This Week in Anime

Editors' Choice Part One

Lucas
Happy holidays, Steve! You know, maybe it's because I'm reviewing SANDA for ANN this season, but I am absolutely BURSTING with the spirit of the holidays!

My partner and I even bought a tree just this weekend! Which is the perfect place for our editorial overlords to tuck away the anime gifted to us for this year's Secret Santa column!

With how often I'm writing about sex stuff nowadays, our readers ought to have an idea of my relationship with sadomasochism, so I knew I'd find a way to appreciate both my gifts and my lumps of coal. Though, since you brought up incest, I think we should start with my least favorite gift: Lady Georgie.

Steve, were you aware at all of this 1983 shojo anime where a (not to her knowledge) adopted girl forms the beginnings of a love triangle with her (not to her knowledge) adopted brothers while going on slice of life adventures in the Australian outback? Or that the mother in the show is framed as a villain for having some fairly reasonable objections to how her children are developing, but is framed as an antagonist for her concerns? Because I was not familiar with Lady Georgie before watching it for this column, and I was NOT ready for it!

There are no wallabies, I'm afraid, but I am pleased to present the titular Georgie riding an ostrich and this Disney-ass animation style basset hound! There's also an obligatory setting koala that the children take in as a pet. This is also taking place in the mid-to-late 1800s, and the anime is SHOCKINGLY overt about Australia's history and status as a former prison colony! It's also implied that the dad in the show, who is constantly getting glazed as a bishie hunk, is the descendant of the prisoners England exiled to Australia. This is a weird one! I have no idea if this was a gift or a punishment, but I'm definitely going to be thinking about Lady Georgie for a good, long time.

Daaaaamn! Rebecca has you studying the foundational shojo texts! The only thing I know about Boys Over Flowers is its ubiquity. I believe it's quietly one of the most successful anime and manga ever made, and has at least one (official or otherwise) live-action television adaptation in most East Asian countries! Does it live up to its reputation?

I know someone on the internet is keeping a repository of anime characters flipping the bird, and I hope this column helps put Makino right at the top of it!

Ooooh~ a botanical burn!!? Maybe older anime really were better... On a more genuine point, I'm also immediately drawn to the character designs in the images you've shared. While the characters are fairly plain by any era's measure, these designs are also hyper legible and immediately convey a character's unique qualities. For instance, I know that the high schooler wearing a suit jacket is more than likely a Daddy's money POS without even knowing his name! To me, this showcases an expertise over the craft of visual storytelling that makes me want to give Boys Over Flowers a chance.

I can't say I'm familiar with what it's like to be a young woman in love, but I'll be damned if that clip doesn't seem like the ultimate crystallization of that experience from everything women have told me about it! It's also not at all surprising to hear that Boys Over Flowers' influence has spread far and wide, and I'm thrilled to hear that it's largely living up to the hype. And speaking of wildly influential anime featuring high school girls...

I watched Azumanga Daioh for the first time in the year of our lord 2025!!!

I've been working as a writer to some degree for the majority of my adult life, and I think the biggest compliment I can give Azumanga Daioh is that it is somehow indescribable despite overtly influencing just about every comedy series that came after it. It has such a specific combination of grounded, slice-of-life humor and madcap absurdity that I think makes it impossible not to like.

Also, as a fan of women characters who are gremlins, the teacher Yukari Tanizaki is an actual menace, and I love her to bits!

I am familiar with Chiyo's father, yes.

And that ties into what is perhaps the most striking quality of Azumanga Daioh for me today: just how much it has influenced the western anime community today. I didn't realize that the "Oh my gaaaaaaad" sound bite came from a real anime, nor that Azumanga was that anime! Similarly, I knew that anime localizations had a penchant for using southern accents as approximations for Osakan accents, but I didn't realize that trend was solidified via a character nicknamed Osaka who speaks with a southern accent in the Azumanga English dub!

A big part of what makes the more absurd elements of Azumanga land is just how simple and even generic the visual elements of the production are otherwise. The madcap sequences feel even more insane when they're juxtaposed against the nondescript character designs. That stray cat turning into a little monster and Chiyo popping her pigtails off are now burned into my memory for the rest of my life.

I know we throw around the term "GOAT" quite a lot these days, but I feel like I've just barely cracked the surface of Azumanga and I can already tell it's one of the best to ever do it. I truly never know what will happen next, but I'm always confident that it will be hilarious and the last thing that I would expect.

I feel like any anime website that was able to host videos in 2012 was nothing but wall-to-wall Another umbrella scene clips for a solid month after that episode aired. But what did you think of Another and why is it apparently divisive? I'll be honest, I just assumed that an anime from this era that managed have any internet virality must have been a hit.

For the record, I have long said that Final Destination has big anime energy and I'm glad that format has apparently been in the anime ecosystem for a while now! Do you think Another was overshadowed by other horror series that preceded it, like Higurashi? Also, is there more of a hook to it, or is the anime just characters getting Final Destination-ed nonstop after the initial setup (which I'm totally down for btw).

If nothing else, Another does seem like the most 2012 horror anime can be, and I think I'm going to give it a watch the next time I'm visiting my folks and in my childhood bedroom to get the full nostalgia effect!

And speaking of 2012 anime, did you know that a series called Ixion Saga DT came out that year and takes the absolute piss out of pretty much every male power fantasy isekai that came out before or since its release? Because I was not aware of Ixion Saga DT and I'm now OBSESSED with it!!!

To ground you and our readers a bit more in this anime's fame, this is where that meme of a golden ball/testicle exploding comes from.

In tone, I'd say it's something like Grand Blue Dreaming but with more meta bent and a comically inept incel as the lead. I also wouldn't be surprised if the dork-ass was literally shoved into a locker in an episode that I've yet to watch for refusing to do any stereotypical isekai hero stuff.

Oh, and I think this anime is technically based on the failed CAPCOM MMORPG Ixion Saga; so I'm now hyper-fixated on learning how this anime was ever greenlit, let alone turned into a lampoon of the genre.

Between the numerous jokes about testicles being destroyed, the supposed antagonist of the series (who is nicknamed ED after both of his testicles are destroyed) being wildly more respectable than the protagonist, and every episode being packed with absurdist gag humor that never fails to garner a laugh from me; I think this show is my new guilty pleasure watch! DT really makes me wish that older series getting English dubs was a more common occurrence in the anime scene today, as this work feels more relevant than ever and could use an excuse for more people to give it a watch.

That being said, there is a character in DT, Mariandale, who is a trans woman, and her identity is handled with about as much tact as you'd expect from a 2012 anime. I think this is an instance of a character actually being solid trans rep while existing in a transphobic piece of media (or at least being adjacent to a transphobic character in said piece of media), but I'd love to hear from folks in the transgender community about how Mariandale has aged as a character.

Wait, Kids on the Slope is queer!?? This has only ever been described to me as "jazz band: the anime," and, as someone who declined to join my high school's jazz band and never looked back, I'm now mad at everyone who ever talked to me about this anime without giving me the full pitch!

It's my understanding that members dating each other is either the cause of, or solution to, all interpersonal drama in a band!

This is a reflective time of year, and I was just contemplating a Space Dandy rewatch myself! Especially with Watanabe's Lazarus not having the impact that many had hoped it would (though, I'll call out anyone who dares to put it on a "2025 Worst Of" list), I understand the impulse to go back and check out the director's earlier hits. Especially when it's clear that whichever folks at MAPPA who worked on both projects clearly had a type!

For as much as I publicly stress the importance of people watching anime outside of the seasonal release cycle to gain a better understanding of the medium and its history, it's hard for me to practice what I preach without having this column as a motivator. Also, when else would we be able to jump between topics like accidental orchiectomies, queer jazz, and seminal romance media in a single sitting?

I could not be more appreciative of the ANN team for making me the proud owner of the Azumanga Daioh Blu-ray, and I had what was at least an interesting time with all of my picks too. I'm beginning to think people around here are starting to gain a sense of what kinds of media I enjoy, which I dig since I'm not all that great at defining the connections between the various works that resonate with me.

Happy holidays, everyone! And please be sure to handle any umbrellas you may be gifted this season with the safety of yourself and others in mind!