Amy's Anime Roundup: Part 1

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every morning I like to begin my day with breakfast and anime! So far this year I’ve watched nine different series, from mostly different genres, so I thought that since we’re at the midpoint of 2026 I’d share my thoughts on a few of them. These are in no particular order!

Killing Bites (2018)

Based on a manga that features gratuitous violence and fanservice from a variety of half-naked animal people, Killing Bites’s conceit is that scientists have discovered how to splice animal genes into humans, creating “therianthropes” with the ability to transform into part-animal forms. You’d think these would be very useful for all kinds of physical tasks, or even just for fun, but instead they use their abilities to fight in shady deathmatch tournaments to decide which mob-like zaibatsu gets to rule the corporate roost in Japan. Because of course capitalism ruins everything.

Unlike similar animal-people stories (BNA: Brand New Animal feels closest in tone), Killing Bites doesn’t concern itself with the implications of this technology on society, nor does it have anything to say about discrimination. It’s just an excuse for one animal-person to fight another one. I’m not saying it’s not enjoyable - the characters are all modelled on different animal types and have personalities to match, there are frequent cutaways to a narrator who dispenses facts about said animals before the fighters demonstrate their skills (yes, it’s educational!) and the core characters - Hitomi the honey badger, Eruza the cheetah and Ui the rabbit - are a likeable trio to root for. But it can feel a bit ‘monster of the week’; in most episodes there’s a battle between two therianthropes, a new tournament participant is unveiled as a cliffhanger, then one of the main cast fights them in the next episode, rinse and repeat.

The supporting (human) cast are given some personality too, despite not being therianthropes: of note are the manipulative Youko Mitsukado, whose facial expressions as she reacts to events are simply wonderful; and Mai Shinozaki, the match commentator who brings a ludicrous amount of hype to every fight and whose voice actor must have simply been given the direction to “go nuts” with all of her dialogue! Lastly, while it might seem like just a trashy fanservice-driven show, Killing Bites does go to some pretty dark places, with an attempted sexual assault from the very first episode and some instances of implied rape that don’t really get called out or punished. I’m actually enjoying the manga more than the anime as the story and protagonists change significantly for the better after the first few volumes that the anime adapted.

Killing Bites may be a bit of a “guilty pleasure”, with its B-movie sensibilities and knowing exploitation of the “male gaze”, but it’s well made and the voice cast are having a lot of fun. It’s just a shame that the entire series is taken up by the tournament arc, making it feel samey, and that the stronger and more varied plotlines from later in the manga couldn’t be worked in somehow.

Yatterman Night (Yoru no Yatterman) (2015)

Yatterman was part of Tatsunoko’s iconic Time Bokan series from the 1970s: every week, teen heroes Gan and Ai adopt the persona of Yatterman One and Two and use various mechanical creations to thwart the plans of the Doronbo gang. These are Doronjo, Boyacky and Tonzra, a trio of thieves who are usually found pulling heists on museums or banks to steal their valuables. They’re close forerunners of Team Rocket from Pokémon, right down to being catapulted into the sky at the end of every episode! Knowing this is important when it comes to the 2015 series Yatterman Night, which deconstructs this simplistic narrative.

Set in the far future after a massive meteor strike has decimated the population, the descendants of the original Doronbo gang live in exile on a remote island. When her mother falls ill, nine-year-old Leopard seeks help from the Yatterman duo - now the rulers of Japan - but is violently rebuffed, and her mother dies. Taking on the mantle of her ancestor Doronjo, Leopard and her two guardians Voltkatze (Boyacky) and Elephantus (Tonzra) journey to the oppressive Yatter Kingdom to find answers and get revenge on the now-corrupt Yatterman, who are terrorizing the populace with legions of robots.

Yatterman Night starts very strongly, revealing just enough backstory for those who might not remember the original series, and by turning the plot on its head - the villain group, now heroes, fighting against the evil Yatterman - it has a strong, poignant and often relatable social commentary on authoritarian dictatorships and the effect they have on the people living under them. For a lot of its run, the series plays out like a Kurosawa movie: Doronjo and her gang arrive in a new town, where the forces of Yatterman are mistreating the people, and must save them using their improbable skills in constructing massive mechas (just like in the original series, where they get the resources or time to build these machines is left unanswered as a running joke). They get a clue that will lead them closer to Yatter Kingdom and the inevitable showdown, and ride off into the sunset.

At around the halfway mark, though, the series starts to slow down and each episode becomes a more self-contained and light-hearted affair, often making use of in-jokes and cameos from other Tatsunoko shows (for example, the Mach 5 and Chim-Chim from Speed Racer). I felt like this was squandering the series’ potential: if its goal was to deconstruct the formulaic nature of the original Yatterman, why return to isolated episodes like this? It left only three episodes to wrap up the series’ main plot itself, which felt rushed and unsatisfying. Nonetheless, I liked what it was trying to do - and it’s impossible not to root for the strong-willed young Doronjo and her band of misfits!

A Centaur’s Life (Centaur no nayami) (2017)

Also known as A Centaur’s Worries, this series is a fairly typical high school slice-of-life serial… except that everyone is some form of mythological creature. There’s folks with angel or devil wings, goat-people with horns and hooves, cat-people (of course), merfolk, and - as the title suggests - centaurs. Our protagonist is Hime, a 15-year-old centaur girl with vibrant red hair. She and her friends - bat-winged tomboy Nozomi, and satyr Kyokou - are just trying to muddle through life, dealing with issues like classroom politics, dating, looking after their younger siblings and cousins, and making friends with people from other races.

The whole series is basically a way to explore the more mundane aspects of a society where racial differences aren’t just skin-deep, but come with their own unique problems. How do centaurs drive cars? Can angel people fly, and what happens if you accidentally cut off their halo during a haircut? How do skirts need to be adjusted to fit a cat-person’s tail through? Is it ok to ride on a centaur’s back? The answer to that last one is “no”, and in fact it’s considered a hate crime to do so because of how centaurs were treated historically - one of many aspects of this seemingly-normal version of Japan which hint at a rather repressive society, with offhanded mentions of “re-education camps” for people caught discriminating against other races, even accidentally. There’s a strong theme of social commentary throughout the series, although without a baseline of ordinary humans (as in the similarly-themed Interviews with Monster Girls), the lessons shared are often oblique and require a bit of mental translation.

A Centaur’s Life doesn’t really have an overarching plot - it’s a straight adaptation of a slow-paced manga that seems content to flit between different characters in its ensemble, telling everyday stories, without a straight ending or connecting theme. The rest of the cast includes the class president Manami, an angel-girl with four young catgirl sisters who soon become the focus of whole episodes due to their sheer adorableness, and Hime’s younger cousin Shino who becomes friends with them. The Antarctican snake-girl Sassassul joins the cast halfway through and becomes a focus of many episodes as she learns how humans of all varieties live together in harmony; her nonhuman apperance and anatomy (especially her smile) becoming a frequent source of humour.

I enjoyed each of the episodes of A Centaur’s Life in and of themselves, but found myself wondering why it kept hinting at much darker themes - like the aforementioned enforced-equality system, the ongoing tensions between humans and the Antarctican snake-people, a side story about mermaid song ceremonies and their gods, and even a whole episode told in flashback about a centaur character in a Second World War concentration camp - but never really involving the main characters in any of them besides observing their reactions to various events. It almost felt like a more interesting series was happening off-camera and I was just watching a high school slice-of-life serial set in the same world. Nonetheless, if you’re a fan of “cute girls doing cute things” and other shows like Monster Musume or Interviews with Monster Girls, it’s worth checking out a few episodes and seeing what you think.

New Game! (2016)

When I heard about the premise of New Game! - an anime series set at a video game developer, following the staff as they produce games - my mind immediately went to Shirobako, my favourite anime, which itself is set in an anime studio. However, the two series are only superficially similar: while Shirobako went into great detail about how anime is made and seemed to want to educate its audience too, New Game! is more concerned with its characters’ lives and personalities, using games dev only as a backdrop for more Cute Girls Doing Cute Things antics.

In the first season, we join budding artist Aoba on her first industry job at Eagle Jump, the studio behind her favourite game, Fairies Story. She’s thrilled to be working under her idol, legendary character designer Kou Yagami (a workaholic who’s introduced to Aoba sleeping under her desk in her panties), and is placed in a small team of artists including the exuberant, tomboyish Hajime and refined but insecure Yun. She’s thrilled to be joining the character art team for Fairies Story 3 - literally her dream job. In the second season, Aoba gets the chance to become a character designer herself. My favourite character, though, is the game director Hazuki: an older lady who’s deliberately staffed the studio solely with women, enjoys taking candid photos of the team and keeps a dress-up box of maid outfits “just in case”…

So, another typical CGDCT series, from moe masters Doga Kobo. The animation is very clean and bold; characters have very well-defined silhouettes, with bright vivid colours, and most scenes show them in close-up, allowing their facial expressions to take centre stage. As expected from the studio made famous by YuruYuri, New Game! features a fair amount of yuri itself, although it’s mostly implied. The all-female cast is put into a variety of accidental-girl-on-girl situations for our amusement, which is fun enough except that there’s one actual lesbian pairing amongst them which isn’t made explicit (no, not like that) until very late in the series’ second cour. This made the usual walking-in-on-undressed-girls antics feel a bit silly and I would have appreciated the series spending more time to develop this relationship. It surprised me how much the series was content just to tease it, especially in comparison to A Centaur’s Life which showed gay couples openly.

Although I didn’t develop an instant affinity with it like I did Shirobako, there are countless moments that I found very relatable: the socially-awkward Hifumi prefers to talk via IM even when she’s in the same cubicle; there’s frank discussion of “crunch” and the difference between quality work and just submitting it when it’s “good enough”; the girls discuss how to spend their paychecks, hold welcome lunches for new joiners and worry about accidentally telling friends too much about what they’re working on. As someone who’s worked in the games industry, these situations felt very familiar - especially the character of Nene, an aspiring coder who starts off in QA and makes a name for herself finding critical bugs in the game. In the second season, there are some more serious plotlines: Aoba has to deal with having her work credited to her superior Koh, and a rivalry from a new artist - but maintains its generally happy tone and sense of humour. I would have liked a little more of a look at the process of developing and publishing a game, but as a workplace moe comedy, New Game! is an easy one to recommend.

Other Series

The other series I’ve watched this year so far were:

Just because I haven’t written about them in detail, doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy all of them. (In particular, Shirobako is my absolute favourite anime, and this was my fourth rewatch of it!)