I’m…legitimately not sure where to start with this one. Look, over the fifty-something years anime has been around, it has brought unto us a veritable slew of strange, crazy, outrageous concepts for shows. And while that observation can be easily written off with the sentence, “Welcome to Japan,” it’s interesting how we haven’t come close to hitting the bottom of the barrel in terms of ideas. Think back to just last year, for example.

No. No, no, no, nonononono, no. I refuse. Absolutely not. The cycle must end. No! For those just tuning in to my karmic wrestling match with the things I review, tradition mandates that whenever I review an anime movie I give a very good grade to, I must always chase it with an abominably bad series to even the scales. Sometimes it’s bad like a poorly stitched together sweater, in that I can find plenty of threads to pick at as I sadistically watch the whole project unravel in front of me; other times it’s like a fifteen-year-old pair of heavily used underpants - boring, stinky, and usually not worth my time examining.

It’s gotten to the point for me where if you see the words “directed by Mamoru Hosoda” in one of my reviews, you should immediately interpret that as a confession of bias on my end. I’m not sure what the deal is with him and the rest of Studio Chizu, but I’m yet to find myself not blown away by any of their productions, and frankly I’m not sure if that trend is ever going to change.

Winter 2015’s Cute High Earth Defense Club Love! is an incredibly stupid show with an incredibly stupid premise and an incredibly stupid central joke. I liked it. And no, I don’t mean that in the ironically cathartic way I liked Brave Witches or something like that. No, I mean I actually genuinely liked the series. More than I really had a right to, in all honesty. Like I said, it is a very, very dumb show, and if the premise isn’t enough to get you laughing, then you’re going to have a hard time enjoying this as much as I did.

I really need to stop doing this to myself. Why must I, after watching a movie that I really really enjoyed, always follow it up with a series nobody expected to be good and completely lives up to expectations? Maybe it’s just a bitter involuntary response I have, like saying, “Shut up,” whenever somebody sneezes, but the last time this happened I actually kinda enjoyed it to be honest.

Before you read any further, consider this your one and only warning that the following review is going to contain spoilers. Quite a few of them. However, aware as I am that flag can turn people off from this review, I’m willing to compromise. The problem is I can’t give this film the thorough dissection it deserves without having to give away the Act 2 plot twist, because that’s the point where the entire tone, theme and story in general switches gears and almost turns into an entirely different film altogehter, so what I’m going to do is chop this review into two sections.

“Really, SnYves? This is what you decided to review this week? A magical girls show that almost nobody’s heard of released as a side story to another equally obscure magical girls show from almost a decade ago?” Reader, I have a very good explanation for this in that I don’t have a good explanation for it. What can I say? I saw Brave Witches show up in my recommended list after watching a bit of Izetta from last fall, and my curiosity ended up getting the better of me.

In 2006, the anime community was blessed with an adaptation of the classic manga series Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata, a psychological thriller series in which high-school student Light Yagami finds a notebook left behind by a shinigami named Ryuk. As Light finds out very early on, the notebook has the power to kill anybody provided the user knows the person’s face and name. Upon discovering this, Light embarks on a crusade to eliminate all evil from the world by donning the alias Kira and killing everyone he deems unworthy.

Alright, fine! I’ll review a 2017 show! Put the Molotov cocktails and pitchforks away! Yeah, it’s pretty well established by this point I found the Winter 2017 lineup banal at best. Outside of one or two high points, there was almost nothing out there I could see myself watching. I gave Chaos;Child a couple episodes before I had to step out and make sure my hair wasn’t messed up by the breakneck speed the plot was screaming at.

Greetings, wanderer. I see you try to cross the vast desert of nothingness that is the Winter 2017 season. Alas, the oasis of KonoSuba 2 has dried just days ago, and the spring rains are still yet to come for some time. You have far to go, and the journey will be harsh, but I invite you to take respite here. Please, sit around the campfire and have a drink.