Winter Anime 2022 part1?

 Haven't reviewed anime in a while but I got some free time lately so why not.  Winter 2022 is drawing to a close, and I find now is a good time to start talking about all the great anime I watched before I get caught up in the new stuff.

 

I'll begin with "Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru" which was a Suprise for me. It's been a long time since I kept up to date on what is coming out in what season. So, when this show popped into my feed, I was immediately drawn to the wonderful art style. Also, after reading a brief summary of the show, I decided this was something I wanted to watch. The story follows a lonely boy who spends all his free time learning how to paint faces on Hina dolls. One day after his home sewing machine breaks, he decided to use the school's machine. There he meets Kitagawa, one of the popular girls in his class. She turns out to be a crazy anime otaku and wants his help in making herself look like her favorite anime character, with cosplay. From there they grow a great relationship as he learns to make costumes for people, and she gets to live her dream of being a cosplayer.

It kind of reminded me of "2.5D" which is a girl who only cosplays her favorite character and an Otaku who is in love with 2d or anime girls only. Not to say the show follows the same route, but they both heavily showcase the life of cosplayers and that alone is interesting to me. Sono Bisque was a great heartwarming slow passed comedy. I was afraid they were going to use the cliche themes. At the beginning you find the boy has some trauma from a girl his age thinking his interest in Hina dolls is strange. I was half expecting that little girl to show up halfway through the show and try to sabotage his relationship with Kitagawa. Luckly that never happened, which I found quite satisfying.

All in all, it had a great ended that could end the series or open it up for future seasons. I believe it was well received so I don't doubt another is in the works.

Next is "Akebi-chan no Sailor-fuku" another show by Cloverworks who also did "Sono Bisque" this season.  I had previously read a little of the manga before watching this.  I was impressed by artists art style. However, I could not get too far into the story. It is a very slow slice of life drama about a girl who enters middle school. She wishes to join the same school her mother had previously attended because she had fallen in love with the sailor uniform of that school. Yet without her knowing it the school had changed from sailor suit to blazers. Luckly however the school allowed her to continue to wear the sailor suit because it had been a uniform the school had used in the past.

So, while the manga is well drawn and there are some great pages, I just could not sit through it. The anime however fixes this by just being animated. They still keep a lot of the really great scenes from the manga but the voice acting and fluid animation make it very exciting to watch.

It is still slice of life, so nothing other than girls living happens. But if that is what you lie to watch then you will enjoy this series. It does hit a lot of the standard school episode points and Akebi is a very interesting character to watch. 

The last anime I'll mention today is "Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru Kenja" and something I had been looking forward to for some time. I have a friend that occasionally lets me know when something I might like is coming. This was no exception. I had been ready the manga for quite a few years before he mentioned it, and The English adaption also just recently released which of course I also purchased.

This is your usual Isekai style anime, where mc gets transported to vrmmorpg that they have been playing as OP hero. In most shows of this type the mc takes on the avatar they had been playing in the game. This time however the mc fell asleep while playing with the character creation tool so when he woke up in that world Instead of Dunblaf an old Gandalf style summoner. He emerges as a little girl he names Mira. He does retain all of Dunblafs skills so the OP hero trope remains.

The show does try to create high stakes with its incoming war back story. But for the most part nothing of much consequence happens. Its mostly just Mira wandering this Vrmmo world turned real and showing the people just how cool summon magic is. Actually is she didn't keep going back to the king and be constantly reminded of what may happen, you might forget about the war entirely. But that's part of the charm. 

Well, that's all for now. Don't know how reviewee these where but I really like all these shows. They are mostly slice of life shows so if that's your cup of tea I highly recommend all 3 of them. "Sono Bisque" does have a lot of fan service so if your not into that kind of stuff you may want to skip that one.