Archive for the English Anime Category


My Beloved Zako Streamer

February 18th, 2026
Two young women wearing different Japanese school uniforms, look into a cell phoneby Burkely Hermann, Guest Reviewer
Is the internet “forever”? A recent indie anime plays with that concept, following the story of a livestreamer and her best friend, who get romantically close to one another, and kiss twice on the livestream channel. The Japanese title for the series is Itoshi no Zako Haishinsha-chan 「愛しのザコ配信者ちゃん」streaming on YouTube. That title has many different translations into English, including My Beloved Underdog Streamer Girl, My Beloved Weak Streamer, My Beloved Low-Tier Streamer Girl (from the site of voice actor Mochimiyu), My Beloved Zako Deliverer (Melon Books and Niconi Commons), My Beloved Zako Streamer (Suruga-ya), My Beloved Zako Streamer-chan, or My beloved girlfriend is an unpopular youtuber (used in official subtitles).
This series director, Naoya Ishikawa, is well-known for his short series, Kuttsukiboshi. Five episodes and four promotional videos for Zako are available to watch on the company’s YouTube channel and there have been screenings in Tokyo. Firstly, this series shows the strength of indie anime, for which there are very few examples.  The series has official English subtitles, so users do not need to use the “auto-translate” feature. 
The reality of COVID-19, and importance of stopping viruses, is clear from the get-go. I liked that it showed, in a respectful way, characters wearing masks. In the first episode, some characters even compliment each other on their masks. This is something I have not seen in any animated clips or series, even though the COVID-19 pandemic began in December 2019. Many people sadly act like the pandemic is “over,” thinking they can go back to their “normal” behaviors. Others won’t even depict it at all. Beloved Zako Streamer reminds people that the virus is here to stay and that you can, and should, take precautions. 
The series contains some commentary on YouTubers / livestreamers. Mamiko (voiced by Koyori Nohana) is a very unsuccessful streamer. However, the person who inspired her to become a streamer is Mikittan (voiced by Popura Sawano), a young woman who lives in a messy, dirty, and disorganized apartment. She might be a hoarder. She claims she knows where everything is and gets lots of comments on her stream. In the fourth episode, Shii (voiced by Yui Otogura) is completely overwhelmed by the deluge of comments that Mamiko gets on her channel and wants them to stop. It reminds me of a recent episode of Oshi no Ko, where an adult-oriented cosplayer criticizes a series online, almost bringing it down.
The first episode begins with Shii dreaming that she is in a compromising position with her childhood friend Mamiko, then kissing her. As she wakes up for school, she realizes she had a wet dream. Later that day, she thinks that Mamiko doesn’t realize she is in love with her. She is caught off guard when Mamiko declares that she wants to do a livestream with her, making her believe that her dream will come true after all. This somewhat implies that Mamiko has feelings for her as well. It takes until the second episode of this ongoing series for things to heat up. Mamiko and Shii sit naked in the same bathroom, and then the same bathtub. Somehow, Shii still believes that she could never have a sexual relationship with Mamiko.

Using a camera she borrowed from Ita, their school friend, Shii and Mamiko begin their livestream. Ita (voiced by Nadeshiko Komae) and Miseri (voiced by mochimiyu), are hinted as having feelings for each other. In one episode, one of them tickles the other with her feet. They are among the stream’s six viewers. In the third episode, everything goes off the rails. Shii pulls Mamiko to the floor. They lie together before Shii pulls Mamiko into the exact position she had dreamed about. She asks Mamiko if she would save her from a train, or five of her favorite YouTubers, in a classic description of the trolley problem. Consent should have been emphasized better. The consent should not have been dubious. Even so, when compared to other anime, including some yuri works, perhaps Beloved Zako Streamer is better.

Only seconds later, she kisses Shii. Mamiko encourages Shii to take the next step. As the calm music plays, they kiss one another again. Their kisses gain them lots of viewers. They are unaware their stream is ongoing. In the following episode, Miseri and Ita continue watching. One of them snaps a photo of Mamiko and Shii’s kiss. Eventually they get in contact with Mamiko and Shii, before they do anything racy and get banned. Both finally learn they were livestreaming this entire time!
In the last-available episode of Beloved Zako Streamer, Shii desperately tries to reverse everything by going back in time thirty minutes. She thinks that the fairy of time, Tokkie, will help her go back to when she pushed down Mamiko. Tokkie warns her that if she does so, her special relationship with Mamiko will be reset. She promises to confess to Mamiko in a better way. She soon awakens and realizes that meeting Tokkie was her imagination.
Apart from secondary coupling-of-sorts, Ita and Miseri, who spend time close to one another, in the last-available episode, Shii’s false assumptions are blasted apart. She truly thinks that no one really watched the stream. When she returns home, her aunt reveals to her what she feared: she has become a celebrity-of-sorts. Someone snapped a photo of her kissing Mamiko, effectively publicly outing her. As she scrolls through the social media feed, she is horrified. She is worried that her “normal” high school life is over, meaning that she can’t be with Mamiko in the way she originally envisioned.

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story – 8
Characters – 8
Service – 3 or 4 (there’s some nudity but it is covered up by lens flares)
Yuri – 6 or 7
Music – 8

Overall – 8

Hopefully more episodes air this year, continuing my list of series that are yuriish. A preview at the end of the most recent episode hints that Shii and Miseri will begin their relationship for real. It seems that Beloved Zako Streamer will depict a growing, healthy relationship by two people under a lot of pressure as sort-of online celebrities.

Burkely Hermann is a writer, researcher, and former metadata librarian. His reviews can be read on Pop Culture Maniacs or his personal WordPress blog. He can be followed on Instagram, Bluesky, or on Mastadon communities such as library.love, glammr.us, genealysis.social, and historians.social.





ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword! streaming on Crunchyroll

January 30th, 2026

Title art for ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight With My Love and My Cursed Sword streaming on Crunchyroll, showing a redheaded fighter and a maid withe a bandaged face, surrounded by other characters.by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer

From ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword! streaming on Crunchyroll: “Flum wasn’t chosen for her strength—she has none. No magic, no skill, only an ability called “Reversal” that even she doesn’t understand. So why did God place her in the hero’s party? After being betrayed and sold into slavery, Flum is abused and eventually thrown to monsters for entertainment. Now faced with death, Flum must choose: be devoured or take up a cursed sword said to kill its wielder.”

I’ve had the original novels for this series in my Bookwalker library for a while now, and didn’t really know much about them other than they were incredibly violent and gory, but the anime offered an easier way in. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that underneath the fairly generic “kicked out of the main hero’s party” premise, there are enough stand out elements to make this show worth watching. The first and most obvious of these is that our main heroine, Flum, is female. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a connoisseur of the genre, so there may be others out there, but the only other series with a female lead which comes to mind is the excellent Sexiled series by Ameko Kaeruda, which you should definitely check out if you haven’t already. Roll Over and Die definitely has a very different tone to Sexiled though, which is much more light-hearted and takes more of a parody angle.

I’ve heard complaints floating around the Internet that the gore has been toned down for the anime, so I did read the first part of the first volume of the novel to compare, and some of the more gruesome moments have been either cut completely or made much shorter and less vivid. However, we do still see Flum being branded on the face very early in the first episode as well as people being eaten by ghouls so it’s definitely not for the faint of heart whichever version you pick. I will give the anime credit though as although the gore in the novel sometimes felt like gore for gore’s sake, the show manages to straddle the line of setting the scene but without overdoing it. It’s very clear that no one in this world is on Flum and Milkit’s side and the very obvious slave branding on Flum’s cheek immediately marks them as lesser once they escape.

They head to the Adventurer’s Guild in the slums of the city, as by becoming adventurers they can earn money from completing quests which will enable them to survive. Unfortunately, the nice man at the guild is also a bit of a bastard, and instead of sending Flum and Milkit on a quest to kill an F-rank monster, they’re tricked into going after some D-rank monsters instead. However, thanks to Flum’s no longer useless ability and cursed sword, the girls are able to kill the monsters and claim their prize, and more importantly, an adventurer’s license from the guild, much to the annoyance of the man who sent them into what he thought was a death trap.

Character-wise, Flum and her companion Milkit are the main protagonists we follow here. Milkit is a slave who Flum rescues from the same dungeon which she was trapped in, and the two begin to work together to survive in a hostile world, and are definitely developing feelings for each other as well. It would have been nice to have a bit more time with them together exploring their feelings when they’re not just trying to survive. This is however one of the other main aspects which makes this show distinct from other “kicked out…” power fantasies. So far, revenge doesn’t seem to be Flum’s main motivation. She just wants to survive and protect Milkit as well. Unfortunately, these first 3 episodes don’t tell us much more about either of them, other than that Flum was chosen by the deity Origin to join the party which would defeat the Demon Lord. One gaping plot hole I couldn’t ignore here is that the Origin just let Jean (another member of the party) sell Flum to the slave trader and didn’t intervene. Maybe this is all part of the grand plan, maybe there’s more going on than we realise.

The character I am most interested in though is Cyrill, another member of the party who is initially friends with Flum due to them being similar ages, however Jean has designs on her and it is implied that one of his reasons for wanting rid of Flum is so that he can pursue her. Flum and Cyrill’s relationship is definitely portrayed in a way that could suggest they were more than just friends, and I would like to know more about them as well as seeing if they reunite further down the line. What Jean also doesn’t realise once he’s got rid of Flum, is that despite her seemingly useless stats and zero magical ability, she helps the party out in other ways, like cooking. Once she’s gone, he’s not getting his food prepared how he likes it and he sulks like the big baby he is. I am looking forward to him getting his just desserts (pun absolutely intended).
In episode 3, we meet Sara, a seemingly pure-hearted nun who has a brand on her neck similar to Flum and Milkit. Sara’s backstory is the most interesting so far, and I hope we get some similar level of detail for the other characters too. She is from a pagan village which was destroyed by the demons and forced to absorb into the Church, including banning pagan rituals such as the use of herbal medicine. (As a personal aside, I’ve been reading about the Scottish witch trials recently for work, and there’s a lot of parallels to be drawn here but that’s probably an article in itself)  Even I, as someone who’s not overly familiar with this genre, have a suspicion that maybe the Church isn’t all it seems to be…

Regarding the art and animation, there’s not really much to make this show stand out. The colour palette is pretty dark, whether that’s an intentional design choice or a saving money choice isn’t really clear, it could just as easily be a bit of both. It does mean Sara’s white robes act as a nice contrast to everyone else’s dark outfits and that the symbolism is incredibly obvious. The character designs are pleasant, although Milkit does remind me far too much of Ren and Ram from Re: Zero.

Overall, I enjoyed this much more than I was expecting to. Whilst there are definitely a lot of generic elements here, the setup and execution is interesting enough for me that I will stick around and see what comes next. If you don’t mind quite a bit of gore, and a well trodden basic premise, you could do a lot worse than this show.

Ratings:

Art – 6. Character designs are pleasant, animation is meh.
Story – 7 There’s enough here to make it stand out from the hundreds of other kicked out of the hero’s party shows.
Characters – 7 There’s a lot to explore here, how I feel about the rest of the show will depend how well this is done.
Service – 8 if you enjoy gore, 5 if you don’t care for it.
Yuri – 8 When the first thing Flum buys for Milkit after they get some money from completing their first quest is a maid outfit…

Overall – 7





There’s No Freaking I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… ~Next Shine~

January 21st, 2026

There's No Freaking I'll Be Your Lover! Unless… ~Next Shine~ promo art. The 5 faces of the main characters, all wearing different, characteristic, expressions, above some information in Japanese giving the airing information

by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer

**SPOILERS BELOW**

This sequel was announced at the end of season 1 in September 2025, and originally premiered in Japanese cinemas in November 2025, then on Japanese TV at the very beginning of 2026. REMOW has also brought the series to Western fans on Youtube, as they did for the first series.

 

All 5 main cast of No Freaking Way I'll Be Your Lover, Unless...members in their school uniforms, with Renako standing slightly forward of the others, a maid cosplay outfit over her arm. Kaho is immediately behind her, jumping and punching her fist into the air

This series is basically an almost exact adaption of volume 4 of the novel series, which I reviewed here on Okazu. As such, if you didn’t enjoy the first season, there is absolutely nothing for you here. This is solely for the fans who wanted more. The animation, art, music, and voice acting haven’t changed at all in style from the original 12 episodes. Picking up where season 1 left off, we can now properly meet the final member of the harem, Koyanagi Kaho, an extroverted cosplayer with a few secrets of her own, and a jealous streak as well.  There is however one very important difference between this adaption and the original novel, which ends with Renako confessing to both Mai and Ajisai and asking to date them both, but the anime ends with a screen showing a text message from Satsuki saying “Hey, you’re already dating two at once, so one more wouldn’t hurt, right?” Obvious sequel bait aside, I do respect that the show didn’t make Renako pick just one of the girls, and actually committed to the harem premise.

It’s nice to see a yuri anime get a sequel, especially when it was announced pretty much at the end of season 1. I hope the bait which was dangled in front of us is taken and we get “Season 2” of the series animated some day.

Ratings:

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 7
Service – 7. Renako has now bathed with every member of the group in animated form.
Yuri – 7

Overall – 7





A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, Streaming on Crunchyroll

November 13th, 2025

A voice bubble of aqua and pink, with the title A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, , next to an drawing of the ensemble of characters, led by a woman in a red and white track suite with purple hair, holding a computer stylus.Manga artists work hard. Like so many people in creative jobs, their hours are frequently full of nothing to do or deadline chaos. Even now, manga artists work on tight deadlines. The traditional meal for manga artists and their assistants was ramen, cigarettes and beer. But why, you might ask?  Because, also traditionally, manga artists pay their assistants out of their own pockets, as they work on the serialized chapters of their story, until a volume is made, then the artists would  get royalties from the sale of the collected volume.  For more established artists, they might have studios where assistants apply to learn from them, as well as do background work. Probably some young artists trade assists, each helping the other out.  If you are really interested in a relatively recent experience, I recommend Jamie Lyn Lano’s The Princess of Tennis: My year working in Japan as an assistant manga artist. The book is out of print, but you might find it through Interlibrary Loan or check out this interview with them on Youtube.  Jamie worked as an assistant to Takeshi Konomi, creator of A Prince of Tennis. As manga artists gain success sometimes their editors can find them help, and I imagine most know a few freelancers who can do some gig work these days.

You may be wondering if this model is different now? Probably a little yes, but mostly no. Crowdfunding, comic markets and digital publishing still mean deadlines, even if a creator is no longer crushed in the crucible of weekly series as often. I know younger artists are keeping more control of their IP and even older artists change publishers now, which used to be absolutely not a thing that happened. 

In A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace, streaming on Crunchyroll, details a fictitious current set-up, centered on Futami-sensei an artist with a current hit manga series, who is drowning under deadlines, but still isn’t sure enough of her success or status to ask for help.  Futami appears to be a hot mess, but we are instantly made aware that she had a terrible editor, who undermined her constantly, so her lack of confidence is wholly understandable. Just in case we forgot what a shitbox he was, we’re reminded later that it is very definitely his fault that she’s so fragile. This tracks with some recent stories in which artists like schwinn have posted how their editor belittled their work. The pain in Futami’s experience feels personal and while I hesitate to claim it’s “clearly” autobiographical, I’ll remind you that Kuzushiro’s first breakout hit was Kimi no Tamenara Shineru, a Heian comedy about Sei Shonagon that ultimately went 14 volumes. It feels awfully personal. Which makes it more powerful. 

Futami’s current editor Sato and she have a very cute, fauxmance relationship. Still not entirely comfortable just being honest, and often too excited to remember to be professional, they quietly crush across the table at each other. It’s very cute and played very gently. Sato is a safe space, not a lover. 

The rest of the cast builds up quickly, Futami’s competent assistant Ha-san, remote assistant Nekonote and Nashida, a woman who is now saddled with the terrible editor who has killed her series. Nashida’s day drinking. It’s not funny how much trauma she’s suffered. But in her pain she is really very funny. Her repeated “editors and men, they are all the same” is a line delivered with such absolute deadpan perfection by Kobayashi Yuu that I twice laughed out loud. 

My only objection to the anime is the same as it is in the manga, which I read, but did not review here. It is very shouty. It’s just part of Futami’s personality. 

Ratings: 

Art – 8
Story – It’s a sit-com more than a story 7
Characters – 8
Service – None thus far
Yuri – 1, maybe two, for Futami’s akogare of Sato.

Overall – 8

This is meant as a workplace comedy, so expect inside jokes and “mangaka writes about being a mangaka” stuff, but so far the ensemble is fun, the cast excellent. Itou Miku as Ha-san, her voice is filled with gravitas and competent calm. If you don’t mind occasional shoutiness, this is a fun, and warm-hearted look at the life of a mangaka.





This Monster Wants To Eat Me Anime, Streaming on Crunchyroll

October 6th, 2025

On dark background of black, blue and blood red, spattered with water droplets that amplify the color, a girl with long black hair and a scaled arm that ends in long-clawed fingers, smiles at use, her eyes glowing, on blue, one gold and inhuman.It can be challenging to go back to the beginning on something you have been following for a long time, to see where – and how – it begins. You’ve watched the story develop, the character mature,  and now you’re back with everyone unsure of the who and what and where. A good example of that is Steven Universe, where a return to the beginning, as Steven is so immature and very, very loud, can be difficult to watch after later seasons.

Not so for This Monster Wants To Eat Me, the anime adaptation of the manga by Naekawa Sae (one of the guests at this year’s AnimeNYC.) 

This story has always been atmosphere first, plot second and the animation really leans heavily into this. One of my favorite things about the visual narrative in the manga is how Hinako is always “drowning.” The darker her thoughts are, the deeper and darker the world around her. Bubbles float past her even in the classroom, as if she takes the deep ocean with her everywhere she goes. 

This is a story about trauma and depression and surviving, and how the horrors of the world take many forms. Including yokai.  Yokai, like vampires and werewolves, are born of fears shaped by the primal dark, the noises of the night,  of getting lost, of the inevitability of death. They are the horrors that we know are not real, but are real enough when we are faced with the truth of the world. A car may go off a cliff and fall into the ocean, but the ocean will not give back what it has taken. If you have ever watched a riptide in the North Atlantic, you may have seen that it is not angry, but it is dark and very hungry. Won’t you come and play in the surf?

This is the vibe of This Monster Wants To Eat Me. 

Something wants to eat Hinako, and Hinako is not opposed, but somehow cannot manage to successfully be dead.

This anime is being spoken of as a “Yuri” anime, but again, I remind everyone that the story is not a romance as such. Yes, Miko’s affection for Hinako is strong, and definitely a kind of love. What Shiori and Hinako may be to one another will not be revealed for a while. In the mean time, sit back, watch the ocean rise up to claim Hinako, and see how her life changes now that Miko and Shiori will vie for her attention…and her life. But not in the way you think.

Ratings: 

Art – 10
Story – 9
Characters – 8, but give it a few episodes
Service – 0
Yuri – This will be debated

Overall  – 10

Beautiful, atmospheric, dark, immensely sad, This Monster Wants To Eat Me, streaming on Crunchyroll, is fantastic.