Summer Anime Season 2022 Short Takes
We are now around three weeks into the summer season of anime releases, and that has given me enough time to have developed some concrete impressions of what this season has to offer. While there are plenty of new anime series debuting this summer, much of the buzz has been about the sequels.
Returning with a new series (it calls each “season” by a different series title but is a straight continuation of previous episodes) is Utawarerumono with Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth, following on the 2015 series Utawarerumono: The False Faces. That itself was a nine-year follow to the original Utawarerumono which aired in 2006.
Not to be outdone, The Devil is a Part-Timer! came back after its own nine-year break with a season 2 that fans had been clamoring for since 2013.
Below are my short takes on some of the many anime series currently available to watch in North America. I think the paragraph each gets will be too short to allow for spoilers, but just in case, I promise, no (OK, almost no) spoilers.
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Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 4
The series abbreviated as Danmachi is back with just a single episode so far (the Ep. 0 that rehashed the previous three seasons was helpful but doesn’t really count). That single episode, however, makes me think this might be the best season since the first one. There is some real character growth on display, and growth that logically follows on from the events of Season 3. We’ll see if it maintains that quality and where it lands in my list of seasons, which goes: S1, the spinoff Sword Oratoria, S3 and the far less enjoyable S2. Streaming on HIDIVE.
Engage Kiss
This should be a by-the-numbers “supernatural meets science” anime in the vein (no pun intended) of Strike the Blood or the Magical Index universe animes. What elevates it beyond those shows is the quality of the character writing and voice acting, and the innovative way the story brings the supernatural antagonists into the otherwise near future world of not-quite Tokyo called Bayron City. The interplay between poverty-stricken Shuu, his beautiful partner Kisara and his ex-girlfriend and former work senpai Ayano is much smarter than most similar triangles. Solid fight sakuga as well. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
The Maid I Hired Recently Is Mysterious
We’ve only been shown one episode of this series so far, and that was more than enough. The first episode had one joke (Yuuri, the boy that hires the maid Lilith keeps finding things she does … mysterious) presented in slightly different variations. I was bored within 10 minutes and not even the alluring design of Lilith could stave off that boredom. Now that I think of it, is it problematic to have the dark-skinned female character as a maid? Anyway, this is another The Duke of Death and His Maid — a big-breasted maid teases and takes care of a young man isolated in his mansion — with even fewer jokes. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
Lycoris Recoil
The premise of this series is interesting, if oh-so-typically anime; orphan girls are raised by a shadowy quasi-governmental agency as stealthy assassins and once they reach high school age are sent out to make Japan an even more peaceful place to live, by straight up murdering criminals. That premise alone would probably keep me interested even if the series screwed everything else up. But Lycoris Recoil doesn’t. In fact, it takes that premise one step further and sets up a situation in which the best Lycoris (what the killers are called) is a type of conscientious objector that has left the organization and works independently. That objector, Chisato, winds up taking the recently banished Takina under her wing (with heavy hints so far of yuri desires to take her other places). Started with a strong Ep. 1 and it just gets better. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
The Devil is a Part-Timer!! Season 2
I barely remember any details of any specific episode of Season 1, and mostly recall it as being mildly amusing, with pretty childish comedy. The long-delayed Season 2 of The Devil is a Part-Timer!! started out with two episodes that are much funnier than I remember the first season being. I think a part of that is the characters are treated more as young adults (which they allegedly were in Season 1) than the way they were treated in the first season. The humor, while still often silly enough to appeal to the youngest of fans, is just slightly more mature enough to land with an older audience. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World
The series is so loaded with isekai tropes I almost bailed after the first episode. Overpowered protagonist — check. Boring character designs and animation — check. But one thing about the first episode caught my attention — and this is slightly spoilery, my apologies. When main character Michio has his first encounter with danger in the other world, he believes he is in a really good sim and throws himself at a bunch of bandits with reckless abandon. Because he is so OP he kills them handily (in bloody animated detail). When he realizes that he is in another world, not a game or simulation, and that he just slaughtered a bunch of real people, he is sickened. The series presents Michio as a realistic problematic person given a chance to do things in another world he would never do in the real world, and he frankly makes a series of pretty unpleasant choices. I’m going to stay with this one to see if they continue to develop Michio as a truly unlikeable character. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
Uncle From Another World
While the previous anime was filled with isekai tropes, Uncle From Another World takes those tropes and turns them upside down — when it uses them at all. The premise is that a young man visits his uncle who has just woken up from a 17-year coma, to find his uncle has been in a fantasy world all that time. This is a great source for comedy, and this show nails it in the one episode we’re able to see, in the dialogue, the voice acting and the animation. There are plenty of shocked expression animations in Isekai Ojisan but they are not as wild as those in Prison School or Asobi Asobase. If anything, the verbal and animated humor reminds me of Hinamatsuri. There is just one episode available in Netflix North America so far, but it is a great one, full of surprises, and I will keep watching. Streaming weekly on Netflix.
Parallel World Pharmacy
The marketing for this anime series did nothing to help differentiate from the incredibly boring Drug Store in Another World from last summer season. And that is a shame, because Parallel World Pharmacy is much more like Dr. Stone than it is the badly animated, repetitive anime from last summer with a similar title. Right out of the gate the differences couldn’t be clearer. The main character in Parallel World Pharmacy isn’t a lazy shut-in or NEET gamer like most isekai protagonists — in the real world the person who took over the body of young apprentice pharmacist Farma de Medicis was a brilliant, accomplished medical researcher who worked himself to death. That work ethic and the knowledge of modern medicine he has, coupled with OP magical skills he developed in the transfer from his death into Farma’s body, makes him want to change the entire other world’s concept of medicine. Science winning out over superstition? Always, please. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting
This is the last on this last, but far from the last series airing or even the last one I am watching this summer season. I almost skipped The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting because it seemed like last year’s barely animated show The Way of the Househusband. Boy was I wrong. The Yakuza’s Guide to Babysitting is one of the most moving light comedies I’ve seen in animation. It will pull on your heart strings until you tear up — or maybe even bawl outright. Yakuza lieutenant Kirishima is tasked with looking out for the boss’ seven-year-old daughter Yaeka, and that little, adorable, and painfully sad, cinnamon bun of a girl softens his brutal demeanor. If I drop this series, it will be because I can’t take tearing up every episode. Streaming on Crunchyroll.
