In an era where technology is making it very difficult for people to feel like they are developing true human connections, Dengeki Daisy is a series that puts a little bit of a twist on that idea. A young girl named Teru recently lost her brother, but he left behind a cell phone with access to something called Daisy to look after her. It’s not super clear what Daisy is, but it appears to be somebody who texts Teru every day and promises to look out for her, which is especially helpful as she has to deal with a lot of stressful people in her everyday life, including bullies and a janitor named Tasuku who keeps giving her a hard time. The first episode was very emotionally gripping for both me and the audience, based on the amount of vocal reactions that I heard. There were a lot of quiet moments that really let this idea of grief and solidarity settle in, and the final scene in particular felt especially poignant, going for this perfect mix of joyful and melancholy. This premiere was able to establish a strong, emotional core with Daisy as the center, and there was a satisfying twist without giving much away regarding what the show is actually about.

There is a very interesting cinematic preview that the episode starts with, acting as a vague flash-forward about how the rest of the series is going to play out. However, the voiceover and style of this preview is kept intentionally vague to the point where I can see a variety of different directions that the series eventually goes in. However, I might’ve been able to focus on this preview a bit more if it wasn’t scored to the actual song Time After Time. The whole thing felt so surreal. I thought I was watching an AMV from the mid-2000s, but it doesn’t stop there. The show overall is very gorgeous and evenly paced. While the designs are pretty typical, there is this storybook style to the show from its use of color and how certain scenes are framed. The characters sometimes represent these amalgamations of shapes that blend, but not in a way that makes it hard to discern where they are or what they’re feeling. A lot of this comes down to the fact that the characters don’t really have any outlines outside of explicit close-ups, and despite the fact that the show itself isn’t overly animated, as half of the episode arguably is composed of still shots, it never feels cheap or unintentional.

However, there are a couple of the aesthetic choices that weren’t made so explicitly clear. For example, the show itself is in a very odd aspect ratio that is closer to 4:3 than it is to 16:9. I thought this was used as some kind of framing device that was going to be made clear by the end of the episode, but to the best of my knowledge, it never is made clear why the episode is boxed like this. I don’t think this was an error with the way that the episode aired because the Crunchyroll staff never pointed this out at all, and the translation notes overlapped with the dead space that was left over. The only thing I can think of is that the framing of the screen might be used to replicate a flip phone screen, which is more of a vertical rectangle than an even box. Whenever Daisy texts Teru, the text messages are overlaid in the center of the screen, so perhaps that was the reason, and while that is a bit clever, it was no less distracting that the entire episode was like that. Still, this was a very emotionally gripping premiere, and while I’m a bit cautious about the directions that some characters go in since the main couple seems to be between a young adult male and a high school girl, I am very curious how Daisy as an entity will tie into these rather depressing themes.

The official website for the Kusuriya no Hitorigoto anime series revealed the additional cast and two character trailers for the anime movie on Tuesday. The movie, subtitled Bouhi no Hihou (The Secret Treasure of the Deceased Consort), opens in Japanese theaters on December 11.

Cast

Birou: Nobuo Tobita (Youjo Senki)

Shuu-u: Kumiko Watanabe (Tomo-chan wa Onnanoko!)

Bisen: Hirofumi Nojima (Komekami! Girls)

Suija: Kensho Ono (Jigokuraku)

Eishou: Ryouta Takeuchi (Nippon Sangoku)

Kaja: Jirou Saitou (Kami no Niwatsuki Kusunoki-tei)

Norihiro Naganuma (Mahoutsukai no Yome) is directing the anime movie at TOHO animation STUDIO. Yuuko Kakihara (Ao no Hako) is writting the script. Yukiko Nakatani (One Piece: Episode of Luffy – Hand Island no Bouken) is designing the characters and credited as chief animation director. Satoru Kousaki (Bakemonogatari), Kevin Penkin (Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari), and Alisa Okehazama (Jujutsu Kaisen) are composing the music.

Produced by OLM and TOHO animation STUDIO, the first and second season aired in Fall 2023 and Winter 2025, respectively, each airing in 24 episodes. Crunchyroll streamed the anime with subs and dubs in multiple languages, excluding Asia.

Hyuuga began penning the novel on the Shousetsuka ni Narou website in October 2011. Shufunotomo began publishing the novel under its Hero Bunko imprint with illustrations by Touko Shino in August 2014 and published the 16th volume in May 2025.

Nekokurage began drawing a manga adaptation in Big Gangan in May 2017. Square Enix published the 17th volume on July 24.

A second manga adaptation by Minoji Kurata began serializing in Sunday Gene-X in August 2017. Shogakukan published the 22nd volume on June 18.

J-Novel Club licensed the light novel for digital release in English in November 2020 and published the 16th volume on May 29. Square Enix licensed the manga adaptation for English release in November 2019 and published the 15th volume on March 17. The 16th volume is scheduled to release on November 3.

Character Trailer (Bi clan ver.)

Character Trailer (Kajadan ver.)

Source: Comic Natalie- 1, 2

SSS-Class Revival Hunter is a series that feels like it is taking some of the most interesting elements of other standard wish fulfillment series, and presenting them in one of the most obtuse ways possible. The story follows a young man named Gongja whose overwhelming character trait is that he is jealous of a jerk on TV who is blessed with incredible powers. That’s it, and if you think that I’m being too harsh on this guy, the show itself actually uses how pathetic he is as a legitimate plot point for why he deserves to get broken abilities that act as the inciting incident for the rest of the show. I’m not kidding when I say that there were audible gaps and groans when the camera pulled back, revealing just how much of a pathetic obsessive loser that this guy is. I can’t tell if this is supposed to be funny or if the show is really trying to relate to a very specific demographic.

But what is this broken ability that Gongja ends up unlocking for being a petty little weasel? Well, it’s the ability to copy the skill of anybody who kills him, but the trade-off is that the skill doesn’t actually bring him back to life, so it’s kind of useless. If only there were an ability that would allow him to circumvent this weakness? What’s that? The jerk that Gongja is obsessed with just happens to have an ability that lets him go back in time a full day every time he dies? Wow, that’s so incredibly convenient it might just work as the premise for an entire show.

There is a right way to do edgy and over-the-top power fantasies, but this definitely isn’t it. The problem with this premise is that it’s trying to get me to care about a character who I have no reason to think deserves any type of fulfillment. I don’t know anything about this guy outside of the fact that he is jealous of a talented individual who just happened to be one of the biggest jerks on the planet, but it’s not like said target of jealousy was hiding the fact that he was a terrible person either, so that doesn’t even work as some kind of reveal that completely shakes up Gongja’s worldview. He was just literally at the wrong place at the wrong time, but considering how well it works out for him, it’s just another convenience that eventually will build up to his ultimate power fantasy. There’s nothing here for me to really get attached to or engaged with. There’s no character that I want to follow, and the actual narrative progression feels so forced that it’s sending my critic brain into a drunken fury. Of all the premieres that I watched at New York Comic Con, this is the worst.