Fall 2023 Season

9 July, 2023

In retrospect, I think the fall 2023 anime season will be remembered as a season of sequels, and isekai is if anything driving this trend. The current cour gives us five sequels to only three new series and one continuation.

On the whole, I don’t think this is a bad thing; my personal favorites ran for 52-54 episodes, and the lengthy light novel series which provide the source material for most contemporary isekai can make even that feel rushed. It’s nice to see stories adapted in their entirety, not just serving as advertisements for their source material, and if split cours are what the industry’s current economics require, at least we get plenty of episodes at the end.

That said, running weekly without end is, from a fan perspective, certainly easier to keep up with – especially for a series one is only casually enjoying, instead of falling deeply in love with. It’s nice that the Pretty Cure franchise prints enough money that Hirogaru Sky! PreCure gets to run all the way through at once.

Ever since the success of HameFura, villainess anime have become a subgenre in their own right; usually we’ve had one a cour, but this one actually has two. Tearmoon Teikoku Monogatari: Dantoudai kara Hajimaru, Hime no Tensei Gyakuten Story might legitimately be the finest of the genre, and receives my utmost recommendation… however, as it’s not actually an isekai (the princess is reincarnated after being guillotined), it will not be covered here.

Watashi no Oshi wa Akuyaku Reijou, however, is one, of a sort; the unique spin in this case is that the main character is reincarnated as the heroine! Otome game settings have been explored before through eyes other than that of the villainess; MobSeka gave us a male NPC (aspiring) as a protagonist, while TsunLise saw otherworld communication between this-world players and characters. But an actual heroine being tormented by the villainess is certainly something new.

That said, the heroine, Rae Taylor, is a former doujinka for the franchise (which helped out a lot in her history exam) has masochist qualities, and the villainess does not like her in that way, despite her constant, pushy confessions. Or at least, she doesn’t yet. WataOshi is listed as a yuri, so I suspect that the villainess Claire will, eventually, warm up to her; a one-sided romance alone can not carry a story for long, but as of now she thinks herself unlikable and wonders what Rae’s really after.

So far, she’s made great use of her game knowledge to pass the history exam and (through the approval, or perhaps coercion, of her father, the finance minister) win a position as Claire’s maid. Unfortunately, she also knows the game well enough to realize she’s on the wrong route regarding the male characters – Claire isn’t in this one as much!

And Rae is not the only masochist introduced this season! Admittedly, however, an attractive woman calling you a ‘pig’ hits a bit differently when this is a literal, accurate description of your current body. Buta no Liver wa Kanetsu Shiro continues a long tradition of nonhuman reincarnation; our protagonist, after dying of food poisoning from a bad pig liver, awakens in a pigpen and is shocked to look in the mirror.

Fortunately, our heroine, Jess of house Yethma, has psychic powers and can read his mind… which causes problems of its own, as (despite a pig body) he’s head over heels for her, and can’t avoid embarrassing bits of monologue revealing this. The pig compares her to an angel at one point, which is not in the least bit unjustified. The interactions between the two are quite charming, talking about farming and magic and fairy tales, before they begin their journey to meet the king and hopefully change him back into a human.

Potion-danome de Ikinobimasu! is not the first isekai from its author to be adapted into an anime, and its protagonist, Nagase Kaoru, invites comparison with Roukin’s Mitsuha; both combine long hair, a “legal loli” body type, and an aggressive negotiation style. But Poukin will not have the back and forth that characterized its immediate predecessor; indeed, much of the first episode is wrapped up in Kaoru receiving an apology from her world’s god and saying goodbye.

Her cause of death stands out as unusual; like in Digimon Adventure, the barriers separating worlds are beset by distortions, and Kaoru was killed in a dimensional repair accident. These distortions do not play a role in the rest of the episode, but with how much back and forth Roukin contained, it’s easy to hope they will later on in the story.

Once finally in the other world, the language skills Kaoru negotiated either come in handy, or prove annoying; she’s able to comprehend birds in the trees discussing the politics of the local country, and avoids what troubled Mitsuha for much of her story’s beginning. The titular potions are also useful, and she saves an adventurer’s life from a bear attack that way. But before long, despite the efforts of the local aristocrats, she’s on the road yet again; if nothing else, infinite language skills eliminates much of the difficulty with travel!

Seijo no Maryoku Bannou Desu begins its second season with an exciting dragon fight… which, if you watched the first season, you would know to be an entirely misleading impression. This show is far more on the slow life side of things, but Sei’s business acumen really shines – cosmetics are a huge industry in our world today and might lead her to get rich in another one.

Plus there’s a coffee date. Despite the difficulty of obtaining coffee in another world. This is a josei anime with romance elements, after all. And by episode’s end she’s off on a journey to find rice – it being the staple food of her old diet, because coffee makes her miss the taste of home. There are some things that just stick with a person, no matter how far they travel or how desperately they want to leave, and food can often be one of them.

Kage no Jitsuryokusha ni Naritakute’s second season begins with a zombie apocalypse. As always, this anime is the epitome of over-the-top, chuunibyou fun – a blood red moon is worsening the undead curse, a city under siege, and Cid Kagenou enjoying every minute. The antagonists are trying to awaken the blood queen, Elizabeth (likely named for Bathory), who had been sleeping for a thousand years, and sacrificing humans to that effect; Shadow Garden’s gonna have to team up with some vampire hunters to get out of this mess.

Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari gives us this fall’s only season 3, and much of its first episode is spent with dealing with the fallout from the spirit tortoise battle last time around. But they have a few months before they’ll have to fight Suzaku, err, the spirit phoenix, so Naofumi, in his new role as an aristocrat, tries to restore Lurolona Village, Raphtalia’s old home.

Unfortunately, getting rid of slavery is easier said than done – news of impending anti-slavery laws simply meant slaves sold outside of Melromarc while local officials looked the other way, and Raphtalia’s newfound fame has driven up the price of Lurolona slaves beyond Naofumi’s ability to buy them back. In fact, beastmen from elsewhere are passed off as Lurolonan, because the very name has become a source of prestige.

So to earn money, Naofumi-tachi make their way abroad; the first episode ends in an underground battle arena.

It is easy, I think, to forget that Saihate no Paladin is an isekai anime at all; Will Youngblood may have a past life in another world, but his eyes are firmly fixed in his current one. It’s still a beautiful, well-executed fantasy series, and I greatly enjoyed season one.

I am not fond of magic academies, but ever since the success of Zero no Tsukaima, Japanese audiences have clearly disagreed. That said, there is no denying the sheer cool factor of talking to the academy groundskeeper, searching for it through snow and tree symbols… only to see a spell broken, and the whole thing reveal itself before Will and Bee.

Plus, the episode’s end has a nice speech from Bee about the importance of storytelling – in her case, as a bard, in song form – to bring hope, and ensure the heroes of the past do not become forgotten.

There is a lot going on in Dead Mount Death Play, and when one adds mystery elements to a three month layoff it does not always make for the easiest anime to follow. Still, it’s a fun one. Keeping the media spotlight off the heroes has been a problem going back to Seisenshi Dunbine, and the appearance of a pushy reporter can not be good news for the Shinoyama Group; arrests, chaos, riots, nothing’s happened yet but a lot of bad things can when these problems are brought into the open. And when one considers that nearly every isekai protagonist (and much of the audience) dreams of escape, there’s something very sad about Polka’s realization that the old empire has followed him to his new world/time period.

Finally, this week’s Hirogaru Sky! PreCure episode, number 36, is on Earth and mostly stars Ageha, one of the two non-Skyland Pretty Cures – and her efforts to become the best nursery school teacher ever. It’s very sweet, with flashbacks to her own teacher when she was their age, and efforts to cheer up a child who learned (and kept) her secret identity, and is soon to move away.

From an isekai fan perspective, the Skyland episodes are admittedly more fun. But it’s not bad, and not wholly an Earth thing – Tsubasa hears her sleep-talking from his birdhouse, and the Undergu Empire is itself an otherworldly invader; Skearhead, the current villain, is the cruelest yet. Attacking a pre-school is the sort of atrocity that makes headlines when successful, but Cure Butterfly is, after all, known for her shields…

While this finishes the TV anime premieres, Digimon Adventure 02: The Beginning also releases about a month from now. I loved Digimon Adventure tri., although was not satisfied by the conclusion, and still refuse to acknowledge Digimon Adventure: Last Evolution Kizuna - for better or worse, I’m sure to have a lot to say about this film once I watch it, if perhaps not all that many screencaps to put beside my thoughts.

I’ll be sure to see you then!