Archive for the Staff Writer Category


There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… Light Novel, Volume 2

August 8th, 2025

Two girls stand back to back, saluting the viewer with V signs. One girl has very long black hair, the other has collar-length pink hair. They both smile at us.by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer

Volume 2 of There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… opens with Mai announcing that Renako is her fiancée at a fancy dinner party, much to Renako’s surprise and horror. Despite this, after that prologue, Mai is almost a side character in most of this volume, as we get to know another member of the friend group/harem. This volume focuses almost entirely on Koto Satsuki, who is featured on the cover alongside Renako, and is called Satsuki-san at this point in the story. In Volume 1 we find out that Satsuki has a crush on Renako, but also that her relationship with Mai is more complicated than it first appears. Satsuki describes their relationship as “toxic friends” and also says that “The number one reason why I stay with her (Mai) is that it gives me the opportunity to see her in distress.” Hopefully, this volume will dive into this in more detail.

We also know that after Mai assaults Renako in volume 1, she confesses everything she’s done to Satsuki in an attempt to soothe her guilt. Satsuki is less than sympathetic, and we still don’t really understand her motivations or why she has a crush on Renako. Is it jealousy or does she simply want what Mai has? It turns out to be a little more complicated than that, she wants to date Renako as a way to get revenge on Mai. In classic harem protagonist style, Renako is manipulated into dating Satsuki for 2 weeks. Never mind the fact she’s still technically dating Mai.

Satsuki though, has a secret of her own. She has an after school job at a fancy doughnut shop which Renako and her sister end up discovering, and it turns out there’s more to Satsuki-san than meets the eye. Satsuki invites Renako back to her house after work, and we find that she’s an only child, raised by a single mother and works to try and support herself and her mother and the perfect facade is just that, a facade. She clearly still doesn’t trust Renako very much, but the fact she’s brought a friend home for the first time since starting high school shows that there’s maybe some cracks appearing in that defensive wall.

Harems of course live and die on the strength of their characters, and I’m surprised by how much I’m enjoying this series. Renako is understandably utterly bewildered by this whole situation she finds herself in, and the way things are going so far I could genuinely see this ending up in a poly situation. And if it does, I respect that choice, because why have one girlfriend when you can have many? As long as everyone involved is happy and consenting, bring it on. I’m also looking forward to Volume 3 because Ajisai is on the cover and I hope this means we see more of her and her relationship with Renako as I enjoyed her section of volume 1.

Ratings: 

Art – 7
Story – 6
Characters – 8 The side characters are still more interesting than Mai.
Service – 6
Yuri – 7
Harem – 8

Overall – 7.5 I found this volume more interesting than the first one because Satsuki is a genuinely interesting character and I still have no idea what her true motives are.





Bad Girl Anime, streaming on HIDIVE

July 30th, 2025

Six high girls in school girl outfits in various poses. A multi-colored logo said “Bad Girl.”

by Matt Marcus, Staff Writer

Your butt is mine, gon’ tell ya right

So opens Michael Jackson’s 1987 mega-hit “Bad”. I’ve always found this line risible, like a 7-year-old trying to sound cool. Don’t get me wrong, the song is a certified banger, but no amount of buckles or hip-thrusts were going to convince me that MJ knew how to throw down.

Even less convincing is Yuu Yuutani, the titular so-called Bad Girl,streaming on HIDIVE. You see, she wears earrings (that are actually paper clips)! And she doodles on the bus window! That will definitely catch the attention of her beloved senpai and public morals committee member, Atori Mizutori, won’t it? Turns out she’s very bad and being…well, bad. But despite this, she gets her wish, as Atori finds herself fascinated with this small scared animal who follows her around.

Every character is an easily identifiable archetype: we have the socially inept lead; the grumpy gyaru best friend with a crush; the conceited clout-seeking cutesy girl; and the well-admired and respected senpai. Not much in the way of surprises here, although aside from the “school idol” girl they are likeable enough.

Nothing about Atori’s sudden interest in Yuu makes a lick of sense aside from the fact that there wouldn’t be a premise without it. You can’t look at Bad Girl and expect anything resembling verisimilitude or character growth—it’s simply a vehicle to deliver well-worn jokes around our lead struggling to communicate yet failing upwards. There is also a layer of lewdness to the gags that feel very calculated, starting with the OP that includes several moments of our cast posing with each other in the nude for no reason.

The animation is solid, the comedic timing is tight and punchy. It’s a well-executed version of what it is: a gag manga adaptation with few fresh ideas. To paraphrase Wesley Snipes: it ain’t bad.

Art – Cutesy. Very cutesy
Story – Goofy and fluffy
Characters – Here just to be silly
Service – Kya-hoo out of 10
Yuri – Should’ve called this series Down Bad Girl

Overall – It’s not bad, but it’s not particularly great either

You can watch this series on HIDIVE, if you’re bad enough

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.





There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless… LN 1

July 28th, 2025

A girl with blonde hair embraces a girl with pink hair, who looks uncomfortable about it. They wear the same school uniform skirt of black plaid, white blouses and red ties. The blonde wears a black blazer, as well.by Eleanor Walker, Okazu Staff Writer

This series has been on my radar for a while, but with the anime now airing I took the chance to read the first novel, which is mostly covered by episodes 1-3 of the anime adaptation of the light novel There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…, Volume 1

Content warning: sexual assault

Mai Oduka has it all. Money, good looks and brains. So when former loner Renako decides to reinvent herself for high school and go to a new school where no one knows her, she of course attracts the attention of Mai. Renako becomes part of Mai’s friend group, and is stunned when Mai confesses her feelings to her. Renako, however, just wants to be friends, so they set up a contest where some days they’ll try being lovers, and other days just friends. If Mai wears her hair up, it’s a friends day, if it’s down, it’s a lovers day.

I like the premise, it’s silly and a little bit of wish fulfillment for those who want to imagine how the other side lives and date the most popular girl in school. I just wish the author understood consent. There is one particular chapter in this volume where Mai and Renako end up in a hotel room because of course they do, and of course they end up naked together as well. I would describe what Mai does to Renako at this point as sexual assault. If you (supposedly) love someone, you listen to them when they say no. Granted, Mai does apologise later and says she got carried away, but it still leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

From this point, feelings start to get a little more messy. Mai tries to put Renako out of her mind, and hosts a private party to find a new partner. After a confrontation with Satsuki (another member of the group who has the potential to be very interesting), Renako dashes to find Mai and they quite literally kiss and make up. I must applaud whoever came up with the pun “friends with Rena-fits” at this point, as that’s how their relationship is going to proceed into volume 2. Not quite friends, not quite lovers. I do wonder if the reason Mai likes Renako so much is that she treats her relatively normally and actually says no to her, when she’s spent her entire life getting what she wants as soon as she wants it.

A potentially much more interesting development is Renako and Ajisai’s relationship. Ajisai is another member of the friend group, described as “the class archangel” but there seems to be more to her than just that. She has siblings who she has to care for and it turns out she’s also into video games, so while Mai is away working in France, Renako invites Ajisai over to play games with her. Renako has a little bit of a crush on Ajisai and does tell her that, so I’m interested to see where that goes, although I’d be very surprised if she ends up with anyone other than Mai.

Overall, this book is more complicated that it first seems. What seems to be a very shallow, over the top, harem-ish premise actually has some interesting characters in there. Renako’s reaction to being assaulted is also surprisingly realistic, she blames herself for not being firm enough with her boundaries and feels bad for slapping Mai. Girl, you are not the problem here. I was heartened to see that the most popular comment on episode 3 of the anime on YouTube at the time of writing was “The word of the day is consent”. Maybe there’s hope for the internet after all.

Ratings:

Art – 7 I do enjoy Eku Takeshima’s art
Story – 6 This would have been a lot higher if there was no sexual assault.
Characters – 7 So far the side characters are more interesting than the main couple.
Service – 6 A few illustrations but nothing too indecent.
Yuri – 7 It gets better as it goes on.

Overall – 7 I just hope there’s no more sexual assault in the next volumes.





SHWD: The Complete Yuri Collection

July 21st, 2025

by Matt Marcus, Staff WriterTwo women line on the ground smiling at each other. They are both wearing SWAT-like outfits that are covered in black gore. One woman has red hair, a fit build, and a mechanical arm. The other has short black hair and a broad build

CWs: death, gore, child murder, attempted suicide

If these reviews had bylines, this one’s would be “the perils of world building”.

In SHWD: The Complete Yuri Collection, major cities are plagued by the Dynamis, a bio weapon made during the previous world war. Those exposed become immediately violent and attack all of those near them. Airi Koga, a bulky, muscular 22-year-old woman is the newest recruit at the Special Hazardous Waste Department, a private company that specializes in the neutralization of Dynamis.

Koga gets paired up with the Tokyo division’s ace Shino Sawada, a steely woman who seems purpose-built to fight the Dynamis. Koga is immediately smitten with her new boss, and spends the duration of the story wagging her tail at any scrap of approval from Sawada.

In general, I like the dynamic between the leads but I didn’t find it strong enough to bear the weight of the whole series. The problem ends up being that neither character changes very much over the 16 chapters. Koga pushes through every red flag and warning given to her about Sawada, but she is too ensorcelled to acknowledge them. The emotional climax of their story is simply Koga asserting that her puppy-love for Sawada is real in defiance of a big reveal that should otherwise cast extreme doubt on Sawada’s character. It also doesn’t help that this climax lands in the middle of a messy exposition dump that feels like set up for a longer series that we will never see (more on that later). Nevertheless, if you love Yuri where the leads show their affection through their fists, you’ll likely be plenty pleased with their arc.

There is also a secondary pairing from the Fukuoka branch: Leone “Leo” Cass and Nonaka. The former is a hunky, affectionate operative from the US; the latter a short-tempered ex-yakuza. I felt this pairing had the strongest thematic resonance: Leo lost her 8-year-old daughter and has become viscerally nauseous at the sight of children, while Nonaka lost family members and school friends to an attack that left her body unable to mature, forever stuck in the form of a child.

Leo is by far my favorite character in the series: she adds both levity and pathos, both with her playful-but-caring nature and her vulnerability. Despite appearing in control at all times, she has an emotional weak point that, when exposed, sends her immediately into deep despair. It really highlights how the Dynamis’ mental pollution leaves even the strongest operatives balancing their sanity on a knife’s edge. Nonaka, unfortunately, is as half-baked in her characterization as she is in her physical appearance. Despite her, dare I say, shitty demeanor towards Leo, there is “dere” under that “tsun”, but we are never told whence that affection came which leaves her feeling a bit hollow. That said, the way that Nonaka offers herself as Leo’s safe space to recover from mental pollution feels surprisingly sweet. However, it comes with the obvious caveat that while Nonaka is mentally mature, the optics of her and Leo together has some notable ick factor.

One of the draws of a sci-fi setting is the ability to explore themes with extreme precision. SHWD has a clear setup to explore how people process and react to grief. Every named operative was motivated to join the company because of someone they lost to the effects of the Dynamis—and we are shown enough of those gruesome moments to give bite to the characters’ feelings. The problem is that the story doesn’t follow through with this angle, and instead shoehorns in a conspiracy plot in the final stretch that ends up undermining those motivations. As it turns out, SHWD is secretly the causers of the Dynamis outbreak (due to an unnamed disgruntled evil scientist, natch). Leo drops one line about staying with SHWD simply to minimize harm, but it. It’s the equivalent of someone joining an addiction center run by Perdue Pharma after a loved one died of an opioid overdose.

Sawada stands ominously in front of closed blinds in her office, telling Koga in the foreground "This is the world's plot."

When she ’bout to tell you the world’s plot.

What also doesn’t help the final narrative twist is the way it is written. The pages where Sawada explains the Dynamis’ true history is, to be frank, very incoherent. The grammar and sentence structure doesn’t flow at all, or at best does if you squint really hard. One section reads:

“As world wars became more frequent, the weapons needed to end them became increasingly more radical.

In other words, soldiers lost their fighting spirit.

A weapon that affects the spirit of enemy soldiers is difficult to reproduce.”

I think the meaning here is supposed to be something along the lines of: “Constant world wars with escalating weaponry began to seriously erode the morale of the military rank-and-file. With their existences on the line, many governments developed methods to combat the emotional tolls of war, but their effects were short-lived.” What’s on the page feels like a very rough-cut translation that took me multiple reads to parse.

I don’t want to make any firm claims, but given that Seven Seas decided to forgo separate volume releases after the first one and instead pivoted to an omnibus format coupled with the fact that this wasn’t a problem anywhere prior to the Volume 3 sections makes me wonder if shortcuts were used for the later chapters. It could also be plausible that it’s just as confusing in the original Japanese. Either way, you can tell that sono.N was wrestling with fitting in “the world’s plot” in the limited space of the back of this series. It’s as if the world-building was too good for the space that was given, leaving me wanting the themes and character motivations to be more consistent and clear than they are.

I would say that I do like sono.N’s art. The Dynamis are formless but very creepy, the character designs are fun (props again to body diversity), and the action is well-conveyed. Occasionally, though, characters do look off model in a way that messes with their scale relative to each other: case in point, Koga looks a lot less beefy on the cover compared to inside the book. It’s a minor gripe, though.

If you are looking for a short Yuri sci-fi story with badass women in it, and you can stomach some bad things happening (mostly to children), this meaty omnibus is an easy book to recommend. I just know that a lot of meat was left on the bone. 

Art – 8 Plenty creepy when needed
Story – 6 A lot of potential that was left unfulfilled and a bit grim at times
Characters – 7 Koga and Leo are plenty loveable, the rest…eh
Service – 4 Mostly if you like muscular women (plus one bath scene)
Yuri – 8 / LGBTQ – 8 The imprint is called “Girls’ Love” for a reason

Overall – 7 A snack that could have been a four course meal

Matt Marcus is a cohost of various projects on the Pitch Drop Podcast Network, as well as the writer for the blog Oh My God, They Were Bandmates analyzing How Do We Relationship in greater depth.





Turkey! Time to Strike

July 13th, 2025

On a bright blue sky, piles high with fluffy white clouds, five girls in Japanese school uniforms fly.So, Okazu Staff all read the initial comments about this series and decided right away that this one was going to have to be a group review. ^_^

On the face of it, Turkey! Time to Strike,which is streaming on Crunchyroll, seems like a relatively typical school cute girls doing cute things sports club anime, with girls bowling as the sport of choice. Mai-chan is a brilliant bowler, who always seems to choke. Her friends are part of the bowling club because she asked them to be. Rina, their star bowler, has had it with the low energy of the group and threatens to quit.

A paranormal plot complication will render everything in the above paragraph moot.

Director for this series is Kudo Susumu, fresh off the mess that was Momentary Lily. Scriptwriter Hiruta Naomi seems to be primarily a writer for television dramas with a penchant for paranormal narratives, as we see.

So, what did the Okazu Staff think about Turkey! Time To Strike?

 

Christian

I don’t think I’ve seen the ‘cute girls doing cute things’ genre take on bowling before, and I definitely haven’t seen a bowling anime launch into the twist that we get at the end of the first episode. In bowling parlance, a turkey is three strikes in a row, which is what Mai is capable of, but she always chokes afterwards. (If she’s choking because the turkey’s too dry, I suggest she drink some Ramune with it, which the cast were doing their absolute best to advertise mid-show). A golden turkey (nine strikes) later evolves into a dinosaur (perfect game), which I hope is where we’re headed, in case we get a new twist every episode or so; I could definitely see Sayuri getting eaten by a Brazilian Irritator later on to try and get the audience invested, as she doesn’t seem like she’ll get much character development at first glance.

Rina is the only one on the team who takes bowling very seriously, and is one of those characters who believes that someone’s bowling performance is an expression of their true feelings. I feel bad for her and her and her aspirations, as she is the literal embodiment of how “it’s hard to soar with the eagles when you’re surrounded by turkeys.”

Overall, this is a fine first episode; yes, it’s bad in the way that a lot of anime is bad, but not in a way that should stop anyone from continuing to watch.

 

Eleanor

Much like director Susumu Kodo’s previous effort and subject of our last Okazu Staff group review, the absolute trainwreck which was Momentary Lily, Turkey! seems to be a combination of two entirely different ideas mashed together because the studio only had enough budget to make one. At least it’s not GoHands this time. My favourite character by far was Nanase (the purple haired one), who during one of Mai’s main character monologues says something along the lines of “I can’t tell if that’s meant to be profound or not” followed a few minutes later by “…definitely not profound.” One could be forgiven for thinking this was in fact just a 24 minute advert for Ramune soda, but since it’s showing signs of possibly being self aware thanks to Nanase, (who coincidentally is the only character apart from Rina who isn’t a childhood friend of Mai)  I’ll give it a couple more episodes and see what happens. In the meantime if you want to watch an actually good girls’ sports anime with an avian reference in the title, go watch Birdie Wing.

 

Erica

Merriam-Webster dictionary has, in recent years, become a force for good, on Twitter, especially. Using it’s platform to explain and educate, the folks there have kept their finger on the zeitgeist, with a clear eye to providing context. Today I will take a literal page from them and start with a definition of the word Turkey:

turkey (noun)
Pronunciation: tur·​key ˈtər-kē
Plural: turkeys

1 a large North American gallinaceous bird (Meleagris gallopavo) that is domesticated in most parts of the world
2 failure, flop especially : a theatrical production that has failed
3: three successive strikes in bowling
4: a stupid, foolish, or inept person

There is a fifth definition: to speak truthfully, so let us talk turkey about Turkey! Time to Strike.

This anime has a heavy-handed and portentous beginning, that keeps us on edge throughout the generic set-up that both my wife and I named a couple of other anime that have similar set-ups in plot or subplot. So when the star threatens to quit, I was, likewise, one foot out the door, with intent to check back in when the story was almost over and we were at the big competition, with Mai and Rina competing against each other for different teams. I did not expect the different teams to be the Tokugawa clan versus the Toyotomi.

Turkey! is still both silly and somewhat boring with animation that occasionally rises from phoned in to entirely over the top. At least it’s not by Go Hands. (Despite that, their shadow lays heavily over this anime.)

Anyway, four of the above five definitions apply to Turkey! Time to Strike. And I don’t put it past this anime to squeeze in that last one somewhere.

 

Frank

Did you know that three high-tech executives once tried to take professional bowling, pigeonholed as a sport for nerdy guys, and turn it into mass-market entertainment? How’d that work out? Well, despite their best efforts to jazz it up, it looks like it’s still a sport for nerdy guys (albeit nerdy guys with tattoos). That shouldn’t stop anime creators though, as they can deploy the time-honored strategy of having nerdy activities be practiced by anime girls. However, the creators of Turkey! seem to lack faith in the power of the vanilla CGDCT playbook: the end of the first episode sees them resort to a second time-honored strategy to juice up nerdy pursuits, namely having their practitioners be isakai-ed somewhere else where they can teach the natives a thing or two.

Boring sports can be rendered palatable to the average anime viewer. Look no further than Birdie Wing, which did it by taking JoJo-esque characters and over-the-top plots and mixing in a heaping helping of yuri subtext. Whether Turkey! can duplicate that success remains to be seen. But it’s going to take more than having our girls instruct Oda Nobunaga in the finer points of converting the ten-pin spare.

 

Luce

Club members have friction all the time. Especially in sports clubs, there will be conflict between those who want to succeed at it, and those who just want to have fun. Honestly, neither is incorrect, but there has to be a way of managing that. In a club as small as five members, if you get one overly ambitious member, it can alienate everyone else. It did feel like we got thrown into episode 3, rather than 1, but it did a relatively decent, if clunky, job of getting the vibe of the club over. At least there’s no balloon boobs like Momentary Lily.

Oh, and I guess they get isekai’d via a lightning struck spherical object that psychically connects with Mai’s bowling ball? Here’s hoping they don’t just immediately die on the battlefield.

 

Matt

Turkey! lulls you into a false sense of normalcy. 80% of the episode is standard hobby anime fair, although it seems to begin in medias res as the Bowling Club teeters on disbandment with the serious first year, Rina, calling out the team’s inadequacies and quitting. The surprise doesn’t come until the end, where our heroines find themselves transported via magic bowling ball to the middle of a feudal battle.

To be honest, there isn’t anything terribly wrong with this first episode. OK, one of the characters making a pun swapping “bowling” with “boreholing” is a bit eye-rolly. The real test will be what happens next—will Mai finally embrace her desire to win by bowling over dozens of samurai? This may be the first piece of bowling media with a body count since There Will Be Blood.

If I were writing the script, I would have made Rina not just an underachieving prodigy, but a demigod/cosmic horror being that tears the fabric of reality if she bowls a hambone—that is, four consecutive strikes. The finale would pit her desire to win for her team against the threat that bowling a perfect 300 would end all existence, but she goes for it anyway Because She Believes In Her Friends. Could that still happen? Sure! Or maybe they’ll just all be clones again (spoilers for Momentary Lily).

 

Overall – It could be worse, you might as well watch it, because you have a Crunchyroll subscription and it wasn’t as bad as Momentary Lily, which gets 4 mentions here to 3 for Birdie Wing.