Trudging Through the Winter 2025 Anime Season - Renegade Animation #173
In this episode, Captain Kaye, The Animation Guru, and Teresa give their honest impressions of what Winter 2025 had to offer in the wonderful world of anime.
What’s going on, everyone? This is your Captain speaking, alongside my co-hosts, The Animation Guru, and Teresa! As the title implies, we all may be experiencing a bit of anime burnout. Even though this season didn’t have as many new titles as the past couple, it’s still a daunting task to go through all of these, especially when they’re not exactly bringing their A-game. So without further ado, please tune into the podcast to hear the full discussion, and keep reading if you want to see our collective top 5 recommendations!
Ameku M.D.: Doctor Detective
It’s House, but instead of Hugh Laurie, our protagonist is an eccentric director of Investigative Pathology named Takao Ameku. She has the ability to diagnose patients that others cannot, and has also taken an interest in solving mysteries. I don’t think I need to say anything else to convince you why this is the best show ever, or at the very least a strong top 5 contender for this season. But if you really do need convincing, you have to watch at least the first two episodes, because that’s how long the first mystery takes to solve, while episode 3 gets it done in one shot. So if you’re an anime fan who’s also into network TV procedurals, then you need to get on this ASAP!
Flower and Asura
Anime that’s centered around various high school clubs are a dime a dozen, but this one feels a little different. Our protagonist is Hana Haruyama, a first year student who’s recruited to join the Broadcasting Club by the club president and second-year student, Mizuki Usurai. So what we have here is another coming of age story that’s all about following one’s passion, which Hana certainly has for recitations. The animation looks great, these characters are varying degrees of likeable, and the music is wonderful.
I May be a Guild Receptionist, But I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time
It’s CloverWorks, so I can’t be too surprised that this one is as great as it is. But what it really comes to is the characters. I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But I’ll Solo Any Boss to Clock Out on Time follows Alina Clover, a young receptionist working at Iffole Counter, who has grown tired of all the overtime due to the overwhelming number of adventure requests. There’s just something so cathartic about this premise, as someone who had to work plenty of overtime at their last day job. That was already enough to connect with our protagonist, but that I’m also invested in the world building is just an added bonus.
The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World
So far, since we started doing these seasonal anime impressions, the shows with the best track record have been the Power Rangers/Super Sentai parodies. The Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World kills two birds with one stone, as it’s more than a parody of Super Sentai. It’s also an isekai, but it still maintains the over the top energy of its titular protagonist. I knew right from the start that I was going to love this anime, and that’s because I instantly fell in love with these characters. It’s dumb, but it’s exactly my kind of dumb, which means it’s an easy top 5 contender!
Sakamoto Days
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that THE anime of each season ends up belonging in the action genre, but the truth is that never actually matters. What matters is coming up with great characters and putting them in a compelling narrative, and Sakamoto Days does exactly that! A retired hitman working at a convenience store and using his talents to help the people in his community? It’s so simple, yet brilliant. I don’t think I need to say anything else, just watch the first episode to get an idea of what to expect, then keep watching because it only gets better from there!
That’ll do it for this episode! Thank you all for joining us! We have provided a link to several GoFundMe pages in support of those affected by the 2025 Wildfires in LA. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10gvOxituYvxxknoY9IQa-YEqfK8WvCjcLBcg4hsmME4/edit?pli=1&gid=0#gid=0
