2026.1.25

Long time no see.

• I finished Cosmic Princess Kaguya!. Not as perfect as I initially imagined, but still a very good show. I love the little details they add to the characters when they do things. Still a contender for Best Anime 2026.

• Mayonaka Heart Tune, however, was somewhat of a let-down when it comes to art style. Using Hoshimachi Suisei is a slightly weird choice; I enjoyed the OP nonetheless, but I personally would probably go for P-maru sama. Drawing the vtuber character as a neko blob was a cute touch.

• Ikoku Nikki, however, was just as good as I imagined. I knew I was gonna love it when I saw the premise, and if you like more mature plots you'd probably like it as well.

• Finished two Nihei Tsutomu works: Knights of Sidonia and Ooyukiumi no Kaira, movie and all. Some people don't think too highly of the latter but I'm a sucker for Nihei's background settings; they're always so intriguing that I don't care if Nihei reuses the same plot and elements again and again.

Speaking of Nihei Tsutomu and Knights of Sidonia... I just realized that in most such shows soldiers are almost (if not always) exclusively teenagers. Darling in the Franxx, Knights of Sidonia, Eighty Six, even Neon Genesis Evangelion... other than the fact that the biggest consumer demographic group is the teenagers and we need to make them the protagonists, there could be a more sinister reason (and possibly the actual logical reasoning that would be taken if the worlds and the characters in these shows were real): it's an age where one's body function grows mature enough for adult purposes (viz. fighting and reproduction) and their minds have developed enough (so that they'll understand and carry out orders) but still malleable (so that they can be molded to listen to orders without too much thinking). A bit chilling if you think about it.

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