Beware the golfer with one club.

Someone on the IRC opined, "Tonbo is...it's like a kid's anime? But not really?" I didn't know what he meant, but I sort of understand after watching the first episode. It's Tonbo herself. She comes across as much younger. She's in her final year of middle school, but I would have no trouble accepting her as a seven-year-old child instead. Perhaps that's deliberate, since that's about when she lost her parents. A synopsis I saw described it as a car accident, but didn't specify where. Was it on the island? That seems to be the sort of small community where everyone knows each other. If it happened on the island, and there was another car involved, surely she would still see the driver of that vehicle all the time.1 How awkward. (My guess is it was off the island, and she moved there when her grandfather became her guardian.)

Your name is Igaiga now. Deal with it.

Anyway, Ooi! Tonbo does seem tonally odd. I'm probably overthinking it, and it'll turn out to be an actual kid's sports anime. It does have familiar clichés such as when the pro golfer guy narrates amazing techniques that he spotted in a split second. However, the source material apparently runs in a weekly golf magazine (presumably for adults), so maybe the tone actually is weird for what it is. Not that I'm expecting something darker. This is surely an anime about good times on rustic golf island as a former pro golfer fleeing his old life gets his act together again with the support of genuine small-town folks and through the power of unorthodox golf techniques. There are already 49 volumes of the manga, though, and it's still ongoing, so anything can happen.

Note 1: I suppose all of the other occupants in a multi-vehicle collision could have also died, but I feel as if accidents that violent require speeds I wouldn't expect on the island. Probably they died off the island, or in a single-vehicle accident, or the entire parental death thing is an unexplained bit of the backstory that I'm completely overthinking. [Update: The second episode confirms their deaths occurred off the island.]

Oh my God, The Million Live! anime really happening.

Relax, it's only water.

If you don't count Cure Grandma or the various "other" Cures, and ignore whatever the deal was with Cure Earth, then Cure Butterfly is the oldest mainline Pretty Cure. She's only 18, but she's out of school and has a job, drives a car, and spends every waking moment on the verge of despair. Wait, not that last part. Actually, she's super genki and sort of doesn't seem like an adult at all. Do adults like her really exist? Maybe I'm asking too much of my made-for-children magikal girl show.

I wonder if Tsubasa and Syrup will get along.

There's also a boy Cure now: Cure Wing. He's fine. He's the youngest of the group, and he's technically a tubby bird who spends most of his time quietly doing tubby bird things instead of being a loud brat or something. He's WAY better than any of the dudes from Delicious Party♡Precure. I know the natural thing to do is compare Cure Wing with Black Pepper (spoilers: Cure Wing is better), but you have to remember there were a whole mess of other male characters in Delicious Party♡Precure who were way worse than Black Pepper.

I like your luggage.

Anyway, I'm getting off track. Ageha is an old friend of Mashiro (Cure Prism) despite their four-year age difference. Until now, she has just sort of been hanging around minding the magic baby while the Cures were busy. She finally became Cure Butterfly in episode 18, but there wasn't really any build-up to this, nor any indication there was anything necessarily preventing her from becoming a Cure much earlier. The deciding factor seemed to be she just wasn't needed as a Cure until now.

Ma'am, your slip is showing.

Still, she's a welcome addition, even if the novelty of having a (barely adult) adult Cure will quickly get overshadowed by actual-adult Nozomi's return when Kibō no Chikara ~Otona Precure 23~ begins in October. I'm sort of hoping ol' Dream and Bunbee ended up as co-workers in some fresh corporate hellscape. Maybe they spend a lot of time getting plastered together while bitching about their jobs.

Not yet, Kita Kita!

Bocchi the Rock! is great. It's way better than I was expecting. A huge part of this comes down to execution, though. This is not a slight against its source material (which I haven't read), but rather a reflection of how much I enjoyed the creative choices the anime used to communicate Hitori's discomfort and personal struggles. I also liked seeing "Bocchi" advance as a character, although a significant part of this progress was thanks to new friends dragging her forward. This does mean high school Hitori probably would have stayed in the same place as middle school Hitori were it not for some fortuitous encounters creating these opportunities for her, though.

She's doing it again.

This brings me to the subject central to the title of this post. (Alternate title: "The End of Bocchi the Rock! ~Air/My Purest Love for Kita Kita~." Do people even still get that reference?) For a while after her introduction, I was afraid Kita Ikuyo Kita Kita would be one-note character whose scenes mostly involved gags about adoring Ryou. Thankfully, it turned out she had a much more important role to play, even if her "Kit-Aura" may be a little too fearsome. Ikuyo is a good foil for Hitori, and I enjoy the contrasts provided by their characters. There's no shortage of amazing Bocchi scenes where her anxiety warps time and space or glitches reality, but I also like the gags involving Kita Kita's mabushii being sort of excessive.

This is not Mental Out. At least I don't think it is.

Possibly I just enjoy characters with high genki levels in general. In any case, I don't have a lot of complex reasons for explaining why Ikuyo is great. I guess I will add that—depending on how you feel about Kessoku Band's music—her position as its only vocalist also seems like the sort of thing that deserves more attention. As an aside, even though I said, "only vocalist," I do harbor suspicions Bocchi will be unexpectedly pressed into service to take Kita Kita's place during an unplanned contingency in some theoretical future installment. Maybe Hitori wouldn't feel up to it yet, but I'm confident her seiyuu could tackle this all day, any day. Aoyama Yoshino was a WUG!

What are you thinking about?

You might see Lycoris Recoil and Engage Kiss compared every so often (and I guess that's what I'm doing now), but they don't share much in common. Well, I guess they both have Aniplex and A1-Pictures behind them, and both anime air on Saturdays, but the shows themselves aren't similar. Also, both are headed towards a big finish this weekend, although I can see how Lycoris Recoil might earn itself a sequel, depending on how things go.

Look, there aren't even any bullet holes!

To be clear, Lycoris Recoil is a significantly better show than Engage Kiss. I like both, although for different reasons, but there's a good reason why fans of Lycoris Recoil are so enthused. It features a well-balanced mix of serious drama with genuine stakes, wacky high jinks, and significant amounts of entertaining (albeit unrealistic) gun play.

My opinions about SHARON HOLYGRAIL are wholly positive.

On the other hand, Engage Kiss has a combat nun sensibly named SHARON HOLYGRAIL who only takes off her habit's headpiece during sex. It also features a high school demon girl whose motivation for being so devoted to Potato-kun is somewhat unclear. She at least seems willing to accept she must have had a good reason. Maybe she found instructions scrawled on her hand telling her to be, and just assumed there was a good reason that she merely forgot.

The Million Live! anime sure is taking its sweet time.

I don't know that Center Axis Relock is the best stance to adopt
while leaping in the air, but I also don't know that it's not.

I wasn't planning on watching Lycoris Recoil because I thought it was another show about girls running a cafe. It turns out it's about girls shooting people. And sometimes running a cafe. I suppose I might have guessed firearms could factor into the series, considering the word recoil is right in the title, but I was surprised at the attention to detail given to its gun-handling scenes. I'm much more used to anime characters who can't even be bothered to use the sights. In contrast, the characters in Lycoris Recoil handle their weapons in convincing ways that reveal the production team clearly did their research, presumably modeling scenes after real-world examples.

I guess Takina's washing her hair tonight.

This is not to say the gunplay in Lycoris Recoil is entirely authentic, but rather that it looks really good in ways that most anime don't bother with, so I appreciate the extra effort. This is just one factor in the show's favor though. So far, this series has been pretty fun to watch. The story has also kept the viewer in the dark about some obviously significant events that have influenced the setting. It has been doling out information, but in chunks, which is quite an improvement over the more typical practice of just dumping it all out in the first episode.

It's not Chisato's fault she's better.

The dynamic between the two leads is also engaging. If I had to provide a complaint about Lycoris Recoil, I suppose Chisato's wall-to-wall genki boisterousness is sort of a lot to handle sometimes. Nevertheless, this fits the rest of her personality well, and I enjoy the confidence and casual ease with which she approaches her tasks. Anzai Chika, who played Reina in Hibike! Euphonium, is in this, but she's voicing Chisato. This is sort of surprising since Reina (at least superficially) seems a lot more like Chisato's no-nonsense partner, Takina.

Somehow, this is Chisato's fault. Allegedly.

Much of the imagery surrounding Lycoris Recoil hints as more ominous developments in the coming episodes. As an original anime, chances are good there will be an actual ending of some sort, or at least not some manner of non-ending ending such as those plaguing shows constrained by external source material. Consequently, I'm looking forward to the rest of the series, particularly considering how often it has pleasantly surprised me so far. Lycoris Recoil has done a lot of things well, so I'm eager to see what it will do next.

She may be dead, but she still has feet.

I mostly started watching Kami Kuzu☆Idol (Phantom of the Idol) as an excuse to pad my Ghost Girlfriends tag. The series is about an unmotivated (read: total deadbeat) male idol who gets possessed by the ghost of a recently deceased female idol. Combined, they—I dunno—do idol-type things better, I guess. I enjoyed Ginban Kaleidoscope, which also involved being possessed by a ghost, so I figured I could make space for Kami Kuzu☆Idol in my Summer 2022 anime queue.

I like how she hijacked his body without consent to indulge in physical pleasure.

Through three episodes, it's fine. So far, it's about what I expected. I don't have any complaints about Kami Kuzu☆Idol, but it also hasn't done anything particularly remarkable or memorable yet. Touyama Nao as the ghost is doing a very Touyama Nao voice, if you like that sort of thing. Honestly, I think the show would be more interesting with the premise reversed. Like, instead, make it about highly motivated TOP FUEL GENKI idol who gets possessed by the ghost of a disgruntled dead idol who is a constant downer. I'd watch that too.