I’m up to speed on a few more shows and not planning to drop any of them. If you’re interested in any of these shows, they’re all available on Crunchyroll.
Harukana Receive
Verdict: Keep
Another sports anime makes the list of things I’ll be watching to the finish line this season. Harukana is a blatant fan service anime on the surface.
Attractive girls in showy bikinis play beach volleyball on a sunny beach in Okinawa. If you like fan service, this show very much has you covered. But there’s a lot more substance here than you might be anticipating based on that description.
The show is based on a manga published in monthly seinen magazine Manga Time Kirara Forward. Our protagonist is energetic and outgoing Haruka who has moved to Okinawa to live with her grandmother and cousin Kanata while her mother does business overseas. From the get go, Haruka throws herself into the local world of beach volleyball with a lot of enthusiasm, but it turns out Kanata has a troubled history with the sport.
The show tackles relationship dynamics of all sorts through the platonic angle of beach volleyball partnerships. In just three episodes, the show has dealt with some pretty hefty subjects with good humor and nuance that you would expect from a show that spends a lot of time on close-up shots of butts in bikini bottoms.
The art and animation of the world is just as well put together as the girls viewers are meant to ogle. Haruka and Kanata’s grandmother and the pet turtle are obviously the best things about the show.
Cells at Work!
Verdict: Keep
I remember Osmosis Jones. The notion of a Japanese Osmosis Jones was reason enough for me to check out Cells at Work! I’m glad I’ve given it a shot, and I’m going to stick with it until the jokes and metaphors stop working for me. It’s probably not a show I’d marathon, but it’s a nice refresher in my weekly lineup.
It’s been a good watch so far. Focused on the cells of a human body fending off disease, it’s edutainment with the balance leaning hard toward entertainment. The science isn’t always quite right, but I’m not watching this in health class.
The strength of Cells at Work! is not its concept, which has been handled often and in a wide variety of ways. Its strength is how it personifies the various cell types and microorganisms and the cleverness of its visual metaphors for processes happening inside the body.
The vicious Killer T Cells are funny, super-buff shonen types. The platelets are adorable. Our “protagonists” are a white blood cell and a red blood cell with just enough personality to drive a few bits an episode.
The manga it’s based on has spawned three spin-off series since it launched in Monthly Shonen Sirius in 2015. The anime is being produced by David Productions, which is also responsible for the ongoing JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures anime. Cells at Work! also shares JoJo’s director Kenichi Suzuki.
Chio’s School Road
Verdict: Keep
I was ready to drop Chio’s School Road until I saw the third episode. Chio’s is a gag comedy focused on gaming-obsessed school girl Chio, specifically on her daily walk to school.
The first two episodes have their moments, but there was nothing that made me stop the show so I could quit laughing and read the subtitles. Chio’s predicaments come about because she’s socially inept and tends to use gaming strategies to solve mundane problems.
There’s a lot of comedy fodder there, but at one point in college I was keeping up with something like 15 gaming-focused webcomics. I’ve seen a lot of those scenarios already so it takes something special to keep my attention if that’s your angle.
The third episode gave me the laughs I needed to keep this one on the menu. I’m hoping for more of that.
Asobi Asobase
Verdict: Keep
Ignore the water colors and gentle OP. Asobi Asobase is a show about three socially inept teenage girls brought together by their inability to socialize like normal human beings. And they are terrible people.
Kasumi just wants to get better at English and avoid competition. Hanako desperately wants to be popular despite being a bizarre nerd. Olivia is a white girl born in Japan who pretends she speaks poor Japanese in a bid to manipulate people.
They’re the very definition of friends of convenience, and they form the Passtimers Club, each with the intention of fulfilling their own objectives. Like Chio’s School Road this is a gag comedy, but many of the gags here center around the girls failing miserably at their goals or outrageous attempts to manipulate one another.
Asobi Asobase makes liberal use of gag faces and bizarre personalities. Everyone the girls interacts with is weird and inept. But I’m not going to keep trying to explain the joke. I’ll just say I had to pause the episode three times during the first episode so I could stop laughing.
chasetriesagain.com 