Edit: These shows need to stop having names the size of that one Welsh town, because putting three of them in one title is barely possible at this point.

The summer season had a lot of shows that I have a strong opinion about. For that reason, I only ended up with about three shows for quick reviews. The rest I either don’t want to talk about at all or want to devote a full post to. Before I dive into this, I quickly want to mention some of the sequels I watched this season, in case anyone is still on the fence about those.

Firstly, Danmachi season 4 was very solid. Just like every season before it, it doesn’t overstay its welcome and because of the long break they even did a neat recap.

Overlord on the other hand did not do a proper recap and I found myself kind of confused about what’s going on for the first few episodes. Besides that I never managed to care about the characters much for this season and I don’t know if I even would watch season 5 at this point.
Then we get to the big one; The Devil is a part-timer. I look back on the first season of this show extremely fondly. Which makes it all more of a shame that when I started watching this season I found myself uninterested. I didn’t remember the cast beyond the main four and this part of the story was incredibly boring to me. I hate to say it, but this was not a great season in my opinion. Maybe it’s the long  time between seasons or maybe it’s because it feels like this season didn’t conclude anything properly, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
Now with that out of the way, let’s dive into three shows I want to look at specifically.

The Yakuza’s guide to babysitting

Kirishima is a violent member of the yakuza. He works for the powerful Sakuragi family and is fairly high up its rankings even. He’s doing a lot of hard work, but he often goes too far in his violence and has always been kind of a wildcard. When he crosses the line one too many times, he’s basically put on leave. But not by sitting at home twiddling his thumbs. Instead of that, he’s put in charge of babysitting the boss’s daughter, Yaeka.
Yaeka’s mother got into an accident when Yaeka was very young and because her father is very busy leading a family of Yakuza, she’s been a bit neglected at times. Having a proper babysitter would be good for her, but Kirishima isn’t exactly the type of person that’s perfect for this job. Or is he?

The story watches as the two slowly grow closer while problems do arise here and there, but Kirishima really starts caring for the young girl. The joy of this series is in their interactions and we get more than enough of those. None of the side characters overstay their welcome and this show really makes it feel like a close family of people. I’m sure real life mafia people are also super nice and caring people. It is interesting to see the duality in Kirishima slowly fade as he becomes a kinder person overall. I found myself enjoying this show a lot more than I expected and if you like a good slice of life with a bit of drama mixed in then I’d highly recommend you give this show a watch. It’s short and sweet and bundles everything together nicely at the end.

My stepmom’s daughter is my ex

Because of course she is. In defense of this show, it is a lot more tasteful than a lot of other shows that thrive off of the thrill of incest. It’s still crazy to me how this genre got so popular both in anime and… other media. Yume and Mizuto’s parents remarry to each other. This makes Yume and Mizuto siblings. What neither parent knows, for some reason, is that their children used to date each other, before they were a family at all. They broke up at some point but never quite really forgot about each other and now they suddenly have to live in the same house. The story revolves around their relationship as siblings and former boyfriend/girlfriend, and how they often fail to thread that line. The two still deeply care about each other and the show explores those feelings throughout. I enjoyed this show more than I expected to, which I feel like I end up saying about a lot of the shows I watch on a whim, but I don’t think it was worth watching unless you’re really into high school drama. The production was pretty nice on this show and it had a good atmosphere throughout. I also think, for what it’s worth, that it has a fairly realistic take on this kind of situation. Obviously I have no way of knowing what a realistic take on this situation would look like, but it never feels like the show does anything weird and the characters are very aware of the strange predicament they’ve found themselves in. 

Harem in the labyrinth of another world

This show could have been something great. It’s bordering on being a hentai and every scene has been animated amazingly. But why does every single ecchi Isekai show insists on glamorizing slavery? It irked me in Shield Hero, it’s irked me in several shows since then and I believe after all this time this show is the worst offender. The slaves basically immediately fall for their owner, which is just the most messed up message to send into the world. I think there’s a tasteful way to go about slavery in a fantasy setting, a way in which the person buying slaves can still be a good person doing a terrible thing. There’s always a hint of grey in any story you write, but to just take slavery and make it so that if the master doesn’t treat their slaves horrendously it’s automatically something good leaves an awful taste in my mouth. On top of that does the opening show a whole bunch of the girls that don’t show up until literally the last five minutes. Nothing happens in this show. I’m serious. There is absolutely zero substance. This could have been a hentai if it had actual nudity and it would have probably been pretty great. But now you just have an ecchi show with well animated sex scenes where none of the characters are likeable, no one is a good person, nothing actually happens and there’s no real plot progression at all. It’s just a blatant advertisement for the source material that adds absolutely no value. It’s probably the worst anime I’ve seen in a very long time that I didn’t outright drop. If you like well animated sex scenes and do not care that this is the only thing the show has to offer then I suppose you could give it a watch but honestly you’re better off watching a compilation of it somewhere and skipping this colossal waste of time. 

There are a bunch more shows that came out this season that I want to talk about so I’ll be doing that over the next month or two. A lot of these shows I have more to say about than I could possibly cram into one large paragraph so they’ll each get their own post. For now, I hope I cleared up a bit about these three shows and you can decide for yourself if you want to watch them or not. In summary; watch the Yakuza babysitter, skip the rest. Thanks for reading!