogue is written.  How the scenes are composed.  Even by how much care is put into the OP and ED.  Anyway, I’m Falling In Love With You is the rare type of show that I think is probably going to be bad, but that I’m not willing to totally discount after one episode.  There are enough red flags in this show’s first episode to make me wary, but it also makes enough bold and interesting choices to convince me that it has serious vision.  It’s edgy, melodramatic, and features a color-coded group of male childhood friends for the main character to be shipped with, but it also has the potential to tell a story about evolving relationships and love in the time of covid.

Mizuho Nishino is an average high school girl in the Year of Our Lord 2020, when “that nasty disease” (they refuse to say which disease, so I’m assuming rabies) is lumbering its way through the world.  That means she can’t confess her feelings to Hot Saito from the swim team at the fireworks festival.  She can’t go on a school trip with her childhood friend Kizuki.  The last days of her youth have been stolen from her, and she’s upset about it.  Hot Saito, for his part, has quit the swim team, since year-end competitions have been cancelled and he doesn’t see any point in doing it anymore.  It’s a bummer all around, and Anyway, I’m Falling In Love With You is the first anime I’ve seen to tackle those kinds of feelings.  I think most of us felt like the height of the pandemic took something from us, and people in that 17-21 age range got hit the absolute hardest.  It’s good to see media finally starting to tackle those feelings.  That said, there are a couple of reasons why I don’t think Anyway, I’m Falling in Love With You is going to actually do those feelings justice or treat them in a compassionate, nuanced way.

First off, they refuse to say the word “covid.”  Maybe they grow a spine in later episodes, but for episode one, the word is nowhere to be heard.  As far as I’m concerned, that’s not evidence that they’re not going to do this right, it’s proof.  You can’t write about something that you aren’t willing to talk about in explicit terms.  Imagine if Apocalypse Now took place during “a war.”  Or if Derry Girls made jokes about how their homeland was invaded by people from “an island.”  It doesn’t work.  It’s cowardly.  To be clear, I doubt this is the author’s fault – it’s likely meddling on the part of either the anime studio or the manga company – but it absolutely destroys any sense of credibility the work has.  If that weren’t enough, I didn’t see a single character wearing a mask.  In July 2020.  In Japan.  Every single character should be wearing a mask at all times.  If you’re worried about it making your characters less recognizable, give them unique masks!  Make the main character wear a cute panda bear mask.  The childhood friend’s mask is all black and edgy.  The nerdy guy is wearing your typical, disposable medical mask.  Not only are there lots of chances for characterization there, but I can imagine some great romantic moments where the viewer gets to see a character’s face for the first time.  It’s a huge missed opportunity that I’m assuming was missed due to short-sighted concerns about readers wanting to see characters’ faces.

Then, there’s the romance with the childhood friend.  There’s a scene near the beginning where Hot Saito goes up to the childhood friend (Kizuki) and basically says, “Hey, I know you’re childhood friends with Main Girl.  There anything there?”  And Kizuki actually says, “Yes, actually.  Don’t even think about it.”  The actual line he says is, “I don’t see her that way [as a friend],” which is brilliant.  Since so many childhood friend shows tiptoe around whether or not the childhood friends have feelings for her, having him be assertive and confident in his attraction toward her is a very good sign.  However, I really don’t think they’re going to focus on the right parts of this relationship.  The thing that’s interesting about childhood friends becoming romantic partners is the way that relationship changes.  How they see each-other in a different light.  How weird it is to kiss someone you used to dig for worms with in your backyard, and whether or not that weirdness is ever going to go away.  If they focused on that element of the relationship – especially when it’s compounded by all the drama surrounding the pandemic – then we’d have a stew going!  But that’s not what’s going to happen.  They’re going to focus on the “love triangle” between Kizuki, Hot Saito, and Main Girl.  Hot Saito shouldn’t exist, but I’m willing to bet dollars to donuts he’s going to be a huge antagonist/secondary love interest in the series.  Additionally, in episode 1, Main Girl mentions that Kizuki had asthma as a child that was so bad he had to miss school sometimes, and I’m sure that was mentioned just as a quirky character trait and not at all because they had to shoehorn in a way for a healthy, athletic high school student to die from A Disease.

Additionally, the visuals are nauseating, especially the transitions between characters speaking in the same scene.  They swipe from one character to the other like the camera is strapped to a merry-go-round.  The actual art style is fine, but the way it moves is just a little “off.”  All in all, I think this is a show that had very strong ideas, but that isn’t going to be able to execute on them in a worthwhile way.  Give it a shot.  I would love to be wrong.  I’m just not going to expect too much out of it.

 I May Be a Guild Receptionist, but I'll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time

Est. 6/10. Soft Test / Wary Skip

In That One Town (You Know the One), there is a guild.  At that guild, there is a desk.  Behind that desk, there is a woman.  Inside that woman, there is a burning desire to go home at the end of the working day.  Her job is quite nice.  Good benefits.  Decent pay.  The sense of accomplishment that only comes with fulfilling, government work in service of the people.  There’s only one thing that woman asks for in return:  The ability to clock out on-time and go home to take a nice bath and enjoy reading a book.  That’s what she was promised when she took this job.  Consistent hours.  However, recently, the bosses of the dungeons that populate the area beneath and around her town have started refusing to die.  And that sucks, because it means more adventurers are coming to town to try to kill them!  More monsters are moving in because they feel like it’s safe, and that creates even more jobs for the adventurers to do!  And this bustling economy brings in the most fearsome monster of all:  Overtime.

For reasons that are unexplained in the first episode, our dear receptionist has the ability to summon a giant hammer and kick the shit out of any dungeon boss who dares stand in the way of her quiet return home.  Going by the exciting moniker of “The Executioner,” our receptionist has created quite the name for herself in local folklore!  There’s just one problem.  Government employees aren’t allowed to have second jobs.  If anybody found out, she would lose her cushy receptionist gig forever!  And that would be awful!

This one isn’t as bad as it sounds.  It’s doing all the same things you would expect a show with a title like this to do, but it’s doing them very well.  The generic, quest-based fantasy world seems fairly fleshed out.  The characters are endearing and fun.  Even the joke seems to have a bit more staying power than some of the other shows I’ve reviewed in this little column.  All in all, this show isn’t going to be anything special, but it is going to be a great example of generic, fantasy fun.  If that’s something you enjoy, and you’re looking for good ones of that, then this is that.  Enjoy!

And that's it for this week! Join us next time for the wrap-up of Winter 2025, which will include the much-anticipated haiku about Sakamoto Days, along with at least one other surprisingly not terrible anime! Hope you enjoyed this one. See you next time!