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The Season in Haikus - Winter 2025 (Part 1)
🕑 Added 2025-03-06 16:33:05 +0000 UTC
Hello, everyone, and welcome to a new series that I'm starting on Patreon! This is The Season in Haikus, a combination of those seasonal first impressions videos that I used to do, and the ancient Japanese art form of rigidly syllabic poetry. If you want to know what I think of the various anime that have come out this season, specifically in the form of a three-line poem wherein the first and last lines each have five syllables and the middle line has seven, then read on! The series here are ordered by start date, so if you don't see one that you feel should've been on the list, that's probably why!
For those of you who are new to my seasonal reviews, here's the gist of it: I'm going to watch a single episode of every new anime that's coming out this season. By "new," I mean it's not a sequel, not a remake, and usually not a spinoff. If its first season started in Winter 2025, here are my thoughts. I'll give two different ratings: A numbered rating out of ten (which you have to keep in mind is very loose, since this is, again, based on a single episode), and a separate rating of Watch, Test, or Skip. "Watches" are shows that I'm willing to recommend in their entirety to anybody based on the strength of a single episode. Usually, a season only has one or two of these. "Tests" are shows that I think anybody would be right to try out. Shows that have potential, and that I don't think anybody would be super upset to have on their TV. Some people will probably like them a lot. "Skips" are shows that you should skip entirely. No merit to anybody, except for people who are massive fans of exactly the kind of thing this show is doing. You'll know if that's you. Without further ado, let's get to it!
Ameku, M.D., Doctor Detective
Estimated 6/10. Test.
Ameku M.D. : Doctor Detective is one of those shows, wherein a protagonist who is infinitely smarter than everyone around her uses those smarts to instantly solve problems that The Dumbs simply could never. A mother arrives at Tenikai General Hospital, her son writhing in pain, his brain expanding in his skull. The doctors check his charts, and everything is normal. That’s when Dr. Ameku arrives, literally counting down the seconds until her underling’s shift ends so that they can go watch Jurassic Park together. “Why would you feed your son so many blueberries, idiot?” She says to the grieving mother. “His head will explode if you do that.” Satisfied with her work, she proceeds to call an old man an idiot for eating parasite-infested fish (which is fair) before skipping up to her beautiful, vine-covered cabin on the roof of the hospital, where she lives like a little pathology gremlin among stacks of medical textbooks.
But wait! There’s a problem that even Dr. Sherlock (that’s the name of the episode) can’t solve! A dead man arrives at the hospital (with help from EMT’s, of course. He doesn’t just, like, walk in. That’d be nuts, though, wouldn’t it?). His left leg has been crushed by the enormous jaws of a mysterious carnivore, and he’s drippling blue blood all over the nice, white sheets of the hospital. Ameku – in the presence of a medical problem that she can’t immediately solve with her quantum computer brain – is immediately enthralled, but the problem is, the guy’s dead! She’s the head of the department of forensic pathology, and there’s no reason to pathologize a dead guy! It ain’t gonna help nothin’! She’s ordered off the case, which really sucks, because she already has a solid idea of what could’ve caused that massive bite wound: The fossilized tyrannosaurus rex at the local museum.
I’m of two minds about this show. On the one hand, we’ve seen it before. House exists, and is almost definitely a significantly better implementation of this idea than whatever we’re going to get from Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective. It seems to know exactly what it wants to do, and that thing is spend the season solving a single, big mystery while Ameku goes head-to-head with her family in the hospital's administrative department. If you’re looking for deep characters or even fun illness-of-the-week style medical mysteries, I really doubt you’re going to get those things here. On the other hand, it seems like this show is willing to embrace the strange in a way that similar shows aren’t. The whole premise of this series of posts is that I watch only a single episode of the show, so I don’t know where it’s going after the end-of-episode-one reveal that a fuckin’ t-rex bit off that guy’s leg, but the fact that that’s even a possibility has me intrigued. Show seems bold and fast-paced, and I’ll never say I don’t love a cocky, genius protagonist. Worth a shot if it sounds fun to you.
Kurakon, I Got Married to the Girl I Hate Most in Class
Est. 6/10. Skip.
For undisclosed reasons, Saito and Akane hate each-other. She’s jealous of his test scores, I guess. I think he finds her dramatic and abrasive. But as far as we learn in one episode, these two are simply pulled together by the red string of hate, forced to tumble through life together, rubbing against each-other like sandpaper on glass. That is, until grandpa gets involved! Saito’s grandma died recently (RIP), and Saito’s grandpa decided to marry his childhood sweet-and-sourheart, who happens to be Akane’s grandma! They’ve been extremely happy together, and now they’re worried that they might’ve missed out on the wonderful life that could’ve been if only they’d decided to get together in high school instead of hating each-other. So they’re making sure their grandchildren don’t make the same mistake! They’ve arranged a marriage! And the marriage is going to happen, or else Grandpa is write Saito out of the will and give everything to this stray dog he found in the garbage, and Grandma is going to (whispers something menacing into Akane’s ear).
It's a literal sit com! Two high school students find themselves in a wacky situation and comedy ensues. As for the comedy, itself, it’s fine. Akane’s reactions to the various realities of married life are over-the-top, and Saito’s understated pragmatism plays well against it. Thing is, like most shows of this kind, the joke gets old fast. If you aren’t here for the premise of two high school students who hate each-other being forced to marry against their will, I doubt you’ll find anything in this show that’ll appeal to you. The visual design isn’t special and doesn’t particularly help the show feel “funny,” and while the two main characters have their charming moments, nothing about them is all that special or unique. It's possible that this show will get better once other characters are introduced, but it feels to me like this is the kind of show that's going to double down on the original joke instead of expanding its horizons and giving the viewer some more variety to enjoy.
The one character I do want to highlight is Grandpa, whose overbearing enthusiasm and confident insanity give him a fantastic “evil mastermind meets loony old coot” vibe that I would love to see more of! Aside from that, though, it really is just a show.
Momentary Lily
Est. 5/10. Skip.
The Gamer Girl, The Big Sister, The Loud One, The Rude One, and The Skin Care Enthusiast all sit in a photorealistic café talking about their various interests. It is a warm day, and quiet. The pink-haired one prattles on about the importance of skin cream. The green-haired one talks about real life in terms of video games, referring to her energy drink as a “buff” and saying that having slimy hands from lotion would give her a “debuff.” The One With the Big Boobs tries to quell the bickering between them, saying that she is the big sister of the group and it’s her job to make sure everyone gets along. It’s dialogue written for people who read nametags at family reunions, but at least it goes by quickly. Not five minutes into the episode, the Wild Hunt appears! A group of. . . honestly kinda cool monsters bent on erasing humans from existence for some reason. They have humanoid bodies filled with stars, and their heads are like spaceships that’ve been thrown into Jackson Pollock’s trashcan and run through an Adobe Premier filter. The girls summon their Andvari ™ weapons from their crystal necklaces (sold separately) and destroy the robot annihilators where they stand.
Then, the amnesiac Renge the Unsuspicious shows up. Taking a page from the Herman Melville school of story structure, Renge spends around 15% of the episode teaching the girls how to cook freeze dried soup, then summons The Baddassiest of All Andvari ™ to kill a couple of Wild Hunts who try to wreck the party. You know exactly what you’re getting into with this one. A color-coded team of magical girls fights a ridiculous enemy in an empty, post-apocalyptic science fantasy setting. The only reason you would’ve heard of this show at all is because it’s made by Studio GoHands, the legendary team behind one of the greatest shitposts of all time, Hand Shakers. Unfortunately, GoHands have actually gotten much better at making anime since then. Their trademark, nauseating visual style has actually turned into something that – while I could hardly call it “high quality” – is certainly visually unique and not at all rough to watch. Frankly, I appreciate them working in their own style a whole lot more than I appreciate shows that play things safe and have no visual flair at all. It’s a little heartening seeing this team grow, and I hope someday they can make something whose story and characters are as bold as their visuals. It will be glorious, one way or the other.
Sorairo Utility
Est. 6/10. Skip.
Weird to me that anybody would ever try to make a show about women doing golf again, now that the formula has been perfected with Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story. Even so, the people behind Sorairo Utility decided to take on the gods and put their own spin on Cute Girl Does Golf. That is to say, there is a cute girl, and she does golf. Precisely two cute girls, actually, as of the first episode, neither of whose names I can remember. Blue Haired Protagonist is an anxious gatcha game enjoyer whose favorite gatcha game has just gone offline, and who is now looking for a new hobby. Brown-haired Golf Girl likes golf, and she’s going to teach Blue Haired Protagonist how to play. There are some minor lesbian undertones. Some seemingly unintentional innuendos about feeling the weight of the ball and getting the right grip on the shaft. But ultimately, there just is nothing in this show that hasn’t been done hundreds of times before. Is it possible that a meteor strikes earth in episode three, leaving our protagonists to investigate its origins, only to find that it was, itself, the giant golf ball of an extraterrestrial race of golf masters and that they must now golf them in space for the fate of the planet? Yes. Am I willing to skip the rest of the show assuming something like that isn’t going to happen, knowing how much I have to miss out on if it does? Also yes.
Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster!
Est. 4/10. Skip.
A famous knight dies in battle against the forces of evil and is reincarnated as a beast in a dungeon! Wanting to make good use of his new monstrous powers, he uses his video game stats screen and the RPG skills that he earns as he levels up while fighting the fearsome monsters of this JRPG-esque fantasy world to hopefully get strong enough to kill the bad guys that killed him in his past life! There’s only one problem. The nameless warrior has been reincarnated as a Behemoth! One of the most destructive, deadly, and hated monsters in this entire JRPG setting! And not only that, he’s a baby Behemoth, which means that things both want to and are able to kill him straight dead! Which is exactly what a dragon tries to do. He gets into an epic bout with an S-ranked dragon, is horribly wounded, and teleports away. There, he is found by an Elfventurer – an adventurer who is an elf – who nurses him back to health, mistaking him for a harmless cat.
And by “nurses him back to health,” I mean fucks him.
She wants to fuck the cat.
I’m not exaggerating here. Like, I guess I am a little, because she doesn’t explicitly try to fuck the cat on-screen, but god damn it, man, she touches his balls. She gets in the bath naked with this cat – which wouldn’t, by itself, be weird, because it’s a cat and an anime – but then she actually just reaches the tip of her finger down between its little kitty legs and squishes his little kitty balls, all while making that face that anime girls get when their animators are making them do something ridiculous purely for the pleasure of the author and nobody else.
There are other horrifying things to consider in this show, like the gay barkeep who walks around with heart-shaped nipple patches attached to his suspenders, but why would I bother talking about any of that? You already know whether you’re going to watch this show or not. Do you want to see a naked elf woman touch a cat’s balls? Do you want to watch the kind of show that puts that scene in its first episode? Because your ship has come in, if so. Please, get on it. I doubt you’ll have this opportunity again.
Zenshuu
Est. 7/10. Test.
I think it’s pretty natural for those of us who keep up with anime to want to find ourselves in another world where isekai doesn’t exist. It’s overbearing, completely saturating a market that could be spent on flustered, teenage romances that go nowhere and shounen battle series. But with as much as gets produced, it only makes sense that some of it will actually manage to stick. Zenshuu sticks.
First off, this is an anime about people who make anime, and I have a weakness for those kinds of shows. They’re a way for an artist to speak more directly to an audience than they can with basically any other kind of story. Anime about animators and writers and mangakas offer a direct pipeline for those same people to air their grievances with the industry, talk about the part of the world that they’re most passionate about, and let us experience the world of artistry through art, itself. Sometimes, that can lead to self-indulgent garbage, and sometimes, it can lead to genuinely poignant and touching shows about the relationships between creator and creation. I think Zenshuu is going to wind up somewhere between those two.
As an isekai, Zenshuu is really cool. Exploding onto the anime scene after her directorial debut, Natsuko Hirose is the star of her animation studio. She takes her job very seriously, wanting to produce an absolutely perfect smash-hit movie for her next project, and while she’s holding up the entire production trying to make the perfect storyboard, she dies from eating rotten clams. Now dead (or possibly dying and hallucinating), she finds herself in the world of A Tale of Perishing, a wonderfully-named and critically acclaimed fantasy film that she was watching for inspiration when she died. When she gets to a scene in the movie where she knows one of the horoes is going to die and the local settlement will be destroyed, she uses her talking animation tools to draw a giant monster that saves everyone. It’s pretty cool.
Natsuko is a great protagonist. Cocky, but in a very deserved and understated way. The heroes of the world of A Tale of Perishing feel exactly the way they should. They’re like a team of superheroes from the ‘80s. Paragons of justice who are also kind of assholes to anyone outside their group who’s getting in their way. There’s even a robot and a talking unicorn. And seeing how they react to Natsuko’s powers being revealed – with awe and reverence that I can only imagine they normally reserve for the most powerful of monsters – is super satisfying, especially when they’ve literally been calling her a gremlin all episode. But the thing I'm most excited about when it comes to Zenshuu is the fact that Natsuko hasn't been reincarnated into her own world. A Tale of Perishing is another person's piece of media. Another director she admires, who died recently. Now, she has the opportunity to experience it in a way that nobody else ever has. I want to see how that affects her perception of herself as a creator, and I think that's the kind of thing Zenshuu is going to dive into. Hope I'm not wrong.
Definitely give this one a shot. I can’t promise it’ll be good, and I probably won’t watch more than a few more episodes of it, but damned if it doesn’t have potential.
I'm Living With an Otaku NEET Kunoichi
Est. 5/10. Skip.
Average, unremarkable office worker Tsukasa Atsumi is ready to die. The steel beams are falling on his head, and it is time for him to join his fellow average office workers in the other world where he can defeat the Demon Lord or gather the seven holy whatsits alongside his beautiful harem of underage cat girls. Unfortunately for Tsukasa, he has a guardian angel looking out for him. And by guardian angel, I mean unemployed ninja warrior. According to this cosplaying weirdo, Tsukasa has samurai blood flowing through his veins, and all people with samurai blood flowing through their veins attract demons who cause them misfortune. It’s her job, as a ninja, to kill those demons and prevent that misfortune! And since that’s her job, she doesn’t have to get another job, right? She can just kinda lounge around on your couch all day, right? Hey, do you have a PS5?
This is the kind of show that lives and dies on the strength of its premise. The cute anime ninja girl is actually a NEET who just wants to lay around and play video games all day, only popping up to kill demons after she’s done with her Animal Crossing tasks for the day. If that sounds funny to you, give it a shot! If it doesn’t, there’s no reason for you to spend time on this. The characters exist for the sake of the joke. I doubt there will be any character interactions or plot elements later in the show that are worth sitting through this first episode for if you don’t already like the joke. That said, it does at least seem like there are going to be multiple jokes! The end of the first episode introduces a new character who is called a “crazy psycho lesbian” and whose character trait is that she’s the NEET ninja’s masochistic stalker, so if your jimmies aren’t tickled by the original premise, maybe they’ll start getting itchy at some fantastic queer representation.
Never change, Japan.
Okitsura: Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl, but I Just Wish I Know [sic] What She's Saying
Est. 5.5/10. Skip.
So there’s this guy, you know? And he’s fallen in love with an Okinawan girl. But the trick is, he doesn’t understand what she’s saying! Isn’t that a kicker!
Just like the one with the NEET ninja girl, this show is its premise. There’s a guy, he’s in love with a girl, but he doesn’t understand her dialect. Hijinks ensue. One interesting thing about this show, at least, is that it’s very informative when it comes to stereotypes about Okinawan people, in a way that’s either mildly educational or mildly racist. As a white man who has zero experience with Okinawan culture, it’s really impossible to tell. A cursory look into the author tells me that he’s from Osaka, which is certainly not in Okinawa, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some kind of connection to the island. And even if he doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that this is any worse than Americans making jokes about Florida Man or Valley Girls or that good ol' Alabama lifestyle. What I do really enjoy about the joke is that it goes both ways. This guy wrinkles his eyebrows watching all the weird crap these hick Islanders do, but they cringe just as much when he does ignorant mainlander shit. All in all, I’m not sure I would call it a sensitive portrayal of a meeting of cultures, but there are parts of it that feel very true-to-life as someone who’s spent plenty of time living abroad, and it feels good-natured.
Ultimately, for me, the show’s worst sin is that I’m not Japanese. If it had simply made me Japanese instead, I would probably be much more inclined to appreciate the elbow-nudging humor about how everyone in Okinawa is named Higa. As I am not Japanese, most of the jokes don’t hit the way they would if I had simply been Japanese instead. While it would probably be better to a native Japanese viewer, this show feels like a solid 5.5/10 for me, with the half point coming from its high production value and fun visuals.
Medalist
Est. 7/10. Test.
This is a show that you’ve seen before! A washed up twenty-six-year-old figure skater who’s never going to be good enough to go pro takes an unfortunate, down-on-her-luck grade schooler under his wing so that he can vicariously achieve his life goals through her! Inori Yuitsuka has been digging up worms at the playground to trade to the owner of the local figure skating rink so that he might grant her passage to that glorious Ice. Tsukasa Akeuraji takes umbrage with that, chasing her out of the building and around town until she climbs up the rusted pipes in a back alley and nearly falls to her death. Luckily, he catches her, and the two have a nice conversation about their mutual figure skating dreams. Unfortunately, Inori’s sister was a figure skater before her until The Incident, and now her mom is reluctant to let Inori skate. And as a twenty-six-year-old man who is well past his prime, Tsukasa can relate to that pretty hard. So he decides to give Inori one chance to skate in front of him and prove to both him and her mother that she’s worth the tutelage! Naturally, she does! Now, the pair are on the road to the Olympics! Maybe! He very specifically says she might not be that good.
There’s nothing wrong with this show. If you like wholesome, coming-of-age/sports stories with great mentor/mentee relationships, this is going to scratch your itch, but it also isn’t going to be a standout one of those. From what I can tell from the first episode, it is a paint-by-numbers underdog story that may or may not have one or two unique elements to keep the attention of people who are already fans of the genre. I wouldn’t go out of my way to watch it, but I wouldn’t judge anybody for saying they liked it, either.
I Want to Escape From Princess Lessons
Est. 5.5ish/10. Skip.
This is one that can’t really be judged in one episode. Seven-year-old Letitia Dorman finds herself betrothed to Clark, the crown prince of her kingdom! Naturally, this isn’t as momentous of an occasion as Letitia might like. Clark is a nice enough guy, far as she knows. And getting to be queen would probably rock. But the whole process of getting there is a total drag. She’s got this tutor who does nothing but criticize her every move. She teaches her to stand up straight and eat soup without letting her spoon touch the edges of the bowl, when all Letitia wants to do is. . . not that. We don’t really get much of a sense of what Letitia’s hobbies are and what kind of stuff she would want to do if she weren’t stuck inside learning to be a princess. We just kind of have to take it for granted that she has interests and hobbies and such that are stifled by that smothering royal education.
The reason I say you can’t judge this one by its first episode is because the first episode is basically a prologue to the story. Letitia goes through her princess lessons, ten years pass, she concocts a scheme to have Prince Clark fall in love with another woman, the scheme is successful, and the wedding is off. Now, Letitia can go master the sacred art of macrame or whatever it is she wants to do. I’m sure that Letitia’s adult life involves plots, schemes, hijinks, and characters, but I don’t know what they are, and who has time to watch more than one episode of something?
Just speaking about the first episode, the show is a boring slog. I’m always down for a slow-paced character drama, especially if it’s set before the year 1800. This isn’t slow-paced. It’s stalled. There are three different scenes that all amount to “Letitia tries to do something, fails, gets corrected by her tutor, and then succeeds.” They aren’t interesting. They amount to very little. And it’s not even like the tutor is particularly cruel to her, which would at least give the scenes a bit of pathos as we all instinctively feel sorry for the little girl being unfairly put through the trial of balancing a book on her head. I just can’t see any part of this episode drawing anybody who doesn’t have a particular attachment to pre-Victorian noble life. And if it does draw those people, too bad, because that part of the show is over after episode one and it doesn’t bother to tell you what you’re going to be in for for the other eleven.
Also, it’s in widescreen.
That's it for this week! For those of you who are curious about the timing, Patreon recently launched their Creator Growth Program, which is why you might be seeing various different creators featured on the front page. I'm one of those! I've been asked to release more public posts on Patreon as part of that program, so expect to see stuff like this posted on here a few times a week at least until the end of May. After that, who knows? If people like it, I'll probably keep it up!
If you're coming here from the Creator Growth Program, then hi! I'm Explanation Point, and I make anime analysis videos, reviews, and shitposts. My most recent one is about Onara Gorou, an anime about a sentient fart who solves people's life issues and does parodies of popular media. Check it out on my youtube channel! www.youtube.com/@ExplanationPointAnime . Or just become a free member and get your updates that way!
Comments
ShadOtrett
It's amazing how you've managed to transmit your voice directly into my head with each of these without the use of video
AzAzeneth
The best poet I never knew I needed
