It’s been a month full of disembowelments.

Firstly, my Japanese history class took two periods to watch Harakiri, a rather dark period film about poor Edo-era samurai, ritual suicide, bloody revenge and so on and so forth, and secondly I decided to watch an anime called “Kampfer” as a follow-up to Omamori Himari.

The chain of events that led to this was roughly as follows; I’ve enjoyed a lot of shows that can be collectively described as “spiritual successors” to Urusei Yatsura, so I decided to see if any other Takahashi shows had similar descendants.

Now, I’ve heard “Love Hina” described as a Maison Ikkoku knock off, and I may check that out some day, but what I wound up doing first was seeing if there were any shows in the mold of Ranma 1/2, everyone’s favorite gender-swapping high school martial arts tsundere love comedy.

A minimal amount of research suggested the previously mentioned “Kampfer”, so I tracked it down.

And it’s, well, it’s got a boy who turns into a girl and there’s some fighting in it, and it’s in high school and there’s even a girl named Akane.

Apart from that, though, not much in common. The whole thing seems to have been kind of an excuse to animate yuri fan service scenes and cash in on some easy boy-in-girl’s-body jokes, like having to buy bras and figure out how to use the toilet when you’re wearing a skirt.

Oh, and it has weird mascots. I mean, really weird mascots. One of the characters is obsessed with collecting stuffed animals made to appear as though they’ve been brutally killed in some way or another, generally with their intestines hanging out.

Hence “anime with guts”, see.

Also, the stuffed animals talk.

Anyway, it’s a pretty short series, clocking in at 11 story episodes and a very weird Christmas episode, so it doesn’t really have time to develop a story past “boy turns into a girl and the girl of his dreams falls for his girl side but can’t stand his boy side”, and it’s full of little moments that made even me roll my eyes, but it wasn’t actually BAD, just kind of… well, just kind of THERE. It is a thing that exists.