I have recently started watching more things on Crunchyroll (never let it be said that I don’t support the anime industry!) as most of the time I ignore it and let my backlog sit around. I currently have around 35 or so things in my queue.
How to Keep a Mummy: Painfully cute story about people keeping fantasy creatures, although it has more serious parts about the threat to the creatures and the issues the main characters face in their friendship. This was better than I thought it would be, although I’m confused about what the abilities of the mummy (up until one scene it seems like Mii-kun is really lacking in abilities compared to the other ones, especially the baku) are and other basic questions that the show doesn’t really delve into. (I was also unclear about whether the various creatures are adults or babies. Conny, the oni, seems to clearly be a baby who will grow up to be an human sized adult who can talk, which makes things actually pretty weird when you think about it. Ok, maybe the scene where the critters all learn how to write at a preschooler level too)
Sengoku Night Blood: I played this game for awhile, and I enjoyed some of the art, although the paltry story hardly went anywhere, and like most free games, I hit a wall after awhile so I got tired of it and uninstalled. So I tried watching this wondering if they ever reveal anything about the main plot. No, they don’t, this game has so many characters you can’t really do anything in 12 eps, and the heroine is incredibly uninteresting even by mobile otome standards.
Diabolik Lovers: Most otome anime should not be watched, but I watched this one because I was curious about the game but not enough to play it. However, it is even worse than Sengoku Night Blood and mainly exists as an excuse to animate the heroine, Yui, having her blood sucked by the vampire boys. I’m told the second season is even more incoherent.
The Royal Tutor: This is a fun, ridiculous shoujo-ish (based on a manga running in G-Fantasy) show about a tutor (who looks like a little boy, but is an adult man) summoned to teach four difficult princes. He quickly wins them over and helps them grow and become candidates to the throne. Anyway, though I enjoyed this anime, it really illustrated a “problem” (most people don’t have an issue with it) that I have with anime these days. Most anime is based off an ongoing manga, and when I finish the anime I become annoyed because the manga isn’t finished. I think a lot of people who watch anime prefer watching anime and are anime fans, whereas I find manga just as good of a way to experience a story and only feel a strong need to watch the anime if I’m very curious about how it was animated or want to see how they changed it. So if I were told both an anime and a manga existed, I think generally I would be more interested in reading the manga.
I did go and catch up on spoilers for the Royal Tutor and really the crux of the story is why the King feels it is so necessary that all of his younger sons be suitable for the throne, and the reason is because he secretly thinks his eldest son is not qualified, despite most people thinking he is highly suitable. Conveniently, this reason is a secret which has yet to be revealed in the manga, although if it’s just that he’s terminally ill or whatever, the behavior of Count Rosenburg (his steward who attempts to disqualify the younger princes) is also puzzling.
Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi: Regarding the English title, I kind of find “bed and breakfast” incongruous for what seems more like a resort hotel? Anyway, this is based off of a shoujo light novel where the protagonist, Tsubaki Aoi, was raised by her grandfather after being abandoned to starve to death by her mother, who rejected her because she could see spirits. Aoi was saved by a mysterious ayakashi who gave her food. Her grandfather, Tsubaki Shiro, teaches her how to defend herself from ayakashi by giving them food. Because of Aoi’s high spiritual power, her food has the ability to restore their strength. After her grandfather’s death, Aoi is spirited away to the world of the spirits where she finds out that her grandfather promised to marry her to the Master Innkeeper of Tenjin-ya, in return for his massive debt. Aoi refuses to marry the Master (an oni whose name is unclear, everyone calls him by his title), and instead opens up an eatery at the hotel, with the help of the nine-tailed fox Ginji, who I guess is sort of like the assistant manager. I find all the various titles they have at these inns (there are two of them, Tenjin-ya and Orio-ya) confusing, as is a governmental structure where inn managers are also the regional governors…
The story is mainly how Aoi (who is much more brash and reckless than she seems at first) wins over ayakashi who are at first hostile to her, through the power of her cooking and her insistence on helping others despite her not having any real obligation to in many instances. There’s kind of a vague triangular relationship between Aoi, the Master of the inn, and Ginji, although I feel sorry for Ginji, since he’s clearly not going to win, both in a structurally obvious way from the beginning, and for other reasons later revealed.
I think I’ve enjoyed this one the most, although I have some issues with it: a) the animation quality is inconsistent, at times distractingly so, b) since I have not yet had the opportunity to get bored of kaiseki ryouri, I’m actually not that interested in some of the foods featured (the wealthy ayakashi who can afford to stay at a four star resort hotel are, so they’re intrigued by the more modern Japanese foods Aoi cooks), c) can someone please tell the author not to name all of the characters in the later arc after various Sengoku figures? It’s seriously boring. A lot of the other names are sort of stale, but I was better able to ignore that. But I’m interested enough in the worldbuilding and like the slow burn romance going on. From what I googled online, it sounds like the finale of the light novel is approaching also.