Since this season seems fairly light and pretty heavily weighted towards the weekends, I’ve decided to supplement with other shows from my backlog to watch in between:

• Sasaki & Miyano - This is based on one of my favorite manga of all time, but I skipped the anime when it came out because I was so disappointed by the BL budget and sort of weird pacing. But going back in knowing its flaws, I’m able to enjoy seeing my boys fall in love all over again. It’s not the perfect adaptation I would have dreamed of, but it’s still that same story I love so much.
• Revenger (not to be confused with Tokyo Revengers) - I was pretty busy during the season this came out and ended up not being able to continue basically any of the shows I’d wanted to, but this was one I was pretty excited for. It’s about feudal Japanese catholic assassins who only take on clients who are looking for revenge, and all of the characters have silly anime weapons that they use in pretty brutal ways, like the kid who uses a kite where the string is covered in bits of broken glass. I think so far it’s balancing well its edgy tone and its goofy elements, where it’s fun and not meant to be taken too seriously. I’ve seen a lot of bad reviews, though, so maybe it is supposed to be taken seriously and I’m the only one laughing at seeing a man pray to the virgin Mary for the souls of the people who he just killed with a sheet of gold leaf.

I’m glad Shin got a chance to shine this episode. Last time I was worried the kids would get sidelined too much, but it seems I was wrong, lol.

The resolution this episode felt sort of unearned. It seemed like we were being lead to believe that this A Tale of Perishing was deeper and more complex than the simple movie that existed in the real world, but then the solution to a philosophical disagreement was just a handsome anime boy and a musical number. And normally I’d be all for that, but that fixing Memmeln’s nihilism felt like a cop-out. Though I did still appreciate the handsome anime boy and musical number.

I think it’s really cute how long distance travelers leave those flower offerings. It’s easy to imagine how if you lived in that world you’d start to notice things like “oh, someone must have come through here from [wherever] recently” when passing by one of those statues.

I’m not really a gundam fan, or a fan of space operas in general, but I was recommended this when it first started and I really enjoyed the first half. I felt like the corporate setting gave a suitable dystopian feel for the meaty drama about kids dealing with the sins of their parents, and I was fully on board. But, somewhere in the second half I feel like it all got a bit lost. The plot became more complicated and the themes got a bit muddled, and I sort of stopped engaging with anything except the emotional threads of the characters, who continued to be very well written. Overall, even though it was enjoyable, it felt like it had a lot of wasted potential.

And I agree, not woke enough: not anti-capitalist enough and not gay enough. (But, to be fair, I’d say that about most things, lol)

That seems like it might be what they’re going for, but my problem with it is that we haven’t seen her actually engage with this idea very much. What is it she likes about this old movie? All we’ve seen from her is her complaints about it (QJ being useless, Destiny causing problems for no reason, etc). The things she draws to resolve the conflicts also seem like they should tie in to those themes because they’re ideas pulled from other anime, but she doesn’t engage with any of them as a fan either. It’d go a long way if we got some flashbacks of her watching or fangirling about the stuff that inspired her, or really anything that shows us how excited she used to be about animation.

TBH, I feel like Zenshu’s biggest strength right now is that it has a lot of space for viewers to bring their own ideas and themes related to artistic endeavors and insert them into the story, which I can understand being enjoyable for some people, but for me that just ends up feeling like they forgot a big piece of the heart of the story.

It’s a bit of a weak season for new shows, but I put together a tasting menu of 4 anime for my friend group to consider watching together: Zenshu, Welcome to Japan Ms Elf, Okitsura, and Sakamoto Days. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t take to any of them enough to change our original plans, so our list is still Apothecary Diaries, My Happy Marriage, and Hanako-kun.

The animation this week was pretty rough… hopefully it’ll be better next time.

Especially with her role in the eisaa, I’m even more convinced that Hina is observant enough to know fully what’s going on and is trying to be a subtle wingman for her bff’s obvious crush. I’ll be curious how she plays this with Teru trying to confess to her.

I truly do not understand what this anime is trying to accomplish and am fascinated by how ambitious it is visually while being seeming devoid of any meaningful themes (so far?). I think I’m willing to stick around for the rest of this show to see if it ends up developing into anything meaningful, but at this point I seriously doubt it.

Ada’s comment can be found here

And ya, if it’s true that Ada was the one dealing with the the reports, I’m not really sure what the mod team was even doing (other than making unpopular decisions without community input)

I’ve seen a lot of talk about how this move changes the admins the community will be under, but very little about how this will change the randos that pass through. The mods keep saying this won’t change anything, that the moderation will stay the same, etc, but the reason this community is the way it is is that there are a lot of locals that find it. When the new community shows up on l.w’s local page, it will bring in a far different crowd. Their posts, comments, and up/down votes will change the community, and there’s no amount of moderation that will fix that.

Mods, this is why people are mad you made this change without asking anyone. Many of us do not want an influx of .world users into this space because we know what kind of politics and biases they’ll bring with them and that, even if you moderate the bigots, the normies will still likely overpower the queer voices this community is known for.

This episode felt a fair bit weaker than the first, though it was still fun. Even though we’ve got a bit of a squad going, I worry that going forward Shin and Lu won’t be able to do much in their fights - if the enemies keep escalating in strength, Sakamoto will be the only one really capable of dealing with them, as we sort of saw with Son Hee and Bacho.

The cozy romance side of this is absolutely perfect, but I’m also pretty impressed by the isekai side as well. They’re setting up a decent mystery in why he’s able to cross over, and also we can see that he’s clever and tactically-minded without the show needing to tell us he’s a genius or is relying on some cheat skill.

I worry a little that this will turn into an unnecessary love triangle / harem (a common worry of mine and for good reason, lol), but I’m giving the benefit of the doubt for now and guessing that our dragon friend will be a knowing third wheel following them around for snacks.

If so, I think it failed at that job, because I’m one of those people that decide what to watch from episode 1 and I was going to drop this until i found a spoiler that made me give it a second look.

In shoujo romance you can often do a lot with a relatively low budget, but WOW did they cut a lot of corners on this one. Meanwhile, Kizuki is being pretty pushy, which puts Mizuho in a position of either giving in to his demands or blowing up their entire friend group (which may happen either way). Not a good look, buddy.

Decided to give this another chance and it’s sort of amazing how much better of an introduction this episode was than the actual first episode. I feel like we got a lot more depth from all the characters (including the absent real Grace) and more variety in the jokes as well. If this is how the rest of the show goes, I’m definitely in.

It’s nice seeing the cool visuals when someone does their speaking well, but I was expecting everyone to have a different flair to their auras so that we could see the difference in their speaking styles, but instead we just sort of get an on/off they’re talented and get a cool visual or they aren’t and they don’t, which was a little disappointing.

I think my biggest problem, though, is the same one I always have for club shows: I don’t care enough about the club activity. I like these characters, but it feels like a lot of time is going to be spent on learning and practicing broadcasting, which I don’t really have any interest in. So, while the quality continues to be pretty amazing, I think this is where I leave. I hope everyone remaining has a wonderful rest of the show!

I was excited when it took a bit of a sinister turn and we were left wondering what secret plan the wizards had in store… but I guess nevermind, can’t do anything too interesting or else it will distract from the handsomeness of the wizards. The exposition is also really bogging down the show. For example, I feel like it would have been far better to leave the scene with Murr and the moon a bit more ambiguous, and then let it later be contextualized by the scene where we learn that the moon is evil. As it is it feels like Shylock just narrates backstory for no reason and the audience gets treated like we can’t understand anything unless it’s spelled out for us.

This continues to look amazing, but I can’t help but wonder what on earth the theme is, and if there even is one. I know from the synopsis (still no indication in the anime itself) that she was stuck on her movie because she’d never been in love before, so is she here to learn about love? How would it help her with her movie if she falls in love with an anime character / figment of her coma imagination, if that’s where this is going (and it does seem like it)? Or is she falling back in love with anime / the act of creation, and if so, how does that apply to writing a romance movie? Is there some deeper meaning to her “fixing” the plot of her favorite anime? They should be at least setting up dominoes for her character arc or the show’s thematic message, but I can’t really see anything right now - it feels like just sort of a shallow celebration of animation as an artform with nothing to say.

Everything’s finally out now and it seems like this season managed to right itself after a very lackluster first week. There weren’t any that blew me away, but there are a handful I’m looking forward to seeing more from:

• I Fell In Love with an Okinawan Girl - cute romantic drama put together with comedic edutainment about Okinawan language and culture (I can’t tell how accurate this part is)
• Sakamoto Days - goofy action comedy vibe reminiscent of both Spy x Family and Way of the Househusband, which puts it in very good company
• Welcome to Japan, Ms Elf - very cute reverse isekai with good chemistry between the leads
• Zenshu - amazing animation, but I’m still a little dubious about MAPPA making an anime about making anime without acknowledging the hellscape they create for their workers and also centering a creative lead as the one important character.

I also want to give special mention to the last garbage review I have, which is quite possibly the most disgusting anime I’ve seen in a hot minute: