Summer 2021 Anime Hype Train Derailings
It should be no surprise that the Summer 2021 season of anime isn’t nearly as packed with excellent shows as the previous season was. In the Spring we had shows such as Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song, 86 and the first contender for anime of the decade, ODDTAXI. Add in the shows that in any other season would have been on the top, like Mars Red and SSSS: Dynazenon, and returning shows like Nomad: Megalobox 2 and Zombieland Saga: Revenge, and the Spring season was a smorgasbord of quality anime.
This season there is really only one show that rises to the level of a show like 86, and that is Sonny Boy. The rest of the pack consists of fun and/or interesting anime most of which share the fact that they have well-written characters, but nothing except Sonny Boy has that combination of great plot, well-written characters and outstanding voice acting. But based on the pre-season hype, you would have expected a ton of excellent shows. Two series that had some of the most hype, and so far have been the most disappointing, are The Detective is Already Dead, and The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated.
The preview trailers for The Detective is Already Dead focused on some sakuga fight scenes that looked like a cross between the best of Violet Evergarden meets Demon Slayer. And that sakuga was in there all right — in one short fight scene in the first episode and there was nothing else like it before or after (at least in the 3 episodes I could stand). It was so different than the rest of the animation that it looks more like the kind of thing you would see in a banger OP that was produced by a completely different studio than the anime itself.
If that was the only problem with The Detective I could let it pass, but the story itself is so clumsy I couldn’t take more than 3 episodes. Nothing makes any logical sense, and it sets up an interesting world and overarching plot in that first episode that it then completely ignores in favor of a bog-standard high school harem show. Maybe the light novel series it is based on makes more sense, but if so it sure didn’t make it to the anime.
The second show wallowing in pre-season hype is The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated. Based on the previews and trailers, it looked like an interesting blend of The Devil Is A Part-timer, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid and Don’t Toy With Me Miss Nagatoro — that is, two very funny shows and one that was supposed to be. But the problems started early in the first episode of Jahy. A magical girl destroys the power crystal that gives the Demon Lord’s realm its power and Jahy — normally a very sexy adult demonic woman that is the right hand of the Demon Lord — is banished to the modern human world and physically becomes a grade-school girl. And the first time we see her in the human world she is in a tin bath tub, lamenting the fact that her tiny apartment has no bath of its own. Yes, a naked pre-teen girl.
So yeah, we have another example of Shinobu from the Bakemonogatari series — a pre-teen girl character that is actually an ancient powerful woman, so any pervert that is aroused by the young version can feel OK about it. And unlike the otherwise excellent and innovative Bakemonogatari series, Jahy has boring animation with really derivative character designs. So while I can hold my nose during the bathtub scenes with Shinobu to get to the rest of the wonderful parts of her series, there is nothing worth doing so in Jahy, at least in the first episode.
I will give The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated the obligatory 3 episodes to see if it is worth continuing, but since it isn’t very funny, there doesn’t seem to be any real reason to do so at this point.
In the words of the great Public Enemy, don’t believe the hype.
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