Hitorijime my Hero.- ´Cause Everyone Wants a Hero

As some of you might already know due to my anime review on Super Lovers, I quite enjoy Boys Love -BL- stories, be it yaoi or shounen-ai anime and manga.

But though I truly enjoy this genre, truth is that more often than not the anime adaptations that are made tend to disappoint me -beering some exceptions of course-, and that´s mainly because all of them tend to follow the same tropes. Forceful possessive seme, reluctant feminine uke, some nonconsensual sexual advances, etc.

So… for a time there, I distanced myself from the genre -at least in the anime form- until… Hitorijime my Hero came along.

So… what makes this anime different?

Shaman King: Let the Spirits Return

Back in the 2000´s, I didn´t have Internet in my house, I fact I´m not sure Internet was a thing like now. The point is that back then my only source of anime was TV, or in reality cable TV, and one of my favorite channel´s was Fox Kids.

Fox Kids, the channel that brought me and all Latin American kids animes series like Digimon, Monster Ranger, Shinzo, Beyblade, etc.

And among those series was Shaman King which premiered in 2003 and soon became one of my favorite ones. The series had pretty much all that I love in an anime series, it was fun and funny, entertaining with a lovable protagonist, battles, and spirits! so many spirits!

Those who know me, know that I love sports animes, but the truth is that as much as I love them, I love spiritual animes more.

Anyway.., back to Shaman King

Tanaka-kun wa itsumo kedaruge (Tanaka-kun is always Listless).- A Differente Kind of Anime

Is it too early to consider this one my favorite anime of the year? So much that I decided to make it my first in My Classics category? Maybe, but the fact is that there´s no anime I have enjoyed quite like this one. I mean yes there´s Shounen Maid, Super Lovers, Boku no Hero Academia –My Hero Academia– and many others, but this one, this one is special or at least it is to me.

At the beginning, believe it or not, I saw this anime because of work -I was working as an anime reviewer in a website, and this one was in the animes to watch list- and while it wasn´t even on my radar, this is the anime that I couldn´t miss at all.

Black Cat: ´cause Train Heartnet deserves another ride

Years ago my cable provider finally decided to include Animax in our package, that was in 2006 or 7 I believe.

Then streaming anime wasn´t something I could do easily, so… I had to wait until the local channels decided to try putting more anime on air or until Animax premiered some new animes -something difficult ´cause more often than not, they repeated episodes over and over again-.

Black Cat was one of the animes aired by AnimaxLA in those years along with Get Backers, The Prince of Tennis, The 12 Kingdoms, Hunter X Hunter, Bleach, Full Meta Alchemist and others.

Because of its animation and characters design, Black Cat was one of the animes I followed religiously, even if the story wasn´t that good and at times left me feeling like something was missing. I went trough great lengths to make sure I didn´t miss an episode, and finally I saw the great confrontation between Train and… Eve?

That´s right at the end of Black Cat Train´s big confrontation wasn´t against Creed Diskenth, but Eve the girl weapon that Sven -Train´s associate- took into his care almost at the same time as Train. So… Black Cat´s anime ended and I still felt like something was missing, so I decided to check the manga.

Imagine my surprise when the story presented in the manga turned out to be very different and extremely superior than the half-baked anime adaptation I watched on my TV.