Every First Episode in the Winter 2023 Cour

Now that the Winter 2023 cour has come to an end, what better time to discuss the anime that aired this season. This season I have watched episodes from quite a lot of anime. Of course there are some series that I haven’t been able to watch due to them not being available on a platform I use, they are the continuation of a show I haven’t seen, or they don’t seem interesting enough. I will be going through the first episodes of every anime I have watched, and will be giving my thoughts about the series from it, and anime in general this season.

So in no particular order let’s start…

‘Inu ni Nattara Suki na Hito ni Hirowareta.’, or ‘My Life as Inukai-san’s Dog’. First things first, ‘inu’ means dog, so that is quite an appropriate name. This is a bit of a strange anime. In the first episode, the protagonist has somehow become a dog and gets taken in by a classmate who believes that she has found a stray dog. Because of this, the protagonist seems to find himself in some unusual ‘situations’. This is not something that I plan on watching further.

Farming Life in Another World, is another isekai anime where after the protagonist dies, and they get to reincarnate in another world with a wish of their choice. Instead of bringing a smartphone, or getting to live a quiet life, the protagonist chooses to be able to start a farm in their new life. This anime takes some of the elements of Slime 300 to an extreme, with the protagonist gaining a magical farming tool, which gives him some OP abilities as he starts his new life and builds a farm isolated in a forest with wild animals, although it doesn’t seem like it will stay that way for long. The first episode starts off in medias res, with a lively town, and then jumps back in time to show the start of the protagonist's journey. This farming anime seems a lot better than the previous fantasy farming anime we got.

Continuing the theme of isekai we also had ‘Campfire Cooking in Another World with my Absurd Skill’. This anime also starts off in medias res with a brief cold open. After that, this anime starts off as a parody of summoning isekai, with the protagonist getting summoned to another world along with a few other people who are each heroes. The protagonist’s special ability is online shopping, which allows him to purchase items online which instantly appear in front of him. Not thinking that his ability is useful, he parts his way from the adventurers and goes on his own path. This is a unique idea for an isekai, but it seems like it will make this into a food anime.

Next is ‘Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement’. In this isekai anime, Mitsuha gains the ability to travel between earth and a fantasy world. After she finds out about this ability, Mitsuha decides to use it to manipulate the people of the kingdom and use items from earth to gain money and fulfil her capitalist dreams. She found herself in this fantasy world after being manslaughtered and falling off a cliff, ‘Reborn Rich’ style.

‘The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady’ is another isekai in this season. This anime is actually a pseudoisekai series as it doesn’t reference the world the protagonist came from and has no impact on the plot of the series. The only thing that you could argue came as a result of her reincarnating is that she creates several items that resemble things found on earth. In the anime, noble society seems to be rigid and formal, whereas she is able to be much more relaxed and casual. It isn’t clear why they chose to make it an isekai, or if it is just to capitalise on the isekai hype.

‘Chillin’ in My 30s after Getting Fired from the Demon King’s Army’ is another fantasy anime, but this time it's not an isekai. In this anime, Dariel -- the protagonist -- is fired from the demon lord’s army by the new rulers as he doesn’t possess magic. After being fired, Dariel finds himself wandering in the forest where he meets a human girl. He ends up finding out that the reason he didn’t possess magic was because he was actually a human.

‘Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte’ is another otome anime. Instead of the protagonist finding themselves in an otome world, instead the two main characters while playing a game gain the ability to communicate with the characters in the game. This is a unique take for an anime, but it doesn’t seem like a very interesting idea. The producers of the series include DMM and NetEase Games, which seems to be an interesting combination. The female main character has the same voice actress as the female main character in ‘Fruit of Evolution’.

Getting on to the second season of ‘The Fruit of Evolution’, a continuation of another unique isekai. The second season of the show continues after the first, and is set in the academy they travelled to, with Seiichi as a teacher. This season doesn’t seem to be as interesting as the first, and has a very different style to the first.

‘Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire’ is an anime where the protagonist, who was formally the king, is reincarnated in the distant future as a newly-born girl after deciding to devote his next life to becoming the strongest swordbearer. The OP theme sounds similar to some of the music from ‘Spy X Family’.

‘The Reincarnation of the Strongest Exorcist in Another World’ is another reincarnation isekai. The protagonist died in a scene that resembles ancient Japanese folklore, and he is reincarnated as a minor noble in a European-style world. Instead of just relying on European style fantasy, this series incorporates elements of asian mythologies, which is quite unique.

‘Handyman Saitou in Another World’ is another isekai, where someone from a specific profession finds themselves in another world where they can utilise their skills. This series also starts off with a cold open showing Saitou with his party in a dungeon. The episode is made up of a series of vignettes focusing on snapshots of different characters.

Bofuri season 2 also aired this cour. It seems like a weird time to air, as the first episode takes place at christmas, which was a few weeks before the episode aired, although it did have a premiere of the episode before christmas.

There is also the second season of In/Spectre, which is more of the same as the first season. In the first episode Kotoko gives a plausible explanation for a bad mystery and then reveals that that was just a solution she had made up, and what the real cause was.

I have also watched the first episodes of several other anime series this cour, such as ‘Spy Classroom’, ‘The Tale of Outcasts’, ‘ONIMAI’, ‘The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World’, and ‘Tomo-chan Is a Girl!’, but I won’t be going into those as this video is starting to get a bit long.

Overall a lot of anime seem to have poorer animation compared to previous seasons. There have been a few unique anime this season as well.

So what did you think about the Winter 2023 season? Did you agree with my assessments, or did you think something else? Leave your thoughts down below. If you liked this video, consider liking the video, commenting down below, and subscribing so that you don’t miss any future videos.

A Story in 3 Acts - I'm the Villainess, So I'm Taming the Final Boss

I’ve recently finished watching ‘I’m the Villainess, So I’m Taming the Final Boss’ in my never ending quest to watch every isekai anime that comes out. Based on the title of the show, it may sound like it is just a clone of ‘HameFura’, but it is not. While the premise does revolve around a girl who finds herself in the world of an otome game that she had previously been playing and she is reincarnated as the villainess of the story, requiring her to try and avert her death in the game, how she goes about it is quite different. Compared to Katerina, Aileen  is much more intelligent and aware of her surroundings. Her strategy to avoid her death flag involves courting the demon lord and avoiding the final outcome of the first game in the series.

The series is broken into three acts. The first involves Aileen trying to woo the demon lord Claude and avoid everything converging on the eventuality of her death. The second surrounds the plot of the second game in the otome series that Aileen played, and involves her attending a school dressed as a boy to destroy a plot to use demons to destroy the empire. The third act involves lord Claude losing his memory and the royal family trying to break off their engagement, loosely based on the fan disc of the first game, and includes the climax for the entire series.

Unlike Katerina in HameFura, it is repeatedly shown that Aileen, while familiar with the plot of the games isn’t fully aware of every route and the minutia involved in taming each character.

In the first act, after breaking off her original engagement, Aileen heads straight for Claude’s castle in the forest and begs him to marry her, repeatedly until he gives in. The manipulation that Aileen utilises is an interesting approach to take, that is quite a refreshing take to have associated with a main character's personality. Her use of her knowledge of the characters, such as baking biscuits for Almond to bypass him to achieve her goals, and to win their favour and befriend them is a clear example of this.

Throughout this act Aileen repeatedly encounters issues that mirror the events of the game, but did not reflect the actions that Aileen had been taking. It becomes apparent over the course of this act that Lilia, the protagonist of the original game and the new fiancé of Aileen’s previous fiancé was the one that had been orchestrating all of these issues with an aim of forcing Claude to take his demon form and go berserk. Based on Lilia’s actions and what I know from previous isekai series, it seems that she is also knowledgeable about the world she is in, and was probably also reincarnated in that world. Over the course of this act Aileen and Claude slowly fall in love with each other, ending with Aileen professing her profuse love for Claude in the climax of the first act, saving Claude and bringing him back from his dragon form, and creating an interesting scene. The climax built up here is quite intense and is probably one of the most fierce of the entire series. The idea of another character using their knowledge of the game world to manipulate it to the detriment of the protagonist, which will become a running theme over the course of the show doesn’t come off as a completely original idea, having been previously used in MobSeka as a main plot point, even if even if the source material technically did come out earlier.

In the second act, we see how her actions of saving Claude impact on what would be the plot of the second game. Claude has to attend to an arising problem, but Aileen wants to use her knowledge to solve the problem in secret at the school. Aileen has to dress up as a boy due to the prevalence of misogyny in the area. If this is how the series attempts to tackle a social issue, it comes off as just an excuse to set up some jokes based on her gender later on in the act and not any social commentary. It is fascinating to see how the changes that have come about due to the changes Aileen has already made combined with her trying to make changes as a character who wasn’t originally in the story result in her plans not going as she intended.

At the end of the second act Aileen confronts Lilia and confirms that she was reincarnated. We also find out that Lilia only thinks about the people in the world like the game characters and not like actual people, treating her whole time in the world just like a game to be won, which sets up the third and final act of the show.

In the third act, we encounter a Claude who has lost his memories. Obviously the first thing a viewer would think at this point is that Lilia is probably the reason that Claude lost his memories. The Queen, who we also meet is also incessantly trying to call off Aileen’s engagement and make things difficult for her, which also makes her come off as an evil character. Through meeting Claude in secret and using some of the same techniques that she originally used, Aileen gets Claude to fall for her again. This act starts off rather uneventfully other than Claude’s memory loss.

Throughout the series as the stakes begin to get higher and higher, the reliance on deus ex machinas increase dramatically. In the second act, the ending is only resolved when it turns out that Claude is controlling the demons and not the demon snuff. In act 3 there are even more deus ex machinas. Act 3 even starts off with a deus ex machina when Levi helps Aileen escape from a ‘secret mission’.

Almond ends up getting killed by Levi, who is a recurring character in act 3, who you kind of assume is being influenced by Lilia. Almond’s death comes off as needless because it doesn’t really add anything to the plot. Even though Almond is a recurring character and a relatively large part of the overall plot, as a viewer you don’t really build up any emotional connection with the character and his death is similarly not very emotional. Other shows such as ‘Tenkyou no Alderamin’ are able to effectively set up an emotional connection with a character of the course of an episode just to kill them off, even if it does come off as cheap.

Lilia gets her saint sword back and the final episode contains an epic battle between Aileen and Lilia. Lilia references the fact that the other people are just ‘characters’ and that Aileen is the ‘main character’ in front of Levi, and Aileen uses the ‘power of love’ justification for her winning that is such a common trope at this point. Lilia tricks Aileen and almost kills Levi.

By the way, apparently Almond is back again and saves the day. It isn’t really explained how Almond is resurrected or how the climax is actually resolved.

The ending of the series involved yet another deus ex machina. Despite all hope appearing lost and it looking like Lilia was going to win, somehow Almond has the power to break Lilia’s magic wall, allowing Levi to put his eye gem into the Queen’s clock. This also makes Claude wake up and regain his memories for some reason. The guards come to arrest Aileen and protect Lilia, until Claude comes to be Aileen’s deus ex machina. The Queen turns out to actually be evil, and at the end she starts to age as a result. Lilia is caught and people finally see her as the true villain she was. This whole ending is just a series of deus ex machinas. The series at no point establishes any reason why any of this is even able to happen.

The soundtrack used in the series, not the opening or ending themes, reminds me of the music used in the American sci-fi television series ‘Stargate Atlantis’. Talking about the actual themes for the series, the ending for the series has an interesting aesthetic that portrays the themes of the series well, while in itself being unique.

Overall, the series is a pretty unique take on the isekai genre with some interesting ideas. I’d give ‘I’m the Villainess, So I’m Taming the Final Boss’ a rating of 8 out of 10.

The WebP Rant

Google announced their webP format in 2010 as an alternative to other image formats. webP, based on Google’s VP8 compression, offered much smaller image file sizes for images of similar quality, and was pushed by Google as a way to save on bandwidth and storage by using webP on websites instead of other image formats. webP would also later support animation, which meant it could also be used as an alternative to GIF animations, which were traditionally quite large in terms of their file size, whilst still being of low quality.

Many sites and services have adopted the webP format, and most people have the ability to view the images as support has been built into all major web browsers for quite some time now.

One of the companies that has adopted the use of webP images include Google themselves and YouTube.

Google uses the format on some of their sites, and allows users to upload images in the webP format to google photos. You would expect that Google, the creators of the format, and an organisation that uses the format itself would make the format compatible with more of their services. If I want to use a webP image in a Google Doc, and I drag a webP image into the doc, it will give me an error saying that it is an unsupported image type. To be able to use a webP in a Google Doc, I need to use a program such as Microsoft Paint to first convert the image before inserting it. You heard that right, even Microsoft Paint has been updated to allow you to work with webP images. If I want to copy a webP image from a website, it is even more difficult. I need to download the image first, then convert it, then upload it. This is becoming more of a problem as more websites are beginning to incorporate webP images into their sites. There is also no way to tell if an image is a webP without checking, so I don’t know whether I even need to download an image in the first place unless I try to insert the image, download it, or copy and paste the image url. Google Drawings, Google’s simple cloud image creation and editing tool has quite a lot of the features you would need to quickly mock up an image, or even make a simple YouTube thumbnail even if it isn’t a full featured photo editing program. The app however doesn’t allow you to insert webP images, and doesn’t give webP as an option to export your drawing. The program does however allow you to export a drawing as a PDF, which is a document format, but doesn’t even allow you to export Google’s own image format.

The YouTube site itself uses webP, both for thumbnails, as well as the video previews that are available when hovering over thumbnails. To save on bandwidth, YouTube has begun to encode uploaded thumbnails as webP images for supported devices. The animated previews take advantage of the ability to create animated images to allow a single image to be used as opposed to multiple to create a video preview. In one video from YouTube, they even try to convince other site owners to start using webP images for their sites. Despite the fact that YouTube uses webP images for their own thumbnails, YouTube does not allow you to upload thumbnails which are in the webP format.

Don’t get me wrong, webP images are quite good due to their relatively small file size, even if they take slightly more processing power to decode. Taking images from a camera and converting them to jpeg, PNG, GIF, and webP using ImageMagick at 80% quality, the webP image consistently has the smallest file size.

Well that’s all for this video. If you have any other problems you’ve noticed with other products, consider leaving a comment about it down below, and maybe I’ll make it into a future video.

If you enjoyed this video, like the video, comment down below your thoughts and ideas for future videos, and subscribe and click the bell icon so that you don’t miss any future videos.

Did This New Anime Steal a Character?

‘Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate’ is a classic highschool anime series from 2012 based on a visual novel, and involving ‘yaoi sticks’. The protagonist’s childhood friend, and fellow member of the ‘Food Research Club’, Chisato has a relatively distinct design.

When I saw the poster for ‘Kinsou no Vermeil: Gakeppuchi Majutsushi wa Saikyou no Yakusai to Mahou Sekai wo Tsukisusumu’ on MAL, I immediately noticed the character of ‘Lilia Kudelfate’ and initially thought it was Chisato, although I then realised that it was completely unrelated.

Comparing the sources, they don’t appear to have been designed by the same artists, but the characters in both seem incredibly similar. Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate was originally a visual novel by Sprite, and later adapted into a manga, and anime series. The Kinsou no Vermeil manga was written by Amana Kouta and illustrated by Umezu Youko, and as far as I can tell, neither of these people were involved with Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate.

Let’s compare the characters to see just how similar these characters’ designs are. To start off, let’s compare their physical appearance. Both characters have a pale complexion, thin eyebrows, and large blue eyes. They both have long, flowing, pink hair with a bunch of hair, or faux twintails on the sides. The school uniforms worn by the two characters are also very similar. Both wear a blue school uniform, with a white dress shirt beneath. The uniforms both have long sleeves, covering the whole arms, and the chest area is left exposed by the jacket, revealing the dress shirt beneath. Both uniforms also terminate with short skirts, either connected to the uniform itself, or as a separate piece of clothing. Around the necks of the characters, they both have a tie. Lilia wears a more traditional necktie, whereas Chisato wears a ribbon in a bow. For Lilia the ribbon appears to have moved from the neck to be used as hair ribbons for her twintails.

One difference that I need to point out about the two characters is that they do have slight differences and differing art styles. This doesn't discount the fact that both characters appear very similar, as differing art styles are common between different studios, and even different releases of the same property.

I don’t want to accuse anyone of plagiarism, but I just wanted to point out that I noticed that both characters’ designs seem to be very similar.

Also, there is a rhinoceros beetle called François.

Who Actually is Marie? (Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs)

Hello and welcome to another video. In this video we will be having a look at the anime series ‘Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs’. This video will of course contain spoilers for the first season of the show.

‘Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough For Mobs’ was an unexpectedly popular isekai series from the current cour (クール). The protagonist is forced by his sister to complete routes in an otome game she is playing, so that she doesn’t have to go through difficult or monotonous parts of the game, and for an unknown reason wakes up after being reincarnated in a fantasy world matching the game as a character ‘Leon Fou Bartfort’, a character who does not appear in the game. The game’s main character is supposed to be a girl called ‘Olivia’ who the male characters at the academy are supposed to become romantically involved with. When he arrives at the academy, Leon finds that Marie has taken her place at the academy.

As a character who wasn’t at the academy in the original game, Leon has to use his insight about the world he was in in order to raise his rank and standing so that he would be able to attend the academy in the first place. Similarly, it is implied that Marie was also reincarnated into that world, and that she has also been able to replace Olivia by using knowledge that she has brought from playing the game in her own world. In scenes from Marie’s perspective throughout the series, Marie also comments on aspects of the game such as characters’ weaknesses as the series progresses, and there are scenes where she tries to find the saint items that the protagonist normally collected over the course of the game. To go beyond all doubt as to whether she is a reincarnate, Luxion, Leon’s AI assistant actually references her as being a reincarnate and using her knowledge, when talking to Leon near the end of the final episode of the season.

So who is Marie, and why does she appear to be the only reincarnate other than Leon in this world?

It is entirely possible that there are other reincarnates in this world, and that the series only focuses on these two who happen to gain success in the new world, but if there were others, it would make sense that more things in the world would be different as a result of these mob characters, as opposed to the storyline of the actual game that the world is based on. Even if other people were reincarnated as mob characters, you would expect that at least some of them would end up in high-up positions, and that some of them would tell others that they had been reincarnated. If this were to happen the characters in the series would likely have heard about some people claiming to have been reincarnated. Because of this, it is likely that the only two people that have reincarnated into this world are Leon and Marie.

Because of this, Marie and Leon being the only ones reincarnating, must have some significance. Marie is probably actually Leon’s sister from before he reincarnated, the one who made Leon play the game. So what is the reason for believing that Marie is actually Leon’s sister?

Marie in the series knows things about the plot of the game and the world that it is set in. Because before the reincarnation, Leon’s sister was playing the game, it would make sense that she would have this knowledge about the game. If it was just some random person, they would be unlikely to know about the game, especially in depth, so Marie would likely be a younger person, and someone who had played the game.

If two people were to reincarnate together, it would make sense that they had some sort of connection, rather than them just being two random people. If Marie is Leon’s brother, they would definitely have a connection to each other. At the time of their reincarnation, they weren’t just two people who were related to each other, they were constantly in contact with each other, as Leon’s sister was making him complete the game for her, and their relationship at that time happened to be very strained, and they were not getting on well with each other.

Another huge piece of evidence that Marie might actually be Leon’s sister is that Marie came from a very similar scenario to what Leon’s sister would have come from before they reincarnated. As expressed by Marie in episode 4 of the series, Marie also had a brother, and she also had him play monotonous parts of the game for her. Even if she wasn’t Leon’s sister, it could still be possible that she had a brother in her past life, although a sister having a brother would eliminate a lot of people from being able to be Marie. This is because the average number of children in Japan per mother is less than 2, meaning that a random girl in Japan having a brother would have less than a 50% chance. What’s more is that it would be incredibly unlikely that a random girl with a brother would have forced him to play the game in the same way that Leon’s sister did. This lends great credence to the fact that Marie is actually Leon’s sister from before he reincarnated.

None of this actually guarantees that Marie is Leon’s sister, but it definitely supports the idea, and would make sense from a writing perspective. Because of this, it can reasonably be claimed that Marie actually is in fact Leon’s sister.

None of this actually guarantees that Marie is Leon’s sister, but it definitely supports the idea, and would make sense from a writing perspective. Because of this, it can reasonably be claimed that Marie actually is in fact Leon’s sister.

If you liked this video, consider liking the video, commenting down below your thoughts or any ideas for future videos, and subscribing and clicking that bell so you don’t miss any future videos.

If you want to watch more anime-related videos like this check out some of the other videos on the channel.