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Hi, everyone. Welcome back to Cafe Manga. Today's topic, Anime in 2023. It will be a brief review and commentary of shows that I watched in 2023 that I personally enjoyed.
Now, just to qualify this, I will be specifically talking about shows that not only did I watch in 2023, obviously, but they are specifically shows that originally got aired in 2023. As an example of this, I actually started watching That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime in 2023, but all the episodes that I was watching originally aired before 2023. So I'm not going to be heavily discussing that particular anime in this episode.
Campfire Cooking In Another World With My Absurd Skill
So the first show I'm going to talk about is actually a Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill. That show was actually something I was heavily anticipating for 2023 precisely because I actually read the light novels. It was originally a light novel and it later became a manga series. And then now it's an anime series.
So for anyone who's not familiar with the premise of the show, so it is an example of an isekai, which for those of you who don't know what the term isekai means, it basically means other world, as in the main character of the story travels from say this world to another world through different means.
Funny enough, I actually did an episode of my old podcast, Three Fates Decide, specifically explaining what the heck an isekai is. So if you're interested, I will put a link in the episode description for this episode.
But anyway, so in Campfire Cooking, the main character is this 20-something year old guy from Japan, of course. Who accidentally gets summoned through one of those magic hero summoning rituals that inevitably happens in these types of stories. And he gets summoned into this other world along with three high school students.
Now as it turns out, the three high school kids, they are the actual heroes. They all have like these magical abilities, magical affinities to fight monsters and demons.
This guy, though, he actually doesn't end up receiving any special abilities that would define him as a hero. He actually obtains an absurd skill, like the title says. And in particular, the absurd skill in question is he has a skill called online grocery. And if you couldn't guess what this power is, it basically means he has the ability to do online shopping in another world, which is very bizarre, hence absurd skill.
And the series basically follows his wacky adventures with this strange ability as he tries to survive in this alternate world he is basically trapped in at this point. He can't go back to Japan so he just has to live a new life in this world and very quickly he gets himself into all sorts of crazy situations and it's a comedy.
It's a really entertaining comedy and I highly recommend it. It's really funny, really hilarious. There's two minor quibbles I have with it, even though I do enjoy it. Number one, if you read the light novel series, there are certain story beats that kind of repeat themselves a little bit, which I will admit can make it a little hard to read at times from that perspective.
So if you are thinking that you're going into this checking out like a super action adventure fantasy story, then that is not what this is. So you're going to want to save yourself the trouble and not check this out. But if you want comedy, some fantasy, and some slice of life happenings, then this is definitely the title for you.
The other thing that is slightly negative is the fact that he uses a lot of times food in anime is amazingly drawn, delicious looking, very tempting. So just save yourself the trouble and have some snacks on hand, okay?
The Apothecary Diaries
Another series I also enjoyed was The Apothecary Diaries. And technically it's still airing now as I record this. I believe it's going to be 24 episodes and again it's based off of a light novel series which I also happen to be reading as well. In fact I kind of want to reread the first couple of volumes of the series because that's in essence what the 24 episodes are roughly going to cover. Possibly the third book as well but I don't know.
The premise of this story is you have your main character Mao Mao. Her adopted father is a doctor. She has been educated in a lot of things about medicine and health and some knowledge of science as well. She enjoys creating medicines as her father's assistant, hence the title Apothecary Diaries.
So she goes off on her errands. She goes out to pick some more herbs, you know, fresh ingredients to add to the inventory for their medicine making business. She ends up kidnapped and she gets sold to the palace and she gets hired as a common servant girl doing chores and errands around the palace.
And she's thinking to herself, okay, my contract is for only two years. And after two years, they will let me go if I just keep my head down and just do whatever I get ordered to do.
But of course, because she does have this medical background, she gets pulled into a situation happening amongst the Emperor's concubines where people are not doing well health wise and she can't help herself. She has to try to do something to help them. And because she does that, she gets their attention and things get more complicated from there.
It is a really good show. It is also a very good light novel series. I highly recommend it. I would describe it as part medical mystery type of story, a bit like House, if you would like a comparison. And also you get some political maneuverings happening because a good chunk of the story takes place in the royal palace, where you're dealing with people from upper ranks in society. And as I record this episode, episode 14 was recently released so yeah if you are interested in checking out the show you can find it on Crunchyroll.
Tearmoon Empire
Another series that I checked out in 2023 that I actually thought was really entertaining and again it was originally a light novel and again I am currently reading this light novel it's called Tearmoon Empire. And Tearmoon Empire is also pretty freaking hilarious. Really funny. Definite recommend.
Basically, the story goes like this. You have a princess of the Tearmoon Empire. Her name is Princess Mia. And she is the victim of a huge revolution in the empire, a la French Revolution.
And because it's a bit similar to the French Revolution she meets her fate at the guillotine and just when you think it's over she wakes up and she realizes that oh my god I went back in time eight years ago to when I'm a 12 year old girl and this is my chance. This is my second chance to change the course of my future. This is my chance to prevent my fate of meeting the guillotine.
And the rest of the series is her making all these small changes that create butterflies that completely changes things. You may be thinking, okay, well, why is this a comedy?
Well, it's a comedy because this girl does all these things for pretty selfish reasons. She's really focused on not getting her head chopped off, but because she's doing all these things, ironically, she's not just saving her life. She's also actually improving things, changing things for the better for a lot of people. And obviously she's using her knowledge of what is going to happen within the next eight years to prevent all these things from happening.
And subsequently she gets a reputation of being the saint of the Tearmoon Empire and it's just hilarious because people are thinking she's doing all these amazing things she must be wise beyond her years and no but no she's just doing it because she doesn't want to get her head chopped off.
I will say the writing for this is very clever. Because you have to be a really good writer to create situations where the scenario actually works on both sides. And by that, I mean, it's pretty obvious that Mia is motivated by very self-interested motivations. And yet her actions are such that it's very easy for someone who doesn't know anything about her selfish nature to think that she is super benevolent and super altruistic.
It's just absolutely funny. It's really hilarious, very clever writing. And I don't know, unfortunately, whether or not there's going to be a second season. I really hope there will be, but unfortunately I don't actually know that for sure. But there are definitely multiple volumes of the light novels so even if they don't continue with the anime there's plenty of material for you to read if you would rather check it out that way.
The Saint’s Magic Power is Omnipotent
So the final show I'm going to talk about in this episode is The Saint's Magic Power is Omnipotent. Now, what got aired this past year in 2023 was actually the second season, and it's also the final season of the series.
Some people felt that the second season was a bit slow compared to the first season, but to be fair, it matched up with what happened in the light novel series, which I'm sure some of you guys are sensing the theme here. But okay, so the Saint's magic power is omnipotent.
Similar to the first show that I mentioned in this episode, Campfire Cooking, in this show you have another story where you have this person who gets summoned from Japan and ends up in another world. Except in this case, it's number one, a young woman in her twenties versus a man. And number two, she is actually intended to be the heroine, the saint, hence the summoning and hence the title.
So basically the world she ends up in every so often, there are monsters that start showing up and attacking different parts of this kingdom. There's supposed to be a saint, usually a woman, who was born with really strong holy magic affinity, whose job is to use her holy magic to cleanse the land and get rid of these monsters.
Unfortunately, there hasn't been a saint born in this world yet, which leads to the conclusion that they're going to have to use a summoning ritual to summon a person from another world to become the saint.
So in this case, you actually have two people that got summoned. You have the 20 something year old office worker whose name is Sei Takanashi and a high school girl named Aira Misono who gets summoned. And at first there was some confusion because you have two people that got summoned instead of just the one person. So there was actually some debate as to who between the two, who is the actual saint.
But of course, it's pretty clear that the one who is actually the saint is Sei. So you kind of follow her adventures of how she survives in this new world and how she learns to develop these magical powers that she's been given due to the fact that she was summoned here.
And I enjoyed the first season. I've been reading the light novels and I did enjoy the second season. I thought they did a pretty good job adapting light novels. I mean obviously due to pacing reasons they cut out some things, they skipped out on certain events, they cut out some details, but overall I thought it was actually pretty good.
And it made a lot of sense to me that they ended the show with season 2 because, slight spoiler, the final episode of season 2 corresponds to the very end of volume 8 of the light novel. And unfortunately there has only been nine published volumes of the light novel series and when I looked up the story on Shosetsuka Ni Naro which for those of you who don't know what that is.
Shosetsuka Ni Naro is a Japanese website where you can upload fiction that you've wrote. I guess the best comparison would be it's similar to Archive of Our Own, except the difference is that Shosetsuka Ni Naro is intended to be a site for original fiction versus archive of our own, which is mostly fan fiction with some original fiction uploaded on there, but it's primarily a fan fiction site. Shosetsuka Ni Naro is meant to be original fiction that users can self-publish themselves on the website. And incidentally, a large majority of light novels were originally stories posted on Shosetsuka Ni Naro.
So when I went to Shosetsuka Ni Naro, I saw that unfortunately, the most recent chapter that got posted would technically be part of a volume 10 but it doesn't look like it's been updated in a few months so there's no certainty as to whether or not we are going to get a volume 10 anytime soon. So I think it actually makes a ton of sense at the end of the show with volume 8.
Conclusion
So those are some of the shows that I watched in 2023 that I would recommend to any of you listeners if you haven't already watched them for yourselves.
And if you think that there are shows you would recommend me to watch, then feel free to send those recommendations my way via my Substack account.
So before I end this episode, I decided that I'm going to make a little announcement about the upcoming episodes. So the next few episodes, I'm going to consider them a mini series of a sort where I'm going to do a review slash commentary on a particular title. And the next few episodes are going to be one particular title that is very popular and incidentally was a show that I binged watched heavily in 2023.
And in case you are wondering, I will offer you one hint and it is this: I hope you'll get excited about the next few episodes.
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