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I’ll be honest, this week was a lot more interesting for me than the last few weeks. Sure, we got some new anime releases, and as always people writing some awesome stuff, but a lot of interesting things have been announced this week, and I’m just generally excited about what’s to come.

New Releases

Here’s what’s new when it comes to shows.

Shonen-Jump Rom-Com “We Never Learn” Gets TV Anime

On Monday, the official website and Twitter account for the TV anime “We Never Learn” Announced new details about the project. Among these new details are the director of the show, who will be Yoshiaki Iwasaki(The Familiar of Zero, Love Hina). It was also revealed that the screenwriter will be Go Zappa, who screen wrote “Chronicles of the Going Home Club” and that Masakatsu Sasaki will be the character designer. Sasaki has previously done character designs for “Saki” and “A-Channel”

The show’s story will follow a well-educated boy hoping to successfully tutor two girls in order to get them scholarships. The only problem is that the two girls want to study outside of their talents. One is a science nerd who wants to study Liberal Arts, and the other is a reader who wants to be a scientist.

Fairytail Website Releases PV for Upcoming Series Finale

The official website for the Fairytail Anime released a Promotional Video for the final season of the fairytail anime. The video, shown above, gives small details about the new series, like character costumes and a glimpse of the actual story, among a cut of action scenes from the show.

Simultaneously, the site also released promotional art for the next season. The art depicts Natsu and Zeref, two characters who, in the last season, were revealed to be related.

The series is slated for a release this fall, with the first episode being released in October.

Bleach Live Action Movie Coming to Netflix

In a video that came out last week, Netflix announced their list of new arrivals for September. The most interesting reveal on that list? Bleach. According to the list, the live-action adaptation of bleach that was released in Japanese theatres earlier this year will be coming state-side. The movie will be released on Netflix on September 14th, according to the same video.

The live action movie covers the first major arc of the Bleach manga, known as the Substitute Shinigami Arc, because of its focus on the main character Ichigo Kurosaki.

New Service “InkyPen” Coming to Nintendo Switch

A new service called “InkyPen” recently announced that they would be available on the Nintendo Switch. The service is, surprisingly enough, a comic streaming service. As they write on their website, “InkyPen allows you to read thousands of comics from a wide selection of publishers and artists on Nintendo Switch. All content is available upon subscription, no premiums, no piecemeal content.”

This information is also interesting for another reason: the service seems to only be available on the Nintendo Switch. According to the Press Kit available on their website, The Switch is the only device on which the service is accessible.

The Price per month will be 7.99, and will give readers access to over 10,000 different comics and graphic novels, including many different manga series.

Article Shoutouts

Here are so awesome articles from around the web this week.

What’s up with Crunchyroll?

Scott from Mechanical Anime Reviews gives a bit more of a sober take on the recent debacle surrounding Crunchyroll, including their first-ever original series “High Guardian Spice.” Short, but definitely well written. Go ahead and give it a read.

Japanese Literature?

Over on BiblioNyan, there is a great article about 5 books for newbs when it comes to Japanese books. I’ve definitely been more interested in reading Japanese literature, and the books they describe definitely sound awesome. Check it out.

What do you guys think about this week’s anime-related news and featured articles? Let me know in the comments below. Also, if you want to support The Aniwriter through donations or are just feeling generous, consider buying me a coffee on Ko-Fi. Otherwise, thanks for reading and bye for now, Friendos!

I recently read Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot as an assignment for an English Class. It was a fun enough read, and the obvious joke of the situation revealed itself fairly quickly, but after i was done I really didn’t think much of it.
Jump to a few weeks ago when I was scrolling through Crunchyroll’s relatively small selection of manga, and I end up finding an absolute gem in the form of Arakawa Under the Bridge. I’ll admit that I have not read through most of it, only about 40 or so of it’s relatively small chapter’s, but what I have read has intrigued me in a way that most Manga I have read before simply did not.
Now, let’s not beat around the bush, Arakawa Under the Bridge and Waiting for Godot share many similarities, both in their genre and characters. The more obvious similarity between the two is their genre, which can be most easily classified as a Tragicomedy. The Tragedy is Godot comes from the book’s perspective on expectation, where the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait everyday near the same tree for a man named Godot. And while it is true that this expectation also ends up being the comedic payoff, from the perspective of those characters, It is very sad. Both of them sit their everyday, hoping that their aspirations of finally getting to meet Godot, it never happens, and they simply continue to sit their, disappointed. The Comedy also comes from the idea that a lot of different ideas can be projected on the man named Godot, most notably God.
Arakawa also shares a similar comedic setup in it’s reliance on expectation, but the expectations play out in a much more lighthearted way. Kou Ichinomiya is supposed to take over his father’s very successful Company, but one day after being bullied by a group of kids and having his pants hung from the top of a bridge and then trying to retrieve them, he falls in the river and almost drowns. When he wakes up, Kou realizes that he’s been saved by a girl who live under the bridge. As the story goes on, we see that Kou has quite a few expectations about both Nino, the girl who saved him, and the rest of the people living under the bridge. Some of his expectations are right, and some are wrong, but in both cases his expectations create great comedic payoff and a furthered sense of connection. The Tragedy in Arakawa’s case comes after the expectation. As soon as you realize how likable a character like Nino really is you start to wonder why it is she’s homeless under a bridge, or why she insists that she’s from Venus. It also comes from realizing that as much as Kou might want to, it seems unlikely that he’ll ever really fit in with society under the bridge.
It may not seem like Something you would read in English Literature class and a comedy Manga from 2004 have much in common, but they do. Both have two main characters that play off each other and provide fantastic comedy relief, and both have broader societal commentary about what it is we should be valuing in life, and about what it is we really seek to achieve.
I write all of this to say that if you have not read Hikaru Nakamura’s Arakawa Under the Bridge then you should, but also to provide some interesting points of comparison between a book you probably have read and a manga you might not have.

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