Wait, this manga started in 2014? Why did I think this was a reboot of an old series? Where did I hear about it before? Am I going insane?
Eh, never mind. It’s premier season! I have no time for existential crises.
Show Don’t Tell is an important rule of visual storytelling, but I’m not sure if having a character Tell something that was just Shown necessarily breaks it. It’s a bit odd though. Like, dude. We know he was in the Russo-Japanese War, is seemingly unkillable, and has the nickname Immortal Sugimoto. We just saw him fighting Russians, surviving something that should’ve killed him, and calling himself Immortal Suigmoto. That thing about him being denied a medal for almost killing a superior officer is new information, though, so that’s nice.
It’s exceedingly rare for an anime to come along that even acknowledges Ainu people exist. Occasionally you’ll see one of them, but it’s usually just a dude wearing a colorful bandanna whose Ainu heritage is only mentioned in passing, at best. I forgot where I’m going with this. I just felt like pointing it out, because this was going to be my intro before I discovered this isn’t a reboot and had to take a moment to question my reality. Preserving a bit of the Ainu language (which currently has a grand total of 10 native speakers) forever in an anime is fukken awesome.
I don’t want to do two caption gags in row without anything to break them up, so here’s some filler text.
Asirpa is really short.
I liked this premier a lot. Not sure if it’s my favorite premier of the season, but it’s really good. I’m definitely sticking with this one.
[ko-fi]
Ace Anime Reviews 