APRIL 2023 ANIME WATCHLIST
Late April has been a terribly exciting and transformative month for me in terms of Anime. My approach so far has been to avoid any ongoing series like the plague and, at best, wait until an entire season is out before starting. The downside of this approach is I haven’t been mindful of keeping track of the seasons, and that’s how I fell behind so hard with Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia, and that’s why it feels so weird and daunting to jump back in bewildered for two seasons instead of excitedly watching the first episode along with everyone else. I definitely have the ability to watch week-to-week television, seeing how LOST and Game of Thrones are two of my favorite series of all time. But in the fragmented world of the internet, it felt stressful to try and keep up, as I’ve been failing to do with all of the Disney+ series since Falcon and the Winter Soldier ended and Loki began.
That being said, I saw a very strong anime recommendation on the MrMattyPlays Discord from a guy whose taste I respect greatly, and I blindly watched the triple-length feature-length debut episode of Oshi No Ko, a series that just debuted about a week and a half ago. The experience was so brain-melting and I loved being in on the show before it got beaten over my head how good it is. It was such a hard left turn from my usual anime experience that I probably overcorrected and started many series, all of which are FUCKING AMAZING SO FAR!
I navigated to the Spring 2023 section of the MyAnimeList app just to see what called me, and I was drawn by Heavenly Delusion and the first episode fucking HITS! It’s like Attack on Titan meets The Last of Us meets a serious Sci-Fi version of the dome from The Simpsons Movie. I’m thrilled to watch the next episode and that was the final straw that made me excited to bounce around between different Spring 2023 anime, and hopefully ride that momentum into catching up on other contemporaries like Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba and Season Two of Vinland Saga, one of my favorite works of fiction in recent memory and the whole reason why I started Season One back in the Fall/Winter when I heard the sequel was coming soon.
A stupid but persistent side note: In my parking garage at my apartment, there’s an SUV that always parks near me, and they have Demon Slayer stickers on their windows peeking out from where the windows roll down, and on their back windshield as well. They’re high quality stickers and they’re foil holographic as well, so I notice them almost every time I go to my car, week in and week out. I needed to document this somewhere: Those stickers create more Demon Slayer FOMO in me than anything else. Legitimately.
Attack on Titan: Season One (Rewatch)
I’m Back In
T.
Oshi No Ko
04/21: The Pilot (The Emotional Roller Coaster of a Lifetime
As stated above, I received a recommendation to go into this show blind from a trusted source and took the jump into this brightly colored, teenage girl centric, potentially weeb-y show. And when I tell you it. Was. Lifechanging.
I’m not going to spoil anything in this little write-up here because I believe that the show is that important and impactful to watch blind.
04/23: Catching Up (On the Elliptical)
Honestly, the third episode still makes me sad to think about. Ruby is such a sweet, tragic character that still fights to see the good in the world and hope for the best in other people. She is not only fighting for her own dream, which was made impossible in her past life for a multitude of reasons including health, genetics, and financial factors. She is the farthest thing from an entitled brat. While no one knows that she’s Ai’s child, she could still at least leverage her relationship with Ai’s former manager and even play the “She was my godmother” or “Like a big sister to me” role. Despite all that, Aqua’s understandable yet overprotective tactics stomped out Ai’s one in a million chance before it was even fully realized, and I can’t seem to get past that. Even if he’s trying to argue that Idol life is not good for her and that she’d be in the same danger Ai was in, it’s absolutely fucking heartbreaking when juxtaposed with the far flung odds that it took just for her to have a chance at becoming an idol, let alone stardom. And she was such a natural that she had a real shot at a lifechanging opportunity. And she was made to feel like a failure all because her brother, who should be a grown enough adult to know better, absolutely demolished her chances in such a fucking avoidable fashion. It was almost sadistic, and the director reacts accordingly. I went from rooting for this MC to pitying and feeling bad for him, to now only really remaining 50 – 33% invested in his side of the story. In his quest for vengeance. And I’m only partially invested in Ruby’s path because she could’ve and should’ve had a chance to live out her wildest dreams as a superstar idol, and instead she’s settling for a less-than experience and a downgraded life.
Hell’s Paradise
04/21: Too much Caffeine Late + Discord + SurfShark: The Beginning of a Movement
T.
04/22: The Beginning of the Shower Anime
T.
Heavenly Delusion
04/23: A Hell of a Start (Based on the Poster)
T.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba
04/23: Back in the Swing of Things
T.
