Words of the Barely-Published

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Featured Essays astronomy

Bad News From Alpha Centauri A…

There’s a planet in the habitable zone… but not an Earthlike planet.

By James Davis Nicoll

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Published on September 19, 2025

Credit: NASA/Caltech/IPAC

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Credit: NASA/Caltech/IPAC

Astronomers report that there very well might be a planet orbiting in or just outside Alpha Centauri A’s habitable zone. Alas, ordering the stokers to start shovelling seetee into the photon-drive may be premature. Alpha Centauri Ab is an interesting world but it isn’t Earth 2.

But first, a refresher.

At 4.3 light years¹, Alpha Centauri is currently the closest star system to our own². Alpha Centauri is a triplet star system, whose most distant component, Alpha Centauri C, is small, dim, distant from its two companions³, and irrelevant to this essay. Alpha Centauri A (whose proposed world is the subject of this essay) is slightly more massive than the Sun and half again as bright. B is a little less massive than the Sun and half as bright. A and B have an eccentric orbit around each other⁴, but not so closely as to preclude planets in either star’s habitable zone⁵. At least not directly.

Because Alpha Centauri is nearby, because two of its components are Sun-like, and because SF authors have heard of the star system, SF authors have populated A and B with many habitable planets, some of which I’ve mentioned in an earlier essay⁶.

Alas, nothing known about the exoplanet Alpha Centauri Ab (A is the star, b is the planet) suggests that it’s habitable. To begin with the minor issues, Ab is actually a bit outside A’s habitable zone, thus its estimated temperature of 225 K or about -50^o C. Not necessarily a deal-killer. The estimate excludes, as far as I can tell, the impact of any greenhouse gases. As you know (Bob) without its atmosphere, Earth would be about 255 K or about -25^o C⁷.

The next issue is that Ab’s orbit is far more eccentric than that of Earth; it’s comparable to Pluto’s. This means the amount of light Ab receives from A varies considerably over the course of a single orbit. Ab spends a lot more time traversing the outer part of its orbit than it does the inner⁸. So, longer, colder winters than Earth and because the issue is distance and not axial tilt, all of Ab goes into the deep freeze at the same time. No migrating to the summertime hemisphere.

This paper observes that “The S1+C1 candidate is in a highly inclined (≈50∘ or ≈130∘ with respect to the α Cen AB binary orbital plane) and eccentric (∼0.4) orbit, not unlike other S-type planets in close binary systems (e.g., HD 196885 Ab and γ Cep Ab), and is expected to undergo large amplitude von Zeipel-Kozai-Lidov (vZKL) oscillations.”

This isn’t great, because it means that the eccentricity isn’t just extreme, but evolving.

All of which is minor compared to the final detail: Ab is somewhat more massive than Saturn, which means it’s probably composed of hydrogen and helium. Maybe it’s an extremely large ice giant (ice giants are worlds like Neptune or Uranus, which have a significant amount of water, in states of matter unlike any with which we’re familiar) but probably not. In any case, Ab would be as uninhabitable as our Solar System’s gas or ice giants.

Ab’s mass has another annoying consequence, which is that it’s clearing out adjacent orbits that might otherwise (assuming a multitude of counterfactuals) be taken by an Earth-massed planet.

Perhaps Ab has Mars-plus massed moons and maybe one or more of them is a potential abode for life?

The first thing that comes to mind is that no gas or ice giant in our system has moons quite that large in comparison to the primary. Still, if there’s one thing exoplanets have taught us, it is that our solar system is not the default model. Yet… even if such an Earth-like moon existed it would be subject to the very un-Earthlike conditions mentioned above.

Ah, well. There’s always Alpha Centauri B… except that if B is large enough for to induce von Zeipel-Kozai-Lidov oscillations in Ab, then surely the more massive A will do the same for any hypothetical Bb?

There are a lot more ways for a world to be uninhabitable than habitable, so it’s not that surprising⁹ that Alpha Centauri Ab seems to be a dud from that angle. It’s still an interesting system from an orbital dynamics perspective, but for habitable worlds, we will have to look elsewhere.[end-mark]

1. That is about the height of 10^16 giraffes, stacked one on top of each other, and ignoring that such a mass of giraffes would collapse into an extremely (if only very briefly) distressed sphere. Yes, obviously the giraffes are in space suits. I’m not a monster. ︎
2. Stars move. ︎
3. C is almost 9000 times as far from AB as the Earth is from the Sun. I too am boggled that the star has not been stripped away from AB over the five billion plus years the system has been around. By the way, case matters. If I say A or B, I mean the stars but a lower-case b is an exoplanet. AB would be both Alpha Centauri A and B, but Ab would be the proposed planet orbiting A and Bb an exoplanet orbiting B. ︎
4. The distance between A and B varies from about the distance between the Sun and Neptune and the Sun and Jupiter. ︎
5. Looking at you, Procyon. ︎
6. Or sometimes, in the case of authors who knew the name but nothing else about Alpha Centauri, the planet orbiting a singleton star called Alpha Centauri. ︎
7. Back when the Sun was young, it was much dimmer than it is now. A back of the envelope calculation says the Earth, other factors aside, would have had about the same temperature as Alpha Centauri Ab. Why everything wasn’t frozen solid is a bit of a mystery. Alpha Centauri A being more massive than the Sun, its luminosity would have evolved even more and faster than the Sun’s. Ab might have been even farther from the habitable zone than it is today… except we know the orbit would have been very different billions of years ago. ︎
8. Because A and B’s orbit around each other is eccentric, climate on Ab would be further complicated by B’s small but not negligible input as it varies over an eighty-year cycle. ︎
9. What is astonishing, at least to me, is the number of red dwarfs, such as Alpha Centauri C, that have exoplanets in their Goldilocks zone. Red dwarfs are very dim and their potentially habitable zones are tiny. Is there something that favours planetary formation in or near that region of stellar systems? ︎

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News What to Watch

What to Watch and Read This Weekend: A Football Horror Movie You Might Hate and a Brian Eno Movie You’ll Watch (At Least) Twice

Plus pictures of beautiful bookshelves!

By Molly Templeton

|

Published on September 18, 2025

Photo: Universal Pictures

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Photo: Universal Pictures

The first day of fall is Monday. I’m really sorry to bring this up—unless, of course, you’re one of the people for whom this is very welcome news. (How about both? Can I be both?) In Portland, we’re in that stretch of time where leaves might fall into your drinks when you’re sitting outside enjoying the high-70s perfect weather. It’s crossover season. Unintentionally, this week’s recommendations are a little crossover-y, too: sports and horror, books and architecture, satisfying and unsatisfying versions of a similar plot. And Brian Eno, who crosses over most things, come to think of it. Settle in with your beverage of choice, and don’t forget to call your reps.

Football Is Horrifying, Though: Him

Okay, so, the reviews for Justin Tipping’s football horror movie Him are far from glowing. “Style to burn and not much else,” says Vulture’s headline. But I still want to watch it. Honestly, this movie deserves my time just for the gory beauty of its first teaser. It’s 10,000 percent a sports ad (“If you want to transcend the game, you have to dig deep”)—one that goes absolutely haywire. And the effectiveness of that trailer choice made me think about bodies, and sports, and all the ways that a body, put through great physical stress, can go haywire in all kinds of “normal” ways. Bodies are weird, no? At least, if you think about them too much. Anyway. I grew up in the kind of small American town where there is so little to do that everyone goes to the high school football game, even if they—like me—have zero interest in football. I’ve seen the clichés. I want to see the actually-making-it-weird version. But it might not be great. Is it worth it? You can only do that math for yourself.

Just Look at the Pretty Books as a Palate Cleanser

I don’t even remember where this link came from, because it erased all the thoughts in my mind when I clicked it. (Bliss, for a half a second.) “57 brilliant bookshelf ideas for every type of space,” a post from the UK’s House & Garden, requires nothing of you. You can just scroll and admire bookcases. Bookshelves. Beautifully arranged books in tasteful houses. There is, I admit, a preponderance of beige and white walls, and not as much artful chaos as some may wish for. (There is some, though, like the shelves with art hanging on the front of them.) There is a green book nook that I would very much like to read in. There’s a gorgeous cat on a red sofa in a room with red shelves and colorful rugs. There’s so much. I am only halfway through and saving the rest for later.

Which Older Fantasy Books Meet Modern Expectations?

My favorite online discussion this week was definitely the conversation Eddie Clark started when he asked, “what 80s & 90s epic fantasy holds up best to modern eyes and why?”

I am constantly wishing I had more time to go back and read my old favorites—partly because I want to see what does hold up, and partly because I want to see how differently I might feel or think about those books now. The answers to Clark’s question vary, though there is a lot of agreement on Robin Hobb’s Realm of the Elderlings series (serieses?) and quite a few mentions of Kate Elliott, Melanie Rawn (specifically her Exiles series), and Janny Wurts. We can nitpick about whether Tamora Pierce’s books are epic fantasy or not—and there are several similar arguments in the thread!—but I just read Alanna: The First Adventure this week and it was such a joy that I got mad at myself for not having the next three books to hand. There are a few things to quibble with, but Alanna’s fear and frustration and determination are just perfectly depicted.

What holds up for you? What do you want to reread? Is fall the perfect time to do just that?

I’m Going to Go Have a Good Cry with The Magicians

I was not alone in finding the just-ended season of Strange New Worlds underwhelming. The humor wasn’t as sharp as it needed to be; the characters didn’t get enough focus or time to develop; and the finale asked us to be deeply invested in a relationship that’s never quite clicked (and I’m still not over all the unfortunate bioessentialism). But a certain part of the season finale—if you’ve seen it, you know—reminded me of one of my favorite episodes of television of all time: The Magicians’ “A Life in the Day.” In the midst of a quest for some magic keys, Quentin and Eliot wind up living out a whole life while trying to solve a mosaic puzzle. That’s the meat of it. And just thinking about that episode makes me a little teary. It’s beautiful, and in the big picture of the show, it’s meaningful. It also comes at a point when we know these characters, their flaws and foibles and big cracked hearts. It makes sense; it builds things, and it undoes things. And if you would like a good cathartic cry, it will probably give you that. 

Wanna Watch a Movie You Can Never See the Same Way Twice?

Please forgive me, because I’m about to talk about a movie you probably can’t actually watch right now (though it is coming to streaming eventually!). But the thing is, you should know about this movie so that you can watch it when it is available to you—and then maybe watch it again, because the odds of it appearing the same way twice are infinitesimal. I’m talking about Eno, the documentary about Brian Eno, for which director Gary Hustwit “and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit’s original interviews with Eno, and Eno’s rich archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, and unreleased music.” (You can read more about the creation of the film at The Verge.)

Listen: Maybe you think you don’t care about Brian Eno. Fair enough. But if you care about art, and creativity, and the creation of some of the last century’s most enduring music; if you care about how people move through the world and make art and keep being curious; if you could use a straight shot of hope—well, then you should watch this movie when you can. The critic Carl Wilson watched it (almost) five times in a row, and wrote, “It was replenishing because while it lasted, Brian Eno made it seem possible to be hopeful without being oblivious or gullible.”

If you would like to watch a music documentary now, though, may I also suggest the wonderfully chaotic Pavements, which also takes a variety of approaches to its material (though not quite as many as Eno). I cannot emphasize strongly enough the excellence of 20 Feet from Stardom, a documentary that gives backup singers like Darlene Love and Merry Clayton their due (seriously, you will never listen to “Gimme Shelter” the same way again).

On Sunday, Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery—The Untold Story hits Hulu, and I can’t wait. (This oral history of the Fair can tide you over until the premiere.) One of the producers on Lilith Fair is critic Jessica Hopper, who also directed the excellent series Women Who Rock. You should watch that, too. If you like good things.[end-mark]

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Books Teen Horror Time Machine

Highway to History: R.L. Stine’s The Cataluna Chronicles

In which R.L. Stine asks Back to the Future to hold his teen-appropriate non-alcoholic beverage.

By Alissa Burger

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Published on September 18, 2025

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The majority of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books function as interconnected but standalone narratives: there’s a shared setting and some familiar characters that appear time and again, but generally speaking, you don’t need to have read the previous books in the series in order to jump right in. There are, however, a handful of exceptions, where Stine features a trilogy or series within the larger Fear Street series, like 99 Fear Street trilogy (1994), the Silent Night trilogy (1991-96), and the Cheerleaders series (1992-98). Another of Stine’s lesser known trilogies within the Fear Street series is the Cataluna Chronicles, which includes The Evil Moon, The Dark Secret, and The Deadly Fire (all 1995) and centers around an evil sports car that threatens the life of anyone who dares to drive it. Any book that features a sentient, malevolent car will inevitably invite comparisons with Stephen King’s Christine (1983) and there are some of these in Stine’s books, but the Cataluna Chronicles also has some unique surprises of its own. 

The trio of Cataluna Chronicles books are pretty fatalistic and the body count is high. The prologue of the first book, The Evil Moon, follows the misadventures of two young men who steal the Cataluna for a joyride from a used car lot, find themselves powerless in a car that’s charging down the highway at eighty miles an hour, and bail out on the unforgiving pavement, only to be run over by a tractor trailer. From these opening pages, Stine makes it clear that the Cataluna is not messing around and this isn’t going to be one of those Fear Street books where everything turns out mostly okay in the end, explained away by a prank gone awry, mistaken identity, or someone faking their own death. These two boys steal the car and they die. The end. Or at least, the end of the beginning. 

After this hard-hitting prologue, The Evil Moon makes an unexpected turn, taking readers not back to the used car lot or familiar Fear Street, but to West Hampshire Colony in 1698. Early colonial America doesn’t really seem like the natural fit for a technohorror(ish) series about an evil car, but it’s where we go and where we first meet fifteen year old Catherine Hatchett, an outcast young woman who is lurking outside the school windows eavesdropping on the lessons within, because as a girl, she has been forbidden attendance. She is curious and smart, able to conjugate the Latin verb tenses that stymie the boys in the classroom, though her reward for her intelligence is to be chased through the woods, assaulted, and ridiculed. Her nickname in the community is “Bad Luck Catherine” and the colonists blame her for everything from their failing crops to their ailing livestock, and even her own mother scolds Catherine, telling her “You have caused enough trouble for one day. You have caused enough trouble for a lifetime!” (17). Catherine was presumably born under a “bad moon,” which marked her body with a crescent moon-shaped birthmark on her temple. Her only friend is Gwendolyn, an old woman and suspected witch who lives in the woods outside of the settlement. 

When the West Hampshire Colony votes to expel Catherine from the community and her parents reveal that they’re not actually her parents, with Catherine instead being a foundling child that was left on their doorstep after the death of their own infant, Catherine realizes that there’s more to her story than she has ever known: Gwendolyn is her biological mother, a witch, and a shapeshifter, a gift that has been genetically passed down to Catherine and which she uses to escape the colonists when they attempt to hang her. Catherine turns into a cat to claw out the eyes of Joseph Parker, a boy who seduced and betrayed her, then turns into a rat and forces her furry body down the throat of colony elder Edmund Parker, suffocating him. Gwendolyn is murdered by the angry colonists, leaving Catherine alone with her newfound power, no one to guide her in its use, and no way to escape … until she finds her mother’s final gift, a shiny white sports car that is completely anachronistic and looks very out of place in the dark woods behind Gwendolyn’s cottage. Catherine initially believes it to be a monster: “the creature’s eyes began to glow with a bright yellow light … The monster stretched out as long as her parents’ woodshed. But stood not half as tall. It had four black wheels and clear windowpanes all around. Through those panes she found another wheel of sorts. And two rows of seats, red as blood” (124). It turns out Gwendolyn magically brought this car from the future and it becomes Catherine’s only way to escape the danger in which she finds herself. But she doesn’t make the trip alone: William Parker, brother of Joseph and son of Edmund, is not about to let Catherine get away after murdering his family, and he goes along for this bizarre road trip through time and space. 

The Evil Moon, The Dark Secret, and The Deadly Fire trace the Cataluna’s destructive path through Shadyside in 1995, along with Catherine and William’s deadly game of cat and mouse across the centuries. In The Evil Moon, Bryan Folger becomes obsessed with the car when he sees it in a used car lot and is willing to do anything to possess it: he has a part-time job with a florist and steals money from a stranger’s home when he’s there delivering flowers; he breaks into another house to steal more money and when he’s arrested and ends up assigned to community service at the local hospital’s gift shop, he steals money from the register there too. When he sees the Cataluna in his friend Alan’s driveway (because Alan knew how much the car meant to Bryan and bought it for him, which seems excessive, but whatever), Bryan assaults Alan and steals the car. His initial moments of euphoria are overwhelming, but just like the two boys in the prologue, Bryan soon loses control of the Cataluna, which starts driving faster and trying to run down pedestrians and small children, while Bryan screams and attempts to turn the car back toward Alan’s house, figuring if he can get it back where it’s “meant” to be, the nightmare will end. And it kind of does: the car returns to Alan’s house but by the time it gets there, Bryan is dead: “Burst blood vessels had turned his face reddish-blue. A terrifying silent scream twisted his features. His blank eyes bulged. His dead hands still gripped the wheel” (137). 

In The Dark Secret, Lauren and Regina Patterson are stepsisters and their parents buy the Cataluna as the girls’ shared car. Regina quickly becomes obsessed with the car, insisting on driving every time the girls go out together, and she nearly runs down a couple of children: one on rollerblades and another on a tricycle. Both kids escape unscathed, though the tricycle is smashed to smithereens as “Regina threw back her head and laughed” (43). The car drives a wedge between Lauren and Regina, and when there’s a series of hit and runs in Shadyside, Lauren is sure it’s Regina. She tries to cover for her stepsister but every time Lauren tries to broach the subject with Regina, she is shut down. When Lauren finally confronts Regina, the truth comes out: Lauren is the hit and run driver, not Regina. While she has repressed the memories of the terrible things that have happened in the car, they all come rushing back to her: “A man’s face pressed against her windshield, face contorted in pain. Blood running from his mouth, smearing across the glass … Metal slamming against metal. A scream of terror. Squealing tires. A body landing on the hood with a heavy thunk “ (129, emphasis original). The car urges Lauren to run down Regina but she resists, plunging the car into a nearby lake and nearly dying in her attempt to get rid of the Cataluna, though Regina swims to her rescue. Even waterlogged, the car’s not finished, though: as the rescue personnel pull the car from the lake, one of the firefighters on scene is captivated, reflecting that “I’d like to get a sports car like that … Man, that car is wicked!” (135, emphasis original). He has no idea. But while Lauren and Regina survive the Cataluna’s curse, plenty of innocent people died along the way, and when Lauren tries to explain that it was the car and not her that is responsible, Regina only says “We’ll talk about it later” (134), which doesn’t offer much in terms of what the criminal consequences of Lauren’s series of vehicular homicides might be. 

In the third book of the trilogy, The Deadly Fire, people are at least wise to the Cataluna’s death toll, though a family of race car drivers leverages this reputation into a racetrack gimmick, where fans turn out in droves to see the “Doom Car” in competition. The first race is off to a good start until the Cataluna does what it always does, wresting control from driver Stan McCloy and plowing into the stands, killing both Stan and a number of spectators. While most of the McCloys are understandably ready to be shut of the Cataluna, Stan’s brother Buddy becomes increasingly obsessed with it, sneaking it out of his father’s garage to race it on his own along the dark streets of Shadyside. His fickle on again-off again girlfriend Sara is a race track groupie and only seems interested in Buddy if he’s got the hottest car, his new neighbor Marisol seems intrigued by the Cataluna, and there’s a new guy in town named Will who also fancies himself a race car driver (and quickly becomes a rival for Sara’s affections).

William Parker spends much of the trilogy pursuing Catherine Hatchett from place to place and across centuries, often faced with the riddle of trying to figure out who she has shape-shifted into this time. Immediately after she flees the West Hampshire Colony, he follows her to a nearby farmstead, where he works to determine which of his new friends’ bodies his enemy might be hiding within, attacking the family cat and killing an innocent young woman before he gets it right. This question of Catherine’s shapeshifted form is at the heart of The Deadly Fire as well, where everyone seems to have designs on the Cataluna and no one’s intentions or motivations are particularly clear. When William and Catherine made the temporal leap from 1698 to 1995, Catherine’s spirit was imprisoned in the car while William’s found a home in a new human body. This is a new development: William maintained his own body in the immediate aftermath of Catherine’s violence in the West Hampshire Colony, and before he shows up in a human body as a character in The Deadly Fire, he seems to have been a kind unseen presence watching from the shadows, monitoring the Cataluna’s death toll and serving as an occasional narrator, there, but largely invisible. The prevailing assumption throughout The Deadly Fire is that William is now (uncreatively and lazily) Will, but William’s spirit actually occupies Marisol’s body—and after yet another fatal encounter, where a drag race with the Cataluna ends in Will’s death, Marisol takes the wheel, ready to stop Catherine once and for all.

William’s embodiment in Marisol’s female body is actually handled in a straightforward and nonsensationalized way, and William’s residence in a female form is not sexualized or presented as abject or grotesque. William comfortably occupies this physical form while remaining true to his own identity, telling Catherine matter-of-factly that “I don’t blame you for not recognizing me … But it is me inside this girl’s body. It is me—your old friend William Parker” (117). Once he has revealed his identity, the story seamlessly transitions to referring to him as William and using masculine pronouns, grounded in his identity rather than the physical body he occupies. 

William has pursued Catherine across centuries and has dedicated himself tirelessly to learning the secrets of the Cataluna, and as a result, he is able to do what no one else ever has: wrest control of the car from Catherine’s spirit and return it to where he first encountered it, in West Hampshire Colony in 1698. There’s a time travel paradox at work as William tells Catherine “I’m destroying this car nearly three hundred years before your mother was born, Catherine! … Do you know what that means? That means your mother will never exist in this time and place. And so, you will never exist. You will never be born!” (134, emphasis original). While this time travel conundrum offers a retribution of sorts, the Cataluna’s destruction is also grounded in supernatural vengeance, as the spirits of all the people the car has killed emerge to attack and destroy Catherine. And just like that, all of the Cataluna’s horrors are erased and undone, though the danger itself may be reborn as William wakes up disoriented in the woods and returns home to find that his mother has given birth to a baby girl … with a small crescent moon birthmark on her temple.  Stine’s Cataluna Chronicles are a curious combination of historical fiction and technohorror, connecting a sentient, malevolent car with historical ostracism that parallels that of the witchcraft hysteria of Salem in 1692. While Catherine is initially presented as sympathetic and even pitiable, she quickly becomes monstrous, consumed with a hate that lasts for hundreds of years. William is presented with similar complexity, driven by vengeance to do some terrible things. In the end, when William succeeds in bringing Catherine back to her own time and destroying the car, the resolution is tenuous and potentially transitory. It could be that with Catherine’s erasure and the car’s destruction, the horrors of both the present and the future have been undone, or with the birth of the new Parker baby with the familiar crescent moon birthmark, the horrors could just be beginning (again).[end-mark]

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Column Anime Spotlight

Anime Grab Bag: There’s No Crying in Horse-Girl Racing!

Anime meets the wide, wide world of sports, from baseball to badminton…

By Leah Thomas

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Published on September 18, 2025

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Welcome or welcome back, folks! In the Anime Grab Bag series, we dive into the depths of specific anime subgenres and hunt, perhaps futilely, for hidden gems. Each month, long-time otaku and old friends Leah and Bridget spin a custom roulette wheel composed of qualifying anime and watch three random pilot episodes. You can find this volume’s wheel here!

While the wheel may contain almost every possible title in the subgenre, your hosts must abide by the following rules:

1. Each show must be an anime that at least one host has never seen.
2. Each show must be available to stream somewhere so readers can join in if they want to.
3. We are forbidden from doing any research on the show before viewing it, although a simple Google search and some Wikipedia-ing during and after are fair game.

We react to our selections and share our thoughts on where they fit into the anime landscape, commenting on everything from plot to character design, making comparisons to other series, and finally asking the most important question: Would we watch more of this?

Feel free to play along by watching these shows (if you dare), spinning the wheel to meet your fate, or sharing your thoughts below. 

This week, we delve into a subgenre we have an unexpected soft spot for: niche sports. While there are plenty of anime about major sports like baseball, soccer, and volleyball, we thought we’d lean into some of the more unlikely sports, or those with a peculiar twist. Also? We invited Bridget’s friend Daniel to join us.

L: Bridget, do you consider yourself an athlete?

B: (extensive giggling)…No.

L: What’s the most athletic thing you do? 

B: On a day-to-day, I take a short ten-minute walk from my car to my workplace. And then at work, sometimes I do shipping.

L: And I say I hike, but mostly I just find a forest and wander through it until I find a shrine or temple. I am not a Patagonia girl. I’m a Michigander, and I love swimming, but like a frog, mostly. Team sports? Absolutely not.

B: Now and then, I go watch a baseball game. I do occasionally like a lady wrestler, e.g. Rhea Ripley.

L: So let the record state: we play a lot more tabletop than sports.

B: Hey, I told Daniel it was sports week. But I didn’t tell him it was niche sports week.

L: (laughs)I welcome this deception.

B: Also, did you know there’s a pole-dancing anime called Pole Princess!!?

L: Now that is an athletic sport, and it takes way more coordination than I have ever had.

B: And you gotta have that core strength. Hey, does Eyeshield 21 count as a niche sport because it’s the only anime about American football?

L: I mean, every sport’s niche to you and me. 

(ENTER Daniel, aforementioned gamer friend of Bridget’s, whose cowardice and/or wisdom made him decline an invitation to our isekai wheel)

D: Hey guys.

B: Daniel. What would you say is your daily level of sports interaction?

D: I sometimes play basketball with a six-year-old.

B: See, we’re bringing in an expert on this one.

D: I got some weights right here. I could be doing reps while we watch sports anime. Does Rocket League count as a sport?

L: What about Katamari?

B: I would dominate. I would be a gold medalist.

D: Come on, guys, esports are not real sports. Is there an esports anime?

L: I think you just spoke it into existence.

First Spin: Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl (Madhouse, 1989)

B: I want it to stop on Umamusume so bad. But it stopped on one with a really long name that I have never heard of. It’s about a girl doing judo at the Olympic Games in Atlanta?

L: Wait, that art style. I’m sorry, but isn’t that… is this by Urasawa? No way. The guy who wrote Monster and Pluto also wrote this? How don’t we know this already? Psychological horror with child murderers, but first?

B: A girl doing judo in Atlanta.

L: He’s got the range, darling. 

Alas, Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl! was disqualified for breaking the third rule of Anime Grab Bag.

Second Spin: Salaryman’s Club (Liden Films, 2022)

B: Ryman’s Club. Aka Salaryman’s Club.

L: Being a salaryman is a lot of work, but is it a sport? 

B: This actually looks quite fun. Look at them drinking soju after their badminton tournament. 

D: What’s a soju?

B: It’s an alcoholic drink made from rice where when you drink a quarter of it you think, “This is nice juice,” but if you drink more of it you think, “I am going to die.”

L: The character designer is the person who illustrated Durarara!!. Does this mean they are going to be edgy city boys who hold knives? The poster looks completely unrelated to badminton until you notice the giant birdie in the foreground.

D: Wait, isn’t that called a shuttlecock? Am I making that up?

L: In my neck of the woods we called it a birdie. It’s a regional thing!

Viewing Summary

Most sports anime follow predictable, if comforting, story beats. The hero is usually one of two types: the overly enthusiastic underdog who, like most shonen leads, proves the naysayers wrong through pure force of will and practice, practice, practice! The second type is the foil to this hero, the taciturn, gloomy-gus wunderkind with trauma to work through. Some of the best sports anime out there use this dynamic to build character arcs with momentum—a genuine push and pull between opposing personalities. Be they friends, rivals, lovers, or some combination, solid sports anime know that you need the sun to illuminate the moon, and the moon to appreciate the sun.

In Haikyuu!, Hinata is a ray of light, and Kageyama is the looming mountain. When well done, dynamics like these are a large part of what makes sports anime appealing even to those of us who have zero interest in actual sports. Watching people who are very different learning to work together and accomplish things scratches a very human itch. Salaryman’s Club appears to get that, but also throws in the unease of being a new adult entering the workforce.

B: I like that they aren’t kids. That’s always refreshing, and you don’t see that a lot in sports anime.

L: I wonder how much of it will be a send-up of workplace culture. Like, the episode titles are things like “Synergy,” “Assign,” “Feedback,” “Presentation,” and, um, “Breast”?

D: Is “Breast” really a central part of the workplace?

L: I’m sure it’ll be an insightful take on workplace harassment. 

A former badminton prodigy, our hero Mikoto is fired in one of the first scenes, and then his mom tells him he can’t move back home because she has given his room to her pet iguana. To be fair, it’s a really cute iguana wearing a ribbon. 

Now, Mikoto could have gone pro, but something he experienced in high school—something that deterred him from ever playing doubles again—has haunted him, and now he sometimes freezes on the court. The flashback is hazy, but…

D: Gasp! He killed a man during badminton?

L: Or ruined a friendship, at least.

In the present day, our tortured protagonist moves to Saitama, where he has been hired to play for Sunlight Beverage’s corporate team. During his commute on his first day, he comes across a handsome, sleepy drunk sprawled out on a children’s playground. The man awakes cheery-faced and helps Mikoto “fix” his tie. We already know this guy’ll be his boss or something like it in another minute, but we embrace it because, heck, the scene is pretty charming. Anyhow, Mikoto learns after arriving in the office that yes, the park weirdo, Tatsuru Miyazumi, is both coworker and teammate. We also learn that Mikoto really thought his whole job was badminton, but turns out he has to work in the office all day first. 

D: Is this a thing? Do companies actually hire people just so they can participate in after-work badminton tournaments?

L: Look, I don’t know. But in Japan, there are all kinds of wild reasons that people get hired, and a lot of the culture is about unspoken rules and asserting dominance indirectly. So, like, maybe there’s a corporate culture where companies that win “friendly” sports meetups gain the upper hand or respect on a bureaucratic level?

B: Did I tell you the workplace right next to my office is like a studio for Bravo? And those people don’t work; they’re always outside playing badminton and pickleball. But they also make Bravo reality TV shows?

L: “What, like it’s hard?”

Animation-wise, Ryman’s Club is sumptuous. The character designs are sharp and appealing. Everything from bottle labels to bullet train seats to the “Familiar Mart” signage is lovingly rendered. This pilot looks great, and the soundtrack is cool and a little jazzy, and clearly the director, Aimi Yamauchi, watched a lot of Haikyuu!! and took notes on how to pace tense, exciting sports matches involving nets.

Anyhow, after the workday, when these salarymen head to a local middle school to practice and a kid accuses them, not unfairly, of being weirdoes for doing so, we hear Mikoto declare that he will never play doubles. Of course, Tatsuru challenges him to a match. If Mikoto wins, no doubles, but if Tatsuru does? Well. And we all know what will happen, because we need to see these two play doubles and learn to respect each other. It is also important to note that sports anime are infamous for queerbaiting—or maybe it would be more accurate to say wooing Shounen-Ai enthusiasts. These two are striking those notes, too, with ease.

D: He’s the bad boy of badminton.

B: He’s going to have a character arc!

Also, another reason this anime was on the niche wheel, aside from being, erm, corporate badminton? Mikoto might be a little psychic, although it turns out that his power of “foresight” is less than literal, and instead a classic example of the sports anime trope of giving athletic talents powerful nicknames, like when Kuroko’s eyes flash blue when he enters his Zone. In Mikoto’s case, his teammates refer to him as an “esper type” and imply his ability to estimate what a player will do next borders on psychic. 

As a final treat, Daniel and Bridget are delighted to realize that Sunlight Beverage’s rowdy, Yankee-looking coach is voiced by Takaya Kuroda, who plays their beloved Kiryu in Like a Dragon.

Predictable but skillfully handled, the episode finishes strong by revealing the fact that our lead men will be—gasp!—roommates!

Conclusions

B: I enjoyed that.

L: That was a solid pilot. 

B: I hope it’s like Magilumiere, where it incorporates a level of office life into the story.

… And then an after-credits scene takes us by surprise when it implies that Mikoto and Tatsuru met years earlier, when Mikoto was a child on that same playground, and Tatsuru either a teen or college student, and suddenly there may be cause for unease on the BL-pandering front.

B: Oh damn! He’s been on this shit for so long…

L: Now it’s creepy! Thanks for that, show! 

B: Maybe it only seems sinister because, as aging BL fans, we are used to keeping our guard up. We’ll see. Because I really like it when anime features adults in an adult setting. For example, I really liked Nisekoi because it was about geeks falling in love in an office.

L: This may also be a show about how becoming an adult is partly about forgiving the disasters of your youth.

Would we watch more?

B: I would watch more of that just to listen to more of Kiryu.

D: Same.

L: If I were still a regular weekly anime viewer, I would put that in my rotation. The foundations here were decent.

Third Spin: Pretty Rhythm: Aurora Dream (Tatsunoko Production, 2011)

B (cackling madly): We got Pretty Rhythm: Aurora Dream.

L: Oh. You sound too excited about that.

D: What sport is this? What sport?

B: They are ice skating idols. But they can do their ice-skating idol stuff because of prism technology. It’s kind of like Jewelpet, except Pretty Rhythm usually has no animals, except this version (Aurora Dream) does. The other ones don’t have animals; they just have dead dads and school drama.

D: This is… a sports anime? I am looking at this poster and I see not one ice skate. I just see dancing and microphones. And sheet music!

L: No, they do have skates. Look at their boots. Welp. Bridget. Have you seen this?

B: …yes.

L: Daniel, have you seen this?

D: Um, yeah. Totally. 

L: Oh no! I have seen it too, so it’s totally disqualified, damn.

B: No, you have not! But it’s okay because it is literally not streaming anywhere, so it would be disqualified anyway. But while I have this opportunity, I just want to say Pretty Rhythm: Rainbow Live is the better series. 

L: At least we got to hear the joy in your voice.

B: Sometimes life is hard.

Fourth Spin: Tamayomi (Studio A-Cat, 2020)

B: Ooh, the next one is Tamayomi? It’s lesbian baseball!

L: But, lesbians never play baseball!

D: They’re bumping boobies in every single image.

B: What’s with the rim lighting on their thighs? Is that supposed to be muscle?

L: Well, yeah, they’re really strong. Also, is the only thing that makes this niche that they’re girls, Bridget?

B: Look, I wanted sapphic baseball on the wheel, okay.

D: I googled “Tamayomi,” and one of the first things that came up was “Tamayomi abs?” So I clicked on it and yes, they have abs.

L: Maybe my gut is wrong. Maybe this is going to be an amazing representation…

Viewing Summary

First things first: the drop in production value between Ryman’s Club and this show is comparable to base-jumping into the Grand Canyon. Within seconds, Daniel says, “Wow, definitely a step back in the animation department,” and truly, folks, it’s rough. While Tamayomi is two years older than Salaryman’s Club, no anime from 2020 should look this bad. And it’s not just about a wobbly, inconsistent animation: The anatomy is tragic. Sometimes their butts are incredibly square, and the size of their cleavage varies depending on the scene, and so does the placement of their eyes on their faces, and no one in the art department knew how to draw someone from a back view. 

L: Where is the budget? Not in their butts.

D: Butt-gdet.

B: Oh no, these pants are bad. What year was this? This was inexcusable!

B and D: 2020!!!

Here’s the thing: as otaku, we have sometimes loved shows with subpar animation. Sometimes, especially in decades past, studios made the most of a limited budget and the brutal weekly time constraints of churning out fresh episodes. Fans suffered through a few ugly episodes of even otherwise wonderful shows. We must remember that even Yuri!!! On Ice has a few potato episodes. And while Studio Deen has made a few great shows, it retains a reputation for starting strong but failing to budget, so their animation tends to get worse and worse as a series progresses.

As otaku, we learn to tolerate a certain degree of shoddy work if the story redeems it. But in cases like Tamayomi’s, no amount of sapphic energy can distract us from how bad this looks, especially since the story is as dry as sandpaper.

D: Everyone is dopey-looking.

B: I kind of like it.

L: Denial.

Anyhow, the plot? A girls’ high school with a baseball club that’s been put on hiatus has somehow attracted tons of talented aspiring baseball players, including our lead character, a milquetoast, forgettable girl named Yomi. No doubt they will all work hard to reestablish the club, assuming the animators can figure out how to draw them doing so. What are the odds that every girl our heroine meets will also be obsessed with baseball?

L: Gee, there are so many good baseball players at this school where there’s no baseball team! It must be fate, or bad writing! One of the two!

Soon, Yomi meets a pair of twins who also love baseball.

L: We didn’t know they were twins because everyone looks the same already.

D: Or we didn’t know they were twins because their hair was different. Is this a universe without men? Have we achieved that?

B: This too is yuri. I am not immune.

Like our previous sports anime lead, Yomi has trauma to work through. Except, well, it’s really not entirely clear what that trauma is? Apparently, she was a really, really strong pitcher, and no one could handle her pitches. Or maybe it was her terrible aim, because midway through this episode, she throws a ball with all her might directly into another girl’s helmet.

B: Holy shit, she could have died!

L: If there wasn’t a helmet, she’d be gone. What was that one movie from the ’90s where a kid accidentally kills his friend’s mom by throwing a baseball that hits her in the skull?

D: What?

B: Was it a Final Destination movie?

L: No, more along the lines of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape or My Girl or something, one of those extra-bleak coming-of-age movies from that era… oh, Google says it’s Simon Birch. 1998.

D: This is how you know an anime is good. When you’re pulling up traumatic movies from your childhood instead of watching it.

Anyhow, we are treated to a messy series of flashbacks of Yomi being rejected by other girls for being a weird baseball freak. And no one would practice with her. We watch the same animation of her pitching at least three more times.

B: This show looks so much older than it is. It looks like a show from 2006, and not a good one. 

L: Look, the old anime had excuses, but I don’t need new anime looking like shit!

D: We can’t go back.

So yes, we more or less check out halfway through. They stand. She pitches. We question the art department.

D: Will we get a sixth shot of her throwing the ball?

L: This is so boring.

B: I am weak to anything yuri, but even I can admit that it’s boring.

L: That’s its gravest sin.

D: Is her trauma that she was too good at baseball for the other girls?

B: She’s got the God-Hand.

L: She’s got a booty, but only at one angle. A booty that do quit.

D: Same.

Conclusions

L: If the pilot looks this bad, how much worse will it look in a few episodes’ time?

D: I didn’t like this one. You’ll notice in the other anime they actually played a badminton match, but in this one, she just threw a ball a few times. Not a single ball was hit in this episode.

B: I think the trauma was that no one was able to cook on her level. Or something. Sometimes Daniel and I say, after gaming, “That was a game on paper. It was, and we played.” In this case, we cannot say this was not an anime sports, and we watched it.

D: Sports? I dunno.

B: It made me wish I was watching something like Stella Jogakuin, or any all-girls sports anime done right. Birdie Wing. Anything. Have either of you watched baseball anime before?

L: I loved Big Windup! And the appeal of that one was, again, the dynamics between the catcher and pitcher. The pitcher is the most nervous kid alive, with crippling anxiety, but the catcher is gentle and patient and encourages him rather than giving up on him. It was also BL fodder, for better or for worse, and I loved it a lot. It was more about learning to cope with a panic disorder. The sports anime I like are about relationships and embracing perceived flaws as strengths.

B: Sports anime are best when they’re about people learning to see their differences as advantages, and how loving something doesn’t mean everyone has to do it the same way. I think baseball makes for good sports anime because there’s a lot of introspection involved during the game, and a lot of time to consider decisions.

Would we watch more?

No.

Fifth Spin: Umamusume: Pretty Derby (P.A. Works, 2018)

B: YES!

L: It can’t be the horse-girls. Do we believe her, Daniel?

D: Cut to the wheel, and it’s just all Umamusume.

B: I’ll take a screenshot to prove it.

L: How many times has she spun the wheel in a different tab? Let’s inspect this image. 

D: We’re checking the pixels.

L: Bridget, you’re obsessed with the phone game, right?

B: It has reached the point that now, when I open social media, the algorithm gives me actual horse facts about real horses. May I give you a horse fact before we begin?

L: Can we stop you? 

D: Please do.

B: One of the horses in Umamusume, Kitasan Black, after retiring—all of the horses in the franchise are retired or have passed—he just loved running so much that he would challenge all other horses to a race, so they started putting overweight horses next to Kitasan Black because he would amp them up and help them get healthy.

L: I just want you all to know that Kitasan Black is a brown horse.

Viewing Summary

D: Well, this is already funny. 

We are told in the opening scene of Umamusume that the series is set in a parallel universe where the spirits of horses from our world are embodied by horse-girls who are, well, born to run. 

D: Do they have hooves? No, they don’t. Do they have two sets of ears, or will their hair cover the human pair so we never know?

B: It’s a Schrödinger’s Ear situation.

L: Okay, but what if you were born a horse-girl and you hated running? What would happen to you? That’s the story I want to hear.

D: You get turned into glue.

B: Honestly, that is a joke in the series.

Though I tease Bridget, Umamusume: Pretty Derby, an anime based on a racehorse-girl phone game, has seen a huge surge in global popularity this year. As Bridget explains, each horse-girl is demarcated by accessories that tie into their real-life inspirations. For example, Gold Ship, the racehorse, wore a black mask with gold lettering on it, so his horse-girl counterpart wears a little black and gold cap. Her hair is pearly because the horse is grey. His jockey wore red and white, so anime Gold Ship wears a red dress. The parallels extend to their character quirks, too. “So, for example, the real horse Gold Ship was known for kicking—so in the game, when she wins, she dropkicks you and waves.” In the game, players take on the role of horse-girl manager, coaching them to win their races.

If all of this seems bizarre and a little incomprehensible to you, fear not. The rabid, inexplicable fandom the franchise has inspired is very much a zeitgeist phenomenon; you’re either fully invested in retired Japanese horses and their kawaii avatars, or you’re not.

D: Wait, this season aired in 2018? Why is it blowing up right now?

B: Because for the first time this year, the phone game got an official English release. It’s been incredibly popular in Japan for a while.

L: Can confirm that I see racehorse plushies at Village Vanguard all the time. 

D: Notice how this anime came out two years before Tamayomi and looks infinitely better.

Our heroine is Special Week, a young hopeful from Hokkaido who’s headed to the big city to attend Tracen Academy, the racehorse-girl school. Curiously, real people and horse-girls coexist in this world, but we see no horse-boys. 

D: Can horse-girls be with humans?

B: I don’t think so.

L: Well, if there are no horse-boys, where else would they come from, Bridget?

B: No, there are boy horses, but just not here.

D: Is that better or worse? What?

B: It’s a girls’ school.

D: The world is a girls’ school?

When Special Week arrives at the track to watch a race, a weird man gropes her thighs, and she shrieks, and it’s not at all funny, and Bridget claims the game is not ecchi, so let’s hope the anime gives up on shitty jokes about squeezing girls sooner rather than later. She kicks him in the face, like a horse might.

B: Is this supposed to be the player character? I don’t like that. I don’t claim this man; he’s not me.

I learn a lot about horse-girls, not from the show but through Bridget’s commentary. Apparently, one horse-girl character is yandere because the real-life horse was violent because it was inbred? So does that mean we have an inbred horse-girl? It’s confusing, and it shouldn’t matter, but if you, like me, are the type to get caught up in worldbuilding, Umamusume may not be your favorite.

Anyhow, Special Week enjoys watching the race, and it is admittedly fun to watch the anime girls spring like mad at about 85mph. As in the game, the effect is silly and oddly charming.

And then, once again, the coach guy gropes our heroine and it’s not funny, and then the horse-girl winners perform in an idol concert to celebrate their victory. 

“All of the songs are horse-themed,” Bridet tells us, whatever that means. She does not explain further. The nebulous realm of Umamusume is starting to overwhelm me, though Bridget is happy, and Daniel seems willing to embrace it. 

Our girl begins attending Tracen Academy, and we’re treated to a view of a classroom full of girls with ears and tails and special identifying accessories that hint at some long backstory about a horse I know nothing about, but I am sure there are tons of amazing fandom stories about different times each girl’s corresponding horse bit someone or licked a fence or pooped on the course and fans like Bridget see it so clearly and smile and—

A void is opening beneath me. 

I am always glad when people get immersed in harmless, geeky things. I am! But sometimes it is so strange, from the outside, to watch a fandom swallow people you love. I have seen friends fall to K-pop or, in the Dark Ages, to Homestuck or Hetalia, and I know they have seen me fall into my own weird pits of fixation, too. Even so, is there a word for that—for the uniquely unsettling experience of feeling torn between being happy that your friend has found something to devote themself to, and being entirely nonplussed by the nature of the something that has absorbed them?

Because that’s me during Umamusume.

I am helpless, caught adrift as the episode continues and Bridget rattles off horse facts like, “By the way, Haru Urara never won a race in her whole career, except after she retired she won a practice match!” and “Yes, these are my three favorite idiots!” and “No, Symboli Rudolf is a different horse,” and “Mejiro McQueen, she drinks a little teacup and then goes super fast! and “I love Vodka so much!” because there is a horse named Vodka. I try, from time to time, to latch onto the edges of her mad caravan, googling an occasional horse and its anime counterpart and comparing their starkly different faces, but I’m clinging on with buttery fingers.

Bridget sings along with the closing song. Her eyes sparkle.

Conclusion

B: So… what did you think?

D: I think that’s the best thing we watched today.

L: …I disagree with that. Sorry, guys. I am not interested, and that’s okay. I’ve never been into horses, and maybe that’s part of it.

B: I was never a horse-girl either. I was a panda girl. You were always a big cats girl, right?

L: I love animals and yes, cats the most. But honestly? I don’t like anthropomorphized characters in general. I don’t like anything where the animal is being fetishized, and any time in anime that you give schoolgirls animal features, I am sort of put off by the reality that someone somewhere is getting off on that, and it’s just… Like, I only like anthropomorphized characters when it is done to be surreal or comedic, like Odd Taxi or Aggretsuko. Maybe it’s my own issue, or an ace thing, but it does bug me. Transformation stories are fine by me—I love something like, say, Fruits Basket or The Eccentric Family, because those are about the duality of people and internal conflict and allegory. 

B: I get that. And also, I’m the biggest idol fan of our little group here, and this is very much a weird idol anime, and it differentiates itself from others with this unique take on a universe. You end up with weird stuff, and as an idol fan, that’s cool, and the concept is funny to me.

L: To me, it wasn’t funny enough. Because when people like you describe Umamusumue to me, it sounds so fun and charming, but watching it was pretty underwhelming. I think the charm must be getting into the facts and trivia.

B: I think a lot of idol anime struggle with pilots because they’re bound to establishing characters, and they all start in a similar place. “I’ve got a dream, and then all the pieces are in place, and let’s meet all the characters, and then let’s get into the actual show after five episodes.” The reason Love Live! has lasted so long is that it has such a great pilot.

L: And the reason I enjoyed Zombieland Saga is that it was different enough to make the genre feel fresh. I am not hugely into zombies or idols, but those elements together, placed in the setting of an undersung little rural prefecture, made it odd enough to feel different. Like, every genre has its tropes, sports anime too. But how do you spin them?

B: Shonen falls into that hole, too.

L: That’s why every season for every decent shonen, you get about ten more that aren’t worth remembering.

B: I think this one is more special when you play the game. Daniel, thoughts?

D: I think the animation carried it a lot for me, and I like the character designs, and I think watching human beings run around like horses remains really funny to me.

L: True enough. And P.A. Works is a good animation studio.

B: They are. We love them. They always come up during Grab Bag.

L: And I have always loved it when people get deeply passionate about things, so long as those things are not toxic. I mean, that’s what life’s about! Recently, my sister has fallen in love with a TV show for the first time in years, and I am so oddly happy for her. (She’s obsessed with the new Interview with the Vampire adaptation.) So I don’t wanna deny anyone their horse-girls, so long as they aren’t fetishizing children. And hey, that goes for all you anime creators out there! 

D: Yeah, put ’em on notice.

B: Yuck the yum when the yum is illegal!

Would we watch more?

D: Probably, yeah.

B: I am going to watch more because I already love the game.

L: No, but maybe I’ll try the phone game. All of the most interesting things about this were things you told me, not things I saw in the episode.

L: So, we got lesbian baseball—

D: And then we had a much-needed palate cleanser.

L: Horse-girl racing, and salaryman badminton. I think every major sport was represented.

B: How do you feel about the wheel, Daniel?

D: Wait, is there like a “Kill Daniel” written somewhere on here that I haven’t noticed, or…?

L: Look at the title! The title!

D: …“Niche Sports Anime.” Yeah, that’s about right. This is a busted-ass wheel. I don’t see Hajime no Ippo on there.

B: There are way too many boxing anime out there, okay?

D: Is that… is that a ballroom dancing anime?

L: Yes, and it was popular, but people preferred the manga.

We had fun with our niche sports wheel, and there were some nuggets of wisdom to mine from these shows. Because yes, salarymen, while not necessarily endowed with the gift of foresight, can have good instincts. And girls can and do play baseball. The spirits of horses may not actually be transmigrated across dimensions to fill the bodies of cute girls with ears and tails in another world, but I can understand why someone might invest in that reality rather than our own. And whether or not you’re an athlete, we can respect characters—and people—who give their all to something they love doing, and being a part of.

Next time, we’ll be getting appropriately spooky with a horror anime wheel in time for Halloween. Until then, keep, um, running like a horse-girl?[end-mark]

In This Article:

• Salaryman’s Club (Liden Films) Available on Crunchyroll.

• Tamayomi (Studio A-Cat) Available on Amazon Prime.

• Umamusume: Pretty Derby (P.A. Works) Available on Crunchyroll.

Note: This week, right after we watched the Umamusume pilot, a beloved horse that inspired a popular character in the series, passed away. On behalf of Anime Grab Bag, godspeed, Haru Urara! May the afterlife treat you to carrots aplenty.

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