From hobby shows to historical fantasy, check out the team’s faves from last year’s stacked final season!
Tag Archives: Do It Yourself!!
The Best Anime I Watched in 2022
Here we are, another trip around the sun and another list of anime recommendations! While nowhere near as prolific as some people (I admire the dedication!) I feel like I managed to keep up with a solid set of seasonal shows this year, wired in once more by my work for AniFem and the coverage of my fellow staffers. Note as in previous years that some of the material in these personal reviews is adapted from my season recs over on the site. Make sure you give those articles a read, and keep an eye out for the staff’s forthcoming recommendations from Fall 2022 and from the year overall!
I also dug into a bit of my “classics” backlog, watching some older, iconic shows for the first time. I won’t cover those here, though: it’s difficult for me to add anything to the convo around Neon Genesis Evangelion other than “it was good! It was weird! Shinji is my son!” and I already wrote up my feels about both seasons of K-On! here.
Without further ado, let’s get into my personal faves from 2022, from hobby shows to fantasy adventures to… crime dramas? Technically? Well, see for yourself…
Continue readingFiled under Alex Watches
Girls Doing Stuff: Agency and Motivation in Girls’ Hobby Shows
I like to think I have a fairly varied palette when it comes to my anime tastes: a genre charcuterie board with some fantasy here, some meaningful coming-of-age stories there, and a peppering of rom-coms seasoned just right. There’s one category, though, that I always find myself savoring and looking forward to each season. If there’s a cast of funny teen girls trying out a new hobby, be it animation, camping, playing guitar, or building a treehouse, I’m there.
But why does this genre have such a gravitational pull? I could answer, simply and truthfully, that we live in stressful times and these shows are often very relaxing. But upon deeper consideration, there’s something else about these girls’ hobby shows that makes my heart happy, and it’s happening more on the level of character construction and development.
Filed under Fun with Isms
Premiere Review | Do It Yourself!!
What’s it about? Clumsy and airheaded Serufu has just started high school, separated from her childhood best friend Miku for the first time. On the way to class, Serufu’s bike gets into a brawl with a light pole, leaving her without transport… until a mysterious upperclassman on high-tech rollerskates slides over and fixes it for her. Intent on saying thank you, Serufu tracks this stranger down to the shed at the back of the school and finds herself in the DIY club. Could fixing, building, and upcycling be the hobby for Serufu—and the way to rekindle her friendship with Miku?
I’ve been hungering for a hobby show this year, and I’m hoping Do It Yourself!! might do the trick. So far, it’s definitely ticking the boxes: it’s charming, cute, and mixes silly character antics with technical detail to make the world feel grounded while also being cartoony and larger than life.
Filed under Alex Watches
The Afictionado 