That was some fine iyashikei.

Ponko continues to be a great character and Yachiyo is definitely growing as an individual (and not just with the va-va-va-voom upgrade). And it was nice to see the rest of the Tanuki family applying themselves.

And we got more aliens, and now Yachiyo can talk to them.

Just nice and heartwarming all around.

The only ones I’ve seen are to the only series I’m watching this season - Apocalypse Hotel, which is of note for an oddly off-key OP.

The first time I heard it I just took it to be the OP as sung by an awkward and poorly skilled robot, endearingly trying to sing a song that’s more upbeat than she is, and I loved it. I still do and I still do.

So I started off the week finishing up Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e, which was excellent. It’s part political thriller and part coming of age story, played out against a backdrop of quantum mechanics and multiverse theory, and just very well done.

Then I watched both seasons of Getsuyoubi no Tawawa, which, in spite of its four minute episodes dominated by fanservice is actually pretty good.

Then, somehow, I ended up watching Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na! for the third time, and enjoyed it all over again. (And just thinking about it, I now have Easy Breezy stuck in my head).

And at the moment, I’m watching Mekakucity Actors, which atarted off being all style and no substance, which is particularly disappointing in this case, since its style is just a retread of the Monogatari series. And I don’t just mean that it’s the same basic style - it’s the same sort of character designs against the same sort of backgrounds (and seems as if they could be literally the same backgrounds) doing the same stylized gestures and motions accompanied by the same sort of droning narration of the same sort of edgy pop philosophy. So basically the anime equivalent of reheated leftover cup ramen.

The first time I saw a character do this damned head tilt, I almost shut it off right then and there.

Thankfully, it does seem to be finally revealing some actual substance (seven episides in) though whether it ends up being enough to be satisfying or not remains to be seen.

Great episode - Ponko is awesome. The “don’t be the prey” scene was especially good.

The Nudel was a bit too similar to the Graboids from Tremors for it to be an accident.

And Yachiyo got the “pretty voice” reward, so maybe the OP will evolve?

Mmm… I can sort of see that. There are some impressive special effects that accompany the future technology that were likely dazzling for the time. And the CGI for the backgrounds likely was state of the art (and certainly better than, for example, Initial D).

Still though - the character animation seems pretty poor regardless of age, and the contrast of rough, fuzzy character art with simple, rigid, entirely rectilinear CGI backdrops is distracting.

All that said though, I don’t want to focus on the art too much. It’s a thing I noticed, so I mentioned it, but more to the point, the story is very good and intriguing and (so far) well plotted and paced, and the characters are well developed, and I’ll forgive pretty much anything for a good story with good characters.

I’m really looking forward to this. I love the manga, and I can’t wait to actually hear a Wada rant. And some of the manga scenes are going to be epic if they’re done well in the anime. I’m especially thinking of the “what to do if you’re attacked by a wild animal” scene, since it relies on slowly building tension and excitement capped by perfect comedic timing.

Started off the week with Gabriel Dropout, which is a barrel of fun. The basic setup is that in order to qualify as full-fledged angels or demons (as the case might be), angels/demons in training have to spend some time on Earth, which is how we end up with two angels and two demons making up the foursome for a CGDCT screwball comedy slice of school life. I liked it all the way through - good characters (none of them are particularly good at what they’re supposed to be), laugh out loud humor, nice artstyle. It’s not quite to YuruYuri or Lucky Star quality, but was well worth it.

Then, craving a bit more screwball comedy, I went back to a long-time guilty pleasure and rewatched Photon aka Photon: The Idiot Adventures. It’s a sort of sci-fi adventure story set on a far distant future Earth with a straightforward comedy hook - every single major character is an idiot of one sort or another. And in fact, their entire sort of quasi-mystical technology is based on “aho energy” - idiot energy. It’s not great by any means, but it’s good idiotic fun.

Then I sort of steeled my resolve and dove into one that I dropped after a couple of episodes about a year ago, because I could see it was going to be a rough ride, and at the time I wasn’t ready to invest as much energy and attention as it was going to demand - Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the 24 episode run, and it has been very dense and dramatic, and very good. It’s a sort of Evangelion knock-off insofar as it’s in part a complex and vague science fiction/superpower war allegory on coming of age, but without the religious claptrap - it’s instead all built around quantum physics and multiverse theory. The only real downside to it is that the animation is frankly terrible - an awful combination of cheap fuzzy hand drawn and cheap low poly CGI. But the characters and the story make it worth it.

Well, we finally met the tanuki family. I liked it all in all, and now Yachiyo has an assistant, and I assume the whole family is going to stick around. And Yachiyo passed a second mission - I’m assuming there’s an overarching plot involving those.

Interesting that this episode was set 50 years after the last one.

I’ve been resisting wjs018’s predictions of mood whiplash in this series just because I’d rather it not, but then they went ahead and threw a mostly implied bit in with the human ship, then made it explicit in the post-credits scene. Ah well.

The OP is still oddly clunky, but it still makes me smile anyway.

I love ARIA. To me, it’s the perfect iyashikei - it’s just beautiful snd calm, and Akari’s entire purpose in life is to share happiness. And Alicia is the archetype ara ara onee-san.

The only series I’m following so far this season is Apocalypse Hotel. Last week’s episode was fine all in all, but it did an odd thing. They showed the OP for the first time, and it was uncomfortably dissonant - both downbeat and off-key, and ultimately sort of dirge-like. But it was disconcerting enough that it has to have neen deliberate, and it sort of fits, because at the point we picked up the story, both the hotel and the MC have just about run their course, and have just at this late stage found a glimmer of hope. So I suspect that as their fortunes improve, the OP is going to evolve to reflect it. Or at least I hope so, since that would be awesome, and without something like that, the OP will just remain inexplicably awkward.

As far as day-to-day viewing goes, I started off the week with season 1 of Baka to Test. It was fine but sort of oddly dull. I’m not quite sure how it managed that, since all of the individual parts seem like they should add up to more than that. The setup’s interesting and the characters are relatively well developed and the art style is intriguing and it’s consistently funny, but it still somehow manages to be sort of drab all in all. The subs were sort of meta-amusing though - very much “localized,” and by era as well as place.

Then after a bit of wandering, I watched Saekano Or more precisely, I watched half of Saekano, then dropped it. It was strange - the “boring girlfriend” of the title was the only engaging character in the whole cast. She’s intriguing and distinctive and very much her own character, while all of the rest are just awkward conglomerations of tropes that aren’t even internally coherent. I never got a sense of any of them as distinct, recognizable individuals - they were just sort of blank ciphers assigned some combination of stereotypes - and their actions never seemed to spin off from their characters, but to just be whatever was necessary to move the plot along. And most notably, the qualities and actions assigned to the MMC tended to be tedious, insufferable and obnoxious, in addition to arbitrary, which is most of what led me to drop it.

Then I ended up on something only sort of anime-adjacent - Pantheon - which was excellent and highly recommended, but not technically anime, so I guess I’ll leave it at that.

Madoka.

As I just noted in another response, I immediately heard the OP as an overly earnest and depression-prone robot a century out from human contact letting go, to the best of her very limited ability. I thought it was brilliant.

ETA: The more I think sbout it, there are two notable things about that OP - the song was both down tempo and off-key, and a number of her dance moves actually required a partner.

How awesome would it be if, by the end of the season, the song was sweet and light and she had a partner?

I loved the OP.

What I heard, clear as a bell, was an overly earnest and depression-prone robot who’'s one of the few remaining who hasn’t ended up on the scrap heap, and is gamely and determinedly keeping a luxury hotel not only running but luxurious a century after humanity left the planet letting go, just a little bit, with a song that’s more upbeat than she is. For now.

Okay - first off, the OP is wonderful.

The episode itself was sort of odd, but in a promising way - it touched on a number of apparent mysteries, but didn’t reveal much of anything. It’s a slow pace, but if the series remains mostly slice of life with mystery, that’ll be fine.

Still haven’t met the Tanuki family, though they’re heavily featured in both the OP and the ED.

I don’t normally watch currently airing anime - I’d rather binge completed series - but last season I ended up getting sucked into not just one or two, but three of them - Zenshu, Guild Receptionist and Honey Lemon Soda. Now that they’re over though, I planned on going back to not watching current series.

But then last week I happened on a mention of Apocalypse Hotel and read the synopsis… and couldn’t resist. And it was excellent from start to finish, so that’s at least one series I’m going to be following.

Beyond that, I finished up Shinsekai Yori aka From the New World. I’ve bounced off the LN a number of times, so decided ro give the anime a chance, and even it took a while to get going. But it turned out quite good all in all. It’s not an easy watch - not only is it relatively complex and slow-moving - it doesn’t pull any punches. But it was worth it.

But after that, I was drained both mentally and emotionally and wanted something comfy and pleasant, so after a bit of thought, I decided it was time to rewatch Makeine, and it was just as terrific as it was the first time around. It’s just solidly above average in pretty much everything, and Anna is still one of my all-time favorite characters.

Then I bounced around for a bit and ended up watching one that had sort of lurked at the edge of my awareness for years - Aquarion EVOL And that’s one of the most fascinatingly awful series I’ve ever seen.

I actually tried to drop it a few times, but it kept drawing me back in. It was bad, but in mesmerizing ways. It’s a constant barrage of hot blood and pointless drama and insipid pseudo-philosophy and clumsy innuendo and chuuni and giant hams, all forced into a combination of gratingly awkward teen love and sex allegory and super robot model kit advertising. Most of the characters aren’t even characters really - they’re plot devices with legs and hasty backstories, each just reciting whatever collection of tropes is going to move the plot along to the next phase on the way to the hot-blooded, pointlessly dramatic, insipidly pseudo-philosophical chuuni and giant ham conclusion. It was just so bad, but so gloriously and unapologetically over-the-top about it that it sort of worked anyway.

And now I’m casting about for the next thing, without even any clear preferences in mind - just wandering around clicking things and seeing if they hook me.

Mm… yeah. You’ll like it. I have no doubt of that.

I loved everything about that.

This was a great week for old anime.

I started off with the rest of Noragami Aragoto, which was very good. Noragami in general has been a pleasant surprise - it doesn’t seem to get a lot of attention, but it’s really quite good, in a sort of low-key, just-all-around-good sense. This season had two main arcs, and both of them were interesting and well-executed (which was especially satisfying for the first one, which dealt with a central drama that had been lurking in the background since the start, and about which we’d already gotten enough hints that there weren’t many surprises left).

Then I bounced around for a bit before ending up on Oda Nobuna no Yabou. I was in the mood for cute girls doing something, and like the protagonist, have spent far too much time playing Nobunaga’s Ambition, so Cute Girls Doing the Warring States it was. And while I expected it to be cute and stylish and sort of goofy, I didn’t expect it to be… well, sort of epic really. Granted that Sengoku is literally an epic tale, I still figured the cute girls thing would keep it light. And while there was a certain amount of expected charming silliness and fanservice, mostly it was surprisingly dramatic and engaging. And the addition of a character who already knew the entire history and was determined to stop this Oda from making the same mistakes the other did led to some intriguing changes in the story. All in all, it was just very pleasant and enjoyable.

Then after bouncing around a bit more, I ended up diving into a series I’d been idly threatening to watch for a few years - Shinsekai Yori aka From the New World. I got a copy of the first volume of the LN years ago and have bounced off of it half a dozen times or so, so I figured I’d give the anime a chance. And even the anime takes a bit to get going, but once it hit its stride, it just sucked me in. It’s very good, and with impressive art design and music, in addition to the expected good story. I’ve watched 21 episodes in just two days, and will certainly watch the last four episodes later today.

Thanks, but I’ve already read the sequel, and didn’t like it much either.

In fact, pretty much the first thing I did after the shit ending of the anime was to track down the manga in the hope that there was more. But nope - the manga has the same shit ending. But it does have a sequel. But Hanabi doesn’t fare much better in the sequel than she did in the original. Even the slut still gets a better ending than she does.

I’ll get to the winter anime in a bit here.

First, I started last week watching Scum’s Wish, and not to put too fine a point on it, I fucking hated it. I can’t remember the last time I hated an anime this much.

It started out well enough, and I was interested in spite of the fact that the set-up invited drama and heartbreak and a fair bit of unpleasantness.

What I didn’t expect though was that halfway through they were going to just abandon the FMC entirely - one of the few decent human beings in the cast - and completely shift the focus to a gross, nasty slut and the two pathetic cucks vying for her entirely non-existent affection. It didn’t even feel like an actual story - it was more like just a set-up for an NTR doujin series.

The only bare saving grace of the whole thing was that after wasting the second half of the season on the nasty cumbucket and her pathetic simps, it finally returned to Hanabi - the original FMC - long enough to throw her a vaguely hopeful open ending. Though they couldn’t even manage to do that without sticking the bitch in the scene, apparently so she could remind us that she’s a bitch in both the Japanese sense of the word and the American one.

So after that, I really needed a pallete cleanser, and I didn’t even dare gamble on something - it had to be something that I knew would wash the stink of that slut out of my mind. And as it turned out, I didn’t watch one thing, but an episode here and there of lots of things.

Some of the highlights:

Episode 4 of the first season of Sword Art Online - The Black Swordsman. That’s the introduction of Silica and Pina, and it’s just a pleasure from start to finish and one I rewatch often.

The final episode of 86 - brings tears to my eyes every single time. It’s just one of the most touching and beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Episode 1 of Gurren Lagann - it’s solid all the way through, but mostly I watch it for Yoko’s entrance, which is one of the greatest ever.

YuruYuri episode 5 - Ayano goes to Comiket. It’s worth it just to see Chitose discover the world of yuri doujins, but Ayano is especially cute too.

Little Witch Academia OVA 1, which has become my most recent obsession, and at this point I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched it.

And a few other things here and there, plus some of my favorite opening and ending themes.

And now we get to winter anime, since once I’d finally fixed my mood, it was time to catch up on them.

There were three that I watched last season:

Zenshu. - started off strong, as an almost deconstruction of an isekai, and with amusing bits of all sorts of genres mixed in (I never got tired of her mahou shoujo style transformation). It bogged down at about the 1/2 to 2/3 mark, but finished fairly strong. I liked it all in all.

Guild Receptionist - started off a bit slow, other than the sheer awesomeness of Alina kicking boss ass, but built up nicely for a while and looked really promising. But then it sort of floundered for a while, and ended a bit weak. Too much focus on Alina hating overtime and not enough on her coming to terms with her past and her feelings about adventuring and about making herself vulnerable to other people.

Honey Lemon Soda - I thoroughly enjoyed this, and ended up rewatching the entire series. Yes - it’s trite and cliched and sappy, and most of the drama got settled too quickly and easily, but I just don’t care. I liked it.

An awful lot of it is that most anime depictions of social anxiety rely on personality tics and gimmicks to sort of represent it, but never actually depict what it actually feels like. Honey Lemon Soda nailed it with Ishimori though - I couldn’t help but cheer for her, because I recognized so much of what she felt. And the dynamic between her and Miura was unusual but believable and effective - he has just the personality that’s actually best suited for dealing with someone like Ishimori - fundamentally kind but not conciliatory, and relentlessly honest but not cruel.

And at the moment I’m early in Noragami Aragoto. Broadly I can already guess much of what’s going to happen, but a lot of the charm of Noragami is the character interactions, so that’s okay.

The only thing that caught my attention right off was Kowloon Generic Romance. I was interested in the setting, but the manga never managed to really convey it, and hopefully an anime will.

Well… and Shiunji-ke no Kodomotachi, but that’s because it’s from the same mangaka as Rent a Girlfriend and I read the first dozen or so chapters on a whim and it was even more insipid and tedious and awful than I expected. I have no intention of watching it - I just noticed it on the list and was surprised.

Lazarus looks kind of interesting, but it’s unlikely I’ll watch it while it’s releasing. If it’s anything like the other Mappa action series I’ve seen, it’ll be decent in the long run, but it’ll go through a period at about the 2/3 mark when the story will be going in about ten different directions at once and there will still be enough background secrets left to be revealed that none of it will make much sense, and I’d rather binge my way through that.

So last week started with the rest of the Little Witch Academia series. I rank the first LWA OVA as the best single “episode” of anime I’ve ever seen (and I rewatched it a few more times last week - so over the last two weeks I’ve watched it about a dozen times - and that opinion still holds), so any follow-up couldn’t help but be sort of anticlimactic, and with that in mind, it was fine. It stumbled a bit here and there, and I found Akko’s inexplicable lack of character growth particularly disappointing, but I liked it well enough all in all. And the final episode was excellent (and I suspect part of the problem with the series was that that episode was planned out in advance, so the rest of the series, and especially the last few episodes leading up to it, had to be shaped to accommodate it).

Then I cast about for something just light and silly and preferably short and ended up with Uchuu Patrol Luluco. And only noticed later that it was also Trigger. It’s one of those that doesn’t even bother trying to make sense and just revels in lunacy and nonsense, and it was fine.

Then because Trigger had become somthing of a theme, I poked around a bit and went on to Kiznaiver, which was… okay. It had a fair amount of potential, but the pacing was awkward. It basically spends the first ten episodes or so just heaping on layer after layer of essentially context-less mystery, then stuffs the last two episodes with a flood of reveals and exposition to finally make some sort of sense of all of it.

And over the urge to watch Trigger productions, I wandered into Kuzu no Honkai, which is a tawdry love polygon and a rollercoaster of hope and despair and longing and betrayal, and has been pretty good in a smutty soap opera-ish sort of way.