Winter 2017 in Review: Scum’s Wish and Onihei (+ seasonal ranking)

Scum’s Wish

What is Scum’s Wish? I feel like I might be wrong about this, but I feel like it’s a commentary on love. What looks like a standard school romance show is anything but one. It starts out simple enough. Hanabi is in love with her male teacher who she has known her whole life and Mugi, a male student, has been in love with his female music teacher for a long time. Since they are teenagers who are in love with adults, they form a “couple” but are actually there to support one another in their forbidden loves. How do they do this? Well sexual acts of course. It’s not fanservice in the “haha, that girl fell and exposed her panties accidently” kind of way, but in the serious way. I don’t even know if you could call it fanservice because of what goes on. Also, the story gets a little more complicated when other characters are thrown into the mix. Scum’s Wish is a fantastic ride with some many twists and turns that it will keep you on your toes. Please give it a watch if this sounds like your kind of thing. I didn’t want to share too much about it because I want you to experience it for yourself.

Onihei

Okay, this series is easy to describe. It is an episodic cop drama set in the feudal era of Japan. Our protagonist is the Edo chief of police Heiou Hasegawa. Known around Japan as the Demon, no thief ever wants to challenge him. He isn’t the only character that is focused on in the story, because there are quite a few episode where he is the side character and that’s fine. I loved to see how varied each plot can be from one another. That’s quite an achievement. I just wish this show felt like it had a conclusion in the end. The last episode is just another episode and the only conclusion we got was just the end of that episode. It doesn’t do anything like Cowboy Bebop which had an arc put together just so the show had a conclusion. The show’s  jazzy soundtrack is amazing. In the end, I don’t know if I would recommend this series. It didn’t effect in any special sort of way and is kind of forgettable. It’s not bad in any sort of way, but I wish it had a larger lasting effect on me.

Winter 2017 Ranking

Watch Right Now:
-Descending Stories: Rakugo Shinju
-Scum’s Wish
-March Comes in like a Lion
-ACCA-13

Pretty Good Shows:
-Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans Season 2
-Tiger Mask W
-Onihei

Good shows with some negative aspects holding them back:
–elDLIVE
-Demi-chan

Blah:
-Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga