Andraste

新年快乐！

I meant to post yesterday but I've been feeling a bit tired and rundown this past week. Hopefully better by the weekend - I have lunar new year celebrations and a friend's birthday to get to. Not to mention my book club tomorrow night!

Things watched recently:

• Seven episodes of Isekai Office Worker: The Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter, an isekai BL anime about an accountant accidentally ending up in a fantasy world, reforming the royal accounts department, getting hooked on magical energy drinks it turns out he's allergic to... and being saved from an overdose by a handsome young knight in the world's silliest fuck-or-die scenario. And then continuing to make political waves with his accounting!!! power, which is just so satisfying to watch. DAMN THAT MAN LOVES TO ACCOUNTS. The subtitle of the show is correct, the other world's book do indeed depend on the bean counter, and not everyone is happy about him tracking their spending... I'm having so much fun with this! It's funny, but also in a strange way an office worker power fantasy, but also there's political fallout for everything and that feels right, too. Once the season's over I'll have to track down the books.

• All of season one of Lord of Mysteries, first in Chinese, and now I'm watching the English dub. I really will have to track down the novels, the first of which is already out in translation here (apparently the second is out elsewhere in the world but doesn't arrive in Australia until next month?? sigh). I'm hoping to track down that book tomorrow night, if the book store that claims to have a copy really does.

This is also a transmigration story, but it's a steampunk-y horror transmigration fantasy. The main character ends up in a world where people take potions to cultivate into eldritch monsters, basically. He spends the first episode bewildered (and so did I hahaha) but pretending he has any clue what's going on, and I think one of my favourite things is how both his Chinese voice actor and English voice actor give him the kind of voice that can trick you into thinking he's almost a totally normal guy... and then you step back and look at the facts and you're just like, wtf, Klein! He's a great character, but I also like a lot of the supporting cast; my favourite character is actually Leonard, a guy who once fell down a flight of stairs because he was distracted reading a book (relatable). Leonard regularly tries to act cool and mysterious at Klein, who keeps calling Leonard a weirdo instead of being impressed, and I'm very entertained.

I do have... extremely mixed feelings... about the evil secret sect of people who take potions that make them women which gives them more powers to do more evil things, and by mixed feelings I think that has very unfortunate implications but they are all unfortunately also so sexy.

• I watched the remaining episodes of Betrothed to my Sister's Ex, a really charming cinderella story type anime I started last year. Which is actually really good. I appreciate that it doesn't just have the charming romance of Marie coming to be loved by rich handsome dweeb Kyros and everyone else in the castle, as well as slowly learning to love herself, it also deals with how she and her younger sister were abused by their family in different ways, and the ending is a happy escape for both of them. I really liked it!

• I also finished This Monster Wants to Eat Me, a subtly yuri-flavoured anime about the main character's suicidal depression, and the monsters that would prefer her not to die, actually. And like, it really is very good, but it is also so heavy so it makes sense it took a while for me to finally get to the final episodes.

• Cosmic Princess Kaguya (2026), truly the superior of the animated lesbian space princess movies I've watched so far this year. It does zip through plot very fast, so it's not without flaw, but I loved this lesbian sci fi take on the tale of the bamboo cutter, and the scissoring handshake is just an A+ detail. Great songs, a lot of fun.

• Which means Lesbian Space Princess (2025) is the lesser animated lesbian space princess movie I've seen this year. The songs are okay. I was stunned to learn after the fact that the homophobic blokey spaceship was voiced by Richard Roxburgh. It is sometimes funny. The best joke was the Maliens and the thespian. I don't regret watching it, but like... eh.

• Scarlet (2025): Wow, it's amazing how IMAX can make a bad film worse. I didn't realise before going to see it that this was an AU version of Hamlet where Hamlet is a girl who meets a handsome Japanese man from the present day in the afterlife, so that was... strange. It's uh not good. Some of the emotional stuff would have worked better if those scenes had not been dragged out, and a lot of the animation is TV quality limited animation. Morally incoherent, which is a feat because it's so thin and slight. The bit with the imagined Shibuya dance sequence is uh... I don't even know. That sure was a film I watched.