Anime Spotlight #39: Spotlightning Round (Part III)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Animeister

Welcome to another Anime Spotlightning Round, Ticketholders!

With the season changing (and I don't mean the triple-digit temperatures), recent installments of my favorite anime are coming to an end...but not as quickly as I had hoped. So instead of focusing on a single series, I thought I'd rapid-fire through some anime that I've only watched a few episodes of for various, but mostly negative, reasons. However, Date A Live just released the dub of its final episode. Not of the season, but its final episode ever. So I'm going to cover that next week, once I've bitten the proverbial magic time-travel bullet and watched its two sub-only movies.

In the meantime, please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my rapid-fire content.

The Duke of Death and His Maid - There's a Duke. He was cursed by a witch so that he kills any living thing he touches. He has a butler and a maid (completing the title) who constantly teases him with suggestive threats of romantic physical contact. That counts as a joke. I watched three episodes and saw that joke six times. It's a CGI anime...with three seasons. There's apparently more to this story than "watch the same joke seventy-two times," but thanks; I'm good.

Vampire Dormitory - A girl whose life sucks so bad that she has to pretend to be a boy to get a decent job, but then gets fired from that job for being too attractive and slips off a bridge after backing out of a suicide attempt gets rescued by a sparkle-handsome vampire. They end up working at the same host cafe because dude costume (including boob-tape and a wig that defies physics and logical sense because she could have just cut her hair short if we didn't need a twist reveal at the end of the one episode I watched. Also, said vampire only wants to drink dudes because he has a fictional pop idol magical girl girlfriend on TV and on his body pillow, and there's this thing where misery makes human blood taste like shit and happy blood tastes like strawberries. Not a fan of guy-on-guy, but I'm even less of a fan of guy-on-guy fiction that would literally rather be a pussy than commit to its premise, yet still tries to be the most Japraved trash it possibly can.

I need some good news right about now, which brings us to....

Quality Assurance In Another World - A VRMMO test team gets trapped in the world of a new game where every character is thicc. I like the plethora of twists the first episode throws at the audience to keep us guessing which kind of fantasy, RPG, and/or isekai we're in for, who our main character is, and what he really does. The monster designs are unique, and the few episodes I watched so far do a fun take on the MandaLastOfUs formula. I'll keep watching this one.

A Journey Through Another World: Raising Kids While Adventuring - Boring guy gets isekai'd and instead of cheat magic, the gods give him two overpowered and adorable children who constantly double-talk each other's lines (which will not get annoying at all ever by the opening scene of the second episode) and three cute animal familiars to take care of. I have neither the time nor the insulin to endure this.

Re:Monster - What if Demon Lord Retry and That Time I Reincarnated As A Slime had a horny speed-runner goblin baby. The "hero" (who abducts and bangs every human and fantasy creature with a vagina offscreen because he's a goblin and that counts as an ironic joke in the land of Japravity) has a Waterloo-sized interspecies army, sixty-nine fucktillion skills, and the ability to solve any problem with his blood by episode four. Re:Pulsive, Re:Ductive, and Re:Tarded.

Gods' Games We Play - What If DanMachi and Squid Game were combined into something more boring than vanilla-flavored toilet paper. The gods get bored (probably from watching the first two episodes of this anime) and challenge mortals to internationally televised mashups of childhood games that barely make sense (like the second episode's combination of tower defense games, Othello, and tag), accompanied by some of the most soulless, poorly delivered exposition dumps this side of The Last Airbender. God, this is lame, I say.

As was that closing pun-rhyme, so please help me up my game by remembering to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my rapid-fire content.

Animeister,

Out.