The season has only just started, but it’s never too early to pick out a favourite waifu and husbando.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Believe it or not, Winter 2016 has not actually been a great season for waifus and lovers of fanservice. The good folks at fapservice.com have been complaining about the lack of tits and nudity this season. On Musaigen no Phantom World, they said, rather amazingly, “The lack of fanservice brings out the terrible flaws in this anime.”

Not that I’ve seen Musaigen no Phantom World, but I agree with this writer’s general sentiment. Half-hearted pandering doesn’t cut it. You can’t just have a bunch of cute character designs and dumb “MC accidentally falls on boob” jokes and call it a day. It’s the personality that counts, damn it! There’s really no girl who has leaped out at me as an icon of cuteness this season, and that’s a crying shame.

All is not lost, however. To compensate, this has been a good season for husbandos. If you’re a fan of cute boys interacting with each other in homoerotic ways, you’re in luck! We have Prince of Stride and Norn9 for the otome game fans, and of course we still have Haikyuu! continuing from least season. However, my husbando has to be from Akagami no Shirayuki-hime. Obi is the Wan for me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t even tell you what I like about Obi. Maybe I just like him because I don’t care about Prince Zen and I hope that Obi NTRs him. (Clarification: I don’t hate Zen or anything, but for some reason, I just really want to see him get NTR’ed. It’s weird. I can’t explain it.)

But anyway, Obi is simply a likable character. He doesn’t seem to take himself so dead seriously, like the other characters do. He comes across as so charming but you never know entirely what he’s thinking, even though you’re sure that he is 100% a good guy by this point in the series. Because his emotions are so subtle, I find myself paying extra attention to his facial expressions. Also, his fight scenes are amazing.

It looks like season 2 will focus more on Obi and this is entirely a good thing. I can’t wait to see how his actions will affect the plot. Keep up the good work, Ando-san and co.!

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As for my waifu, I’ve narrowed down my choices to two.

My first choice is for an anime I haven’t actually seen, but I am reading the manga, so it counts, right? I’ll go with Irina from Assassination Classroom (AKA Bitch-sensei).

Irina is a “bitch” in the Japanese sense of the word. As in, she’s seen as a loose woman with loose morals. But despite having some really questionable habits that undermine any semblance of professionalism as a teacher (like tongue-kissing her underage students… wtf?) Irina’s flaws are portrayed in the most endearing of ways. Even when her students call her “Bitch-sensei”, it feels affectionate rather than offensive… if that makes sense.

The funny thing about Irina is that she’s competent at everything from languages to playing the piano, but she’s woefully incompetent at her actual job: assassinating. (Well, technically, we’re told she’s good at assassinating too, but we never see any of that in the narrative itself, because everyone sucks at killing Koro-Sensei.) She also sucks at romance and has pretty much zero chance of winning over the guy she likes. But that just makes me want to cheer her on for some reason. She’s just so incredibly earnest it’s impossible to hate her.

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The other girl I like this season is Saya from Dagashi Kashi. The eyes of everyone in this show freaks me out, but other than that, Saya looks pretty good. I’m pretty sure that everyone who thinks she’s cute deliberately tries to ignore that she looks like Kirino from OreImo, though.

Yet despite being violent towards her brother, Saya doesn’t come off like Kirino’s type at all. It has a lot to do with the fact that she’s not a violent tsundere towards the MC himself, which makes all the difference, apparently.

There’s just something natural and unaffected about Saya. I like her because she’s acts as a nice counterbalance to Hotaru, whose energy is just too much for me, honestly. Instead of doing a bland tsukkomi act in response to Hotaru’s zany behaviour, she does something much more realistic: she plays along for the sake of politeness. She ends up getting drawn into Hotaru’s antics, of course, but her silly actions never feel like a show she’s putting on for the audience. Unlike our potato-kun MC, she’s the real audience stand-in.

Also, that card-slapping scene at the end of episode 2 was genuinely hilarious. Saya is the MASTER.

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So those are my waifus and husbandos of the season. Agree? Disagree? As always, take care to remember…