Anime

I have hardly had a chance to watch anything this past week. Basically, the only shows I got the chance to watch are not airing this season, but I have been slowly watching together with my wife.

• Natsume's Book of Friends Season 7 - I finished up the final couple episodes of the season this past week and they were excellent. The final two episodes of this season are frankly, two of the best episodes of the entire show. I hope we don't have to wait so long for another season again.
• Rurouni Kenshin Season 2 of the remake - Still working through this show and have watched up through episode 17 now (Kenshin just finished his training). My favorite character in this show is Hiko Seijuro, so I have been really enjoying the past couple episodes. I am sad that I won't see him as much anymore though.

Meta comment: Next week I am hoping to be the OP/ED thread for the season. So, start thinking about it now!

Finally sorted out what I will and will not be watching this season.

Dropped:

• I'm the Evil Lord of a Galactic Empire: Unappealing protag who decides he deserves revenge on everyone in existence because of two people.

• Shin Samurai-den Yaiba: Although I found the Detective-Conan-mangaka-draws-Dragonball artwork style amusing, the story really didn't grab me.

• Dinner-Table Detective: One of the characters really rubbed me the wrong way. .

Barely made it:

• Yami Healer: The first episode was really awful with its 10+ minutes of continuous harem fluff (made worse because I had no reason to care about the characters), and if people hadn't posted here that the second was much better, this would have ended up in the "dropped" bin.

• Your Forma: Dropping the first story arc from the source material, which would presumably have explained more of the background, really wasn't the best choice here, but we'll see where it goes.

I tried 2 episodes of Witch Watch and enjoyed it, so I'm continuing with it.

I'm also planning to give To Be Hero X a shot.

This week we powered through the first three episodes of Kowloon Generic Romance. Sadly, we both came away feeling underwhelmed. The bones of a great show are there; I dig the aesthetic, KWC is a fascinating locale, and I love a good mystery. But the pacing and tone feel kind of wonky. The big reveals, if you can call them that, tend to be simply stated in the most uninteresting way possible.

Then we crawled through the backlog and ended up putting on Akiba Maid Wars. I had heard this was a fun show a while ago but never sat down to watch it. The first two episodes delivered pretty much exactly what I’d hoped. It’s absurd, hilarious and wildly violent.

I am of course still obsessed with Rock is a Lady’s Modesty. Very excited to see what kind of trouble the younger step sister is likely to cause in the near future.

Is anyone else's favorite anime The Big O as well?

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.

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Witch Watch
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Apothecary Diaries

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

Witch Watch and Apothecary Diaries stay atop their respective charts this week. There is a lot of movement on the AC chart while the reddit chart has stayed pretty stable. One thing I have noticed this season is that the total reddit karma is pretty low (just a bit over 14k this week). That number is usually over 20k. So, that could mean that either the season is pretty weak for reddit users overall, or that there are fewer active reddit users. I suspect the former, but kind of hope for the latter.

I currently have quite a busy time, but I think I've finally settled into the new season. There are some pretty strong ones. My favourites this season so far are (still) Apothecary Diaries, Apocalypse Hotel and Shoshimin. The surprise was Catch Me At The Ballpark. I'm also watching Witch Watch, The Shiunji Family Children, LycoReco specials, Zatsutabi, Can A Boy Girl Friendship Survive, Too-Perfect Saint and Gorilla Girl. There are others I want to pick up, but those are on HIDIVE (i.e. not available for me) or Prime (fuck amazon) and I can't be fucked to sail the seven season atm.

I'm also watching Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun. I'm enjoying that one a lot. Fun character interactions.

Want to highlight two shows completed this week, both of which have eyebrow-raising premises at first glance.

TsumaSho: Yeah, lol at the official localizations omitting the "My Wife is Reincarnated as an Elementary School Student" part (they don't want to get cancelled). It would be a really good moving-on story about getting to terms of the MC losing his wife,

It's bad enough for the rating to drop down a notch because of one episode.

Tawawa on Monday: Features not just an age gap and a student-teacher relationship, but also some more "mundane" ones like an office senpai-kouhai and high-schoolers who are childhood friends. Even without the fanservice, its story punches well above its four-minute episode length. They were able to weave different plot (and "plot") points together into a coherent story. The top-notch voice acting adds to the enjoyment. My favorite is Kayano Ai's performance as Kouhai-chan. Unironically watched this for the plot.

I'm so hyped because of this reason: La Rose de Versailles (2025) en VF

So I was browsing the Internet as per usual, and was very surprised to see this ad probably directed at the elderly having an anime-style image. Anyone know what it's from?