The Season in Haikus - Winter 2025 (Part 2)

Hello, all! We have another week's worth of lovely seasonal haikus with which to entertain you while I work on the next video! Today, we have a heaping helping of mediocre isekai, a couple of romance shows, and one unexpected frontrunner that I'm calling the best show of the season. If you're interested in that kind of thing, read on!

If you haven't read the seasonal haikus for last week, or if you have no idea what's going on here, here's a link for you: https://www.patreon.com/posts/season-in-haikus-123774903 .

Without further ado, here we go!

 Promise of Wizard

Est. 5.5/10. Skip.

Are you a fifteen-to-forty-five-year-old female who wants to be swept away to another world by a ragtag gaggle of suave renegades who are wholly dedicated to your service?  Do you wish you were?  In that case, Promise of Wizard is one of many shows for you!  I can’t even tell you how many of these I’ve seen at this point.  The wish-fulfilling, female-centric harem story featuring five charming boys who are all named after fictional literary icons has returned.  This time, it involves a young woman just like you, who is caught up in the ravages of life and whisked away to another world via a magic elevator.  She’s met with an awful representative of the Ministry of Magic (yes, really) and his assistant Cock Robin (yes, really), who let her know that she’s the Great Sage and that she has to help them defeat the Calamity that’s destroying their world.

When she’s not cool with that idea, wizards burst in from the windows to defend her.  After a legitimately very hype bit of repartee between the assembled soldiers and a wizard named Cain, the lady escapes with a wizard named Heathcliffe, meets up with a wizard named Shylock, and reunites with the floating hat that she met in the elevator, who is actually a wizard named Murr.  Together, they sexily fly out the window on broomsticks to help save the wizards’ friend Faust from a grievous wound he suffered in battle with the Calamity.

Do you like being romanced by stereotypically seductive, color-coded magical boys with silly names?  I do, sometimes.  It’s okay.  If that’s what you’re feeling today, Promise of Wizard will give you that.  If not, don’t go into it hoping it’ll give you anything else, because it won’t.

 Headhunted to Another World: From Salaryman to Big Four!

Est. 6/10. Test.

After being transferred overseas by his incompetent, malicious manager in an attempt to get rid of him, Dennosuke Uchimura does everything he can to keep the project he’s leading together.  He learns the local language.  Gains the trust of his underlings.  Makes a perfect timeline for the project.  And then gets transferred overseas again in a totally awesome power move that leaves him reeling and renders all his hard work pointless.  As he’s moping about the futility of working life, he’s run over by a moped and gets a one-way ticket to the Demon Lord’s throne room.  There, he is offered a position as one of the Demon Lord’s prestigious Elite Four, which comes with full benefits, paid vacation days, and the right to choose his own underlings.

Obviously, it’s an isekai with a silly premise, but I’m a sucker for shows that are more about working together to find common ground and solve problems in mutually beneficial ways than they are about physically fighting for dominance.  Seeing Dennosuke work out negotiations with the minotaur tribe sets a good precedent, and I'm pretty excited to see what other situations it can put Dennosuke in.  This show has heart and very strong pro-worker vibes.  While other members of the Demon Lord’s army might want to subjugate the surrounding settlements and forcibly enlist their citizens, all Dennosuke has to do is call up on his pink-mustached spirit bartender and tell him about the trouble’s he’s having negotiating with the other faction’s leader.  The answer will come to him.

I don’t think this one’s going to be anything too special.  It doesn’t have any visual flair.  The joke will surely get old after a minute.  But the characters are fun, I’m here for the premise, and I think it has the potential for some honestly touching moments as long as it’s able to expand adequately on what it’s set up in this first episode.  Give it an episode or two to see what you think.

I Have a Crush at Work

 Est. 5/10. Skip.

So there’s this guy, right?  And he has a crush at work!  But the cool thing is, she actually likes him back and the two of them have been dating for a whole twenty-four hours.  However, she’s adamant that nobody from their office can know about it, because that would be embarrassing.  That’s really all there is.

I’m willing to admit that the couple is cute here.  Especially the girl.  But seriously, there’s just nothing to this show at all.  It’s not funny.  The “romance” can hardly even be called that.  And frankly?  This guy deserves better than a woman who refuses to admit that she’s even seeing him.  I get not wanting to tell anyone at work that you’re casually trying out dating a guy who works a few floors below you.  If you date for two or three weeks and then decide things aren’t going to work out, you don’t want to have to admit your failure to an entire troupe of office monkeys.  That’s fine.  But this show isn’t setting this up to be a “let’s see what happens before we tell people” thing.  They’re setting it up as a “WE COULD BE MARRIED FOR TWELVE YEARS AND IT WOULD STILL BE IMPERATIVE THAT NOBODY KNOW THAT” thing.  And that’s just not a premise that I feel has any legs.  It’s possible that the side characters could raise this one by a point or so if they add enough spice to the soup, but for the moment, this show is ladling hot water into a bowl and calling it broth.  There’s nothing here for anyone who isn’t exceedingly lonely and in need of a vicarious relationship to project themselves onto, so it’s about six years too late to get me.

I'm a Noble on the Brink of Ruin, So I Might as Well Try Mastering Magic

This is one of those isekai that doesn’t bother giving a backstory.  It says “this is an isekai, you know what that entails,” and it throws us right into the life of twelve-year-old Liam Hamilton, the fourth son of a noble family that’s on the brink of ruin.  This world has a unique approach to nobility.  Every three generations, each noble family has to produce someone extraordinary or lose their noble title.  As the previous two generation of the Hamilton family have all been mid-tier scrubs, they’re counting on this last generation to really be incredible so that they can keep being rich and oppressing the peasantry.  To this end, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton have been trying very hard to have a female child so that she can marry into the Royal Family, which is apparently “extraordinary” enough to maintain their noble status. 

As a boy, Liam is inherently a disappointment to his clan.  He cannot gay marry the crown prince, and therefore he is useless.  But uselessness comes with freedom!  Since his family has no expectations for him, Liam (a reincarnated man from modern-day Japan who’s been thrust into the body of a prepubescent boy (don’t screenshot the words “thrust into the body of a prepubescent boy,” please)) decides to spend his days mastering the ancient art of magic.  With help from his family’s grimoires and his secret, thirty-year-old man friend in the woods, Liam is quickly able to cast five different kinds of magic at once, a remarkable skill that only one in a million very special boys are able to do.  And so, after leaving a clone of himself with his parents, he sets off to use his super special magic powers to make a lot of money.

You could’ve stopped reading when I said “in another world” right up there, and yet you didn’t.  Why is that?  Were you expecting something more?  Maybe a little twist of the plot that makes it seem like this series at least has some unique ideas, whether or not it’s able to execute on them in a meaningful way?  Were you hoping I would be able to make some humorous joke about how generic and bland the show is, using criticism to create art from garbage?  Or are you just going through this post out of habit?  You started reading, and now you feel compelled to continue.  Is that it?  Whatever the case may be, I’m sorry to tell you that your instincts were wrong.  Unless you are a profound devotee of the fantasy isekai aesthetic, this show will be as useless to you as a fourth male child.  Continue on your way, and may you have better luck on your journey.

Bogus Skill <<Fruitmaster>>: About That Time I Became Able to Eat Unlimited Numbers of Skill Fruits (That Kill You)

Est. 5/10. Skip.

In this novel and exciting fantasy world, people are able to acquire special abilities called “skills,” which grant them wonderful and unique powers like being really good with a sword, being really good at farming, and being really good at seduction (that’s canon).  At a special point in a young person’s life, they are allowed to go to the local Catholic church, where a nun gives them something called a “skill fruit,” which will give them one of these “skills” upon eating it.  But they have to be careful never to eat more than one skill fruit, because if they do, they’ll die.  Our protagonist, Light Underwood, wants to be an “adventurer,” which is a kind of person who goes out into the world to fight mean ol’ monsters, discover ancient ruins, and generally have a fun and exciting time of it.  Even though he was hoping that the Fruit Nun would give him the special fruit hat made him sword real good, she actually gave him the fruit that made him good with fruit.  So now, he’s doomed to life as a simple farmer, cultivating fruit for other people to sell.

However, one day, when he sits down to eat dinner that was lovingly prepared by the young girl he was given by the mayor (This isn’t explained.  She’s just there.  He literally says that the mayor made her live with him “for reasons.”), she reveals that she took some fruit from the boxes of skill fruits that he’d been cultivating and put them in the stew!  Tragedy! She is now to be an orphan! Instead of dying, though, Light gets a second skill!  His seemingly useless Fruitmaster skill actually made him immune to the poison of all fruits, which includes skill fruits!  Now, he’s the only person in the world with more than one skill, and he’s going to be the greatest adventurer of all!

Anyway, my name is Bryant, and I’m looking for a new job.  While I enjoyed my previous profession for the freedom it granted me and the ability to interact with a wonderful community of fans, I found myself frequently dreading the more practical aspects of the work, which often involved having to sit in front of a computer screen and witness shows like this.  My skills include graphic design, video editing, social media management, and SEO optimization.  I speak French and Dutch (Flemish) and have ample experience working in foreign environments.  Please know that I am not interested in any position that would put me in contact with anime, manga, or any related media (manhwa, “Chinese anime,” etc.).  My full resumé can be found on Indeed.  Visa-granting EU-based employers preferred.

 Even Given the Worthless "Appraiser" Class, I’m Actually the Strongest

Est. 5.5/10. Skip.

In a fantasy world where “dungeons” are popping up all over the place, Ein is working hard to make a living for himself by joining up with groups that raid these dungeons and sell the loot they find therein.  While everyone in this world is granted a special Skill that allows them to do magic and fight monsters and stuff, Ein’s Skill is one of the most useless ones imaginable: The Appraisal Skill.  All his magic ability is good for is telling him what certain monster parts can do and how much they might be worth at market (and explicitly sorting them into F-rank through S-rank based on their objective quality, of course).  When he teams up with a couple of hooligans who accidentally decide to take on a dungeon well above their pay grade, Ein finds himself abandoned by his squad mates, who leave him to die so that they can hopefully escape the monstrous hellhounds who want to waste them and eat their bones.  With his way out of the dungeon blocked off and no other options available to him, Ein Javerts himself.

On the exceptionally long dive to the bottom of a chasm that he found, Ein. . . truth be told, I forget exactly what happens.  He’s either teleported to some special god tree or he hits the bottom of the chasm and wakes up at the god tree or something.  Point is, there’s a hot anime girl there, and now he’s realized that his appraisal skill is actually really good or something.  Like, he’s at the bottom of the dungeon, and he’s fighting monsters that literally cut his body to pieces, but he can just crawl back to the god tree and drink its god tree juice and cure all his wounds, so he can. . . was he leveling up?  Or just getting loot so he could sell it later and get better gear?  Or. . . something? I’m gonna be honest, I stopped paying attention at the title.

This show is, almost beat for beat, Solo Leveling set in a fantasy world.  For those of you who liked Solo Leveling, this is not as good as Solo Leveling.  For those of you who didn’t like Solo Leveling. . . this is not as good as Solo Leveling.  Which leaves us with people who liked Solo Leveling a totally moderate amount.  If you liked Solo Leveling to a perfectly average degree, and you thought it would be better in a fantasy setting with a little bit more edge to the main character, then you might enjoy having this on while you fold your laundry.  That’s all I can give you.

 Honey Lemon Soda

Est. 4.5/10. Skip.

Whenever I see a show like Fruitmaster or Appraiser Class or Noble on the Brink of Ruin, the thing that’s always on the forefront of my mind is how boring it is.  But when we complain about how dreadfully dull those shows are, it’s important to remember that they aren’t inherently boring.  After all, look at what’s going on in them!  Monster fights!  Dungeon delves!  Magic duels!  There’s betrayal!  There’s heartbreak!  A man is just given a child for no reason!  If they weren’t included in a long line of shows that are doing literally the exact same things, they wouldn’t be boring!  They might still be bad, but we wouldn’t be bored by them in the same way that we are in the real world that actually exists.  Honey Lemon Soda is not like that.  Honey Lemon Soda is a boring anime.

Uka Ishimori, a shy and unimpressive girl who’s trying to decide which high school to go to, gets bullied outside a subway station.  The bullies throw her hard-won high school advertisements to the ground, then leave her to be rescued by a handsome and mysterious boy who’s drinking the eponymous honey lemon soda.  He picks up her papers and recommends one of the high schools for her, and she does wind up going there.  The rest of the show is about her trying to stand up for herself and interacting with this guy, who tries to teach her how to be more assertive.  During one particularly egregious scene, the bullies are lording over this girl after they’ve knocked her to the floor of the hallway, and they just kinda stand there while Savior Man kneels down and literally has her sound out the words “help me” syllable by syllable.  He makes her vocally ask for his help before he gives it to her, which is supposed to be a sweet gesture involving him trying to teach her some self-reliance, but which reads a lot more as a self-righteous prick putting further obstacles in the way of a victim getting help against her abusers.

Look, I’ll level with you all, this isn’t my kind of show.  It’s a very grounded high school romance/drama whose plot revolves entirely around a completely normal girl being saved from her loneliness by a “kind of hot if he’s your type” guy who sprays honey lemon soda on her assailants.  The characters aren’t unique or interesting, and the setting is one that exists in something like 93% of all anime that don’t take place In Another World.  I give it a 4.5/10 for being utterly unremarkable in every way, but it probably deserves closer to a 4 or even a 3 if you consider boredom a sin.  Not to mention the art style is downright unpleasant.

The Daily Life of a Middle-Aged Online Shopper in Another World

Est. 6/10. Test.

AS THIS IS THE KIND OF ANIME THAT IS BOLD ENOUGH TO OPEN WITH A MONTAGE OF CLIPS SET TO THE SONG “ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA” BY STRAUSS (You know the one.  Look it up if you don’t know it by name.), I WILL BE OPENING THIS REVIEW IN A SIMILARLY EPIC FASHION BY TYPING IN ALL CAPS.  IMAGINE A BLARING BRASS SECTION AND DEEP, RICH TIMPANI DRUMS BACKING UP MY WORDS AS YOU READ.

KENICHI IS AN AVERAGE WORKING MAN.  WHEN HE OVERWORKS HIMSELF IN THE OFFICE AND WINDS UP IN THE HOSPITAL, HE BEGINS A NEW CAREER AS A PROFESSIONAL ONLINE SHOPPER.  DUE TO SOME VAGUE INTERFERENCE FROM GREEN FOREST SPIRITS, HE IS ISEKAI’D TO THE WORLD TO WHICH PEOPLE GET ISEKAI’D.  (You know the one.)  HOWEVER, INSTEAD OF BEING GIVEN A SPECIAL SKILL OR A VIDEO-GAME STATS SCREEN, HE IS GIVEN ACCESS TO SHANGRI-LA, HIS FAVORITE ONLINE RETAILER.  WHENEVER HE LIKES, HE CAN PURCHASE THINGS FROM THE REAL WORLD AND HAVE THEM DEPOSITED DIRECTLY INTO HIS ITEM BOX WITHOUT EVEN WAITING FOR SHIPPING!  NOW, HE’S ON A QUEST TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL MERCHANT AND LIVE THE EASY LIFE.

All cards on the table, here?  I actually liked this one a lot.  I don’t think it’s anything people are going to be talking about a year from now, but the gimmick allowed for some interesting plot points and I found the main character charming.  Seeing how he interacts with various people at his merchant stall – from wealthy nobles marveling at his extra-sharp blades to idiotic beast people who just want the tarp he’s using as a roof – is kinda delightful?  The show has a couple of fun jokes, a good sense of what it’s about, and just enough worldbuilding to make the setting feel more alive than you’d typically get from a show like this.  While I don’t expect to finish it, I’m definitely going to watch another few episodes and see where it’s going!

 From Bureaucrat to Villainess: Dad's Been Reincarnated!

Est. 5.5/10. Test.

There is a budding genre of Isekai For Girls where the main character is not some otaku nerd who gets reincarnated into the world of his favorite video game, but rather an otaku nerd who gets reincarnated into the world of her favorite video game, which is a visual novel.  Typically, this kind of show features the main character being put into the skin of either the heroine of an otome game (a dating sim with a female protagonist who is romanced by a gaggle of hot guys), or the “villainess” character (the jerky, stuck-up rival of the heroine who is competing with her for the love of the guys).  It is an interesting, feminine answer to the oh-so-masculine genre of RPG-based isekai, and there are plenty of examples of it that are very good, from My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom to I’m In Love with the Villainess, among others.  However, from the titles alone, I’m sure you can guess the problem here.  It’s a very same-y genre.  There are only so many ways you can rearrange three princely boys, one reincarnated otaku, and either a high-class bully or a low-class darling.  Eventually, you just have to accept that you’ve had too much and you don’t want to eat this anymore.

Which is why I appreciate what this show is doing so much!  As you guessed from the title and were explicitly told in my haiku, this show does not feature an otaku, teenage girl being thrust into her favorite video game.  It features an otaku, teenage girl’s dad being thrust into her favorite video game!  (Sorry that your dad is dead, by the way, girl.  That has to suck.)  As an average, nerdy salaryman in his fifties who finds himself reincarnated in the body of the villainess of his daughter’s favorite otome game after getting hit by a truck, Kenzaburou Tondabayashi has to navigate the complexities of royal life while playing his part in the game so that he and the heroine can live happily ever after!

Watching Kenzaburou try to act like a bitchy teenager is hilarious, because this man is a total sweetheart.  He wants nothing more than to give wise, parental advice to the teenagers around him and help them through this turbulent period of their young lives.  As a central theme, it’s hard to find one that has more potential to be both heartwarming and hilarious.  That said, I can’t imagine this show has the chops to pull it off for twelve episodes.  By the end of episode one, the gag already starts to get old, and the situations that Kenzaburou finds himself in start to feel more obligatory than natural, like the writer had two or three good ideas and used them all before the OP in episode two.  It’s possible that future episodes are going to introduce more conflict and spice up the premise a bit, and I’m sure there are more sweet scenes coming where Kenzaburou gets to act like a loving dad, but just based on the structure of episode one, I don’t trust that the premise is strong enough to hold this show up for a whole season.  The first episode is worth watching on its own, though, so please give it a shot if it seems fun to you!

Farmagia

Est. 4/10. Test.

Imagine a world where Pokemon are grown like crops.  Fields of them lay out on the back of a continent shaped like a giant turtle.  A protagonist with vibrantly-colored hair dreams of raising the absolute best ones.  Children hear stories about the bond between human and monster.  It’s an idyllic paradise where friendship reigns supreme and balance has been struck between the natural and the anthropogenic.  But, as you look closer, you see the oddities in this simple television program made for children to stop watching halfway through because they have to go to school.  Each monster is stranger than the last.  Their eyes stare vacant at a future that they know is not going to come.  Plucked from the ground and into a world where they are pushed to servitude, each of the monsters seems to exhibit a strange kind of awareness to their reality.  They are nothing but tools in the hands of a childish god.  Playthings for teenagers, who were, themselves, designed to sell playthings for children.  The twisted genetic mockery that results from twenty years of Saturday Morning Cartoon inbreeding.

Anyway, then the world blows up.  The leader of the island of Felicidad is dead, and now dark overlord Glaza is attempting to rule the world.  Four of the five leaders of the various continents have already joined his side (bruh wtf), and now it’s up to our protagonists to silently sneak their way into their headquarters, kill them straight dead, and overthrow Glaza’s despotic, fascist regime.  That’s right, this ain’t your grandpappy’s Saturday morning kid’s show.  This is the kind of show that features a headless suit of armor riding a nightmare horse slashing your Pokemon in half with his hellfire axe.  There’s betrayal.  Destruction.  The spark of hope that can be found only at the bottom of an upturned world.  In other words, Farmagia speaks to a reality that all of us are confronting right now, and it says to that reality, “Ack!  A dog!  I am afraid of those!”

Listen, there’s nothing I can say that’s going to accurately sell the experience of watching Farmagia, but let me try:  This is the best show of the season.  It looks like it’s gonna be somewhere around a 4/10, and I have already cleared space on my shelf for the DVD box set.  I might not yet have seen Sakamoto Days, but I know it doesn’t stand a chance compared to the dead-eyed stares of the various disturbing monsters that crossed my screen while watching this masterpiece.  If you want to be swept up in a show that’s just barely not right, this is the one for you.

That’s it for this week!  Hope you all enjoyed my poetry!