Anime Shows To Catch During The Holiday Break!

I haven’t been a big anime fan since the time of Dragon Ball Z, Ghost Fighter (Yuyu Hakusho), Zenki and Fushigi Yuugi, but I’ve recently come across a few new shows that I ended up absolutely loving! They’re what I would call gateway anime – fun shows that are easy enough to follow if you want to get back into it. Anime these days cover a variety of themes, but my personal picks are about food, hyperactive hormones, a bored, bald, and an overpowered superhero.

Shokugeki No Soma (Food Wars)

Shokugeki No Soma: delightfully delectable!

Okay, this has been out for a while now, so even casual anime fans probably already watch this. Shokugeki No Soma is a show about cooking. Remember Cooking Master Boy? It’s similar in the sense that every episode features luscious dishes that you simultaneously want to eat and try to make. But here’s the kicker, when someone eats and concurrently enjoy a really good dish on the show, they do so in a very…titillating fashion. They’re no easier way to explain this, so I’ll just go right ahead and say it in the most respectable way I can think of: good food gives characters orgasms.

On one hand, you could say that the show visualizes the pleasure derived from the consumption of good food into its base form – that it’s something primal or it’s the ultimate pleasure. One the other hand, you could just say that the show takes “Food Porn” waaaay too literally. Either way, Shokugeki No Soma is a show that’s consistently funny, at times surprisingly tender, but ALWAYS delectably fun!

Prison School

A gripping prison tale wrapped in a hilariously racy package!

Underwear shots, implied nudity, exaggeratedly large boobs, BDSM-esque torture scenes, and it’s all set in a HIGHSCHOOL – I know, pretty offensive right?

Hachimitsu Academy, formerly a respected ALL GIRLS school, recently allowed boys to enter their institute. A total of only 5 boys were admitted. 5 boys and a thousand girls…obviously, adolescent antics ensue. When the boys are caught peeping into the girls’ bathroom (as awkward, horny, juvenile school boys do), they are detained in an underground school prison where they’re treated like real convicts. They’re chained up, forced into slave labor, and repeatedly physically harassed.

This show seriously caught me off guard. On the surface, it just seemed like Boy Bastos the anime, but I was surprised to discover that underneath it all was a truly gripping prison drama. By the end of the season, you’d actually be rooting for these perverts. (It’s very disconcerting.) This anime is Shawshank Redemption Lite. Despair, abuse, manipulation, loyalty, hope, freedom – all the elements and themes you’d expect from prison stories appears in some form in this outwardly shallow anime. Prison School is provoking and powerful but it’s presented in one humorous, racy package.

One Punch Man

Dat face. Dat stupid, stupid face. It's enough to crack you up!

Do you notice this skinny bald guy with small, beady eyes and a peculiarly stoic face dressed in a yellow jumpsuit with a red cape on your Facebook feed? That’s Saitama, this show’s main protagonist.

Saitama is a superhero who’s SO strong that he ends fights with only one punch (hence the title). You’d think he’d be thrilled he was so strong, but on the contrary, not having anyone even remotely close to his level has turned him jaded. It’s a show about a overpowered hero who spends most of his time, not battling evil, or destroying enemies, but watering his plants, watching TV, grocery shopping, or just lying at home in his pajamas.

It sounds stupid, I know, but One Punch Man, as difficult as it is to see at times, has a lot more to offer than the superhero hero action and cheap laughs. Beyond its façade is a clever commentary on the superhero genre. The show’s one off characters and overstated genre situations and dialogues underscore the silliness of some superheroes and superhero clichés. So far the show’s already poked fun on Masked Rider, Sailor Moon, the Bruce Lee archetype, etc.

But if that sort of stuff just goes over your head, One Punch Man is still, at the very least, one of the best action shows there is right now. Its highly detailed artwork, vibrant colors, and robust animation let you feel the oomph in every out-of-this-world blow. The glorious battles and the deadpan/oddball/purposely awkward humor could easily make Saitama as recognizable an action hero as Naturo, Luffy, Ichigo or even Goku!

Dragon Ball Super

Speaking of Goku…

The anime that all others try to live up to - DRAGON BALL!

WHY YES! THERE IS A NEW DRAGON BALL SERIES!!!!

Rejoice! The anime that started it all, the anime that got all of us into anime, the anime that to this day is STILL the benchmark for all other action anime, is back!

If you haven’t heard about Dragon Ball and its 3 television shows (Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball GT), several full-length movies, dozens of video games and countless toys and other merchandise, then you sir, had one sad childhood. And now the series creator, Akira Toriyama, is back with new original content!

Dragon Ball Super is set 4 years after Dragon Ball Z and the defeat of Majin Buu. Things are pretty peaceful – Goku is farming again, Vegeta is still resisting domestication, and the rest of the gang are doing their own, non-world threat-y thing…you know, until the next big world threat.

But so far, Dragon Ball Super’s only been a retelling of the story from the recent Dragon Ball films, Battle of the Gods and Resurrection F. On top of that, it’s shown some terribly inconsistent animation quality here and there. But let’s get real guys. Even if Dragon Ball was animated in stick figures, we’d STILL watch it!

And besides, I’ve read somewhere that after the events of the two movies, the story is going to explore alternate universes. Earth-2 Goku? YES PLEASE! There’s something I wouldn’t mind waiting for!

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The world of anime has evolved since I last got into it. There are hundreds of titles out there that vary in story, theme and style, all of them provoking and entertaining, which only proves how timeless a medium anime is. I hope you enjoy some of my favorite titles at the moment. As always, you can count on me to update you with new titles as they come along. For now, happy watching!

*First seen on The Philippine Online Chronicles!