Let’s Make a List: Explaining my Lack of Excitement Over Sequels to my Favorite Anime

Please Teacher is a show memorable to me for sublime use of natural scenery and subtle characterization overcoming a really dumb plot. It’s also one of my all-time 50 favorite anime. So this show ostensibly has a sequel or some other big franchise project (if I were a betting man, I’d put most of my funds on “anime movie version”) on the way for its tenth anniversary. This is notwithstanding Ano Natsu de Matteru, the spiritual successor it got last January.

Am I excited about this news? Well, slightly. See, I’ve had a lot of bad experiences with my favorite anime getting sequels, and I’d really have to know more than what fictional universe it’s taking place in before I get excited.

Note: Since my tastes are somewhat idiosyncratic, and I’ll be talking mostly about shows I’ve seen and loved, feel free to disagree.

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Final Review: Ten – Tenna Toori no Kaidanji (10/10)

Ten-Tenna Toori no Kaidanji (hereafter referred to as Ten) is a manga that ran in Monthly Kindai Mahjong for a 14-year period from 1989 to 2002, and the work that catapulted the award-winning mangaka Nobuyuki Fukumoto into the Japanese spotlight. Though it is less well-known in western circles than the author’s other works (Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji, Akagi), it is by no means an inferior product. Indeed, it is in many ways his best work, a sublime combination of the author’s trademark gritty, greasy yakuza storylines with dynamic storyboarding and a quasi-religious journey through the author’s philosophy on life.

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