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Fire Force s2 eps 18-24 (complete)
A bit more of a focused season, but it still doesn't flow too smoothly with one arc ending and then another starting with little connective tissue. Tamaki's special move/curse is still jarring especially in the penultimate episode. Also the problem of Shounen shows having battles spread over multiple episodes was annoying when I watched it weekly rather than binging that I switched to.
Action was good again, but nothing as quite stand out as I remember from the first season.
7/10

Attack on Titan Final Season ep 4
Political manoeuvres and family meeting.

Jujutsu Kaisen ep 13
Break through to the otherside.

Just Noblesse to finish Crunchyroll for this year. AoT not back till the 10th and Jujutsu Kaisen till the 15th!
 
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Outlaw Star (Rewatch) episodes 13-26 (Complete. Very enjoyable upon rewatch - there’s a balance of grit and comedy throughout and even the more lighthearted outings are good entertainment.) 4/5

Patlabor: The Mobile Police The Original Series (Rewatch) OVAs 1-3
 
December 24th - 29th.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? III (English Dub) Episode 6

TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You (English Dub) Episode 6

Adachi and Shimamura Episode 12 (Complete. A yuri series about an unlikely bond that grew between the two MC's each week as they both developed individualy. At least certain individuals didn't derail the story narrative to much.) 3.5/5

Assault Lily: Bouquet Episode 12 (Complete. A series that provided some decent visual entertainment each week. Other than that, this was satisfyingly alright.) 3/5

Attack on Titan: The Final Season Episode 63 Festivity.

Date A Live Fragment: Date A Bullet - Nightmare or Queen (Complete. With a fourth season on the horizon, this was a welcome 2-part story in perpetration for it. Just a shame that the conclusion was rather cliche and anticlimactic.) 3/5

Dropout Idol Fruit Tart Episode 12 (Complete. An idol series about a newly formed idol group of dropouts trying to make it big in the industry. Though I do think that the excessive fanservice was unnecessary. Overall it was a fairly fun watch.) 3.5/5

Is the Order a Rabbit? BLOOM Episode 12 (Complete. Another comfy season that was very much more of the same as before. Out of all three series, this is one is my favourite. I'm hopeful another will appear soon.) 3.5/5

King's Raid: Successors of the Will Episode 13 & 14 An unexpected double episode this week.

Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Episode 13 (Complete. Having seen all of the other previous LL series, this has definitely been one of the better instalments from the franchise and another fun watch throughout.) 3.5/5

Maesetsu! -Opening Act- Episode 12 (Complete. A stand up comedy series which was hit and miss the majority of the time with its sketches but apart from that and the cast having their moments. Overall it was somewhat disappointing.) 2.5/5

Talentless Nana Episode 13 Sacrifice and grief. (Complete. For a supernatural-mystery series, this was pretty decent with it's interesting story premise and plot twists which kept me engrossed each week.) 3.5/5

TONIKAWA: Over the Moon for You Episode 12.5 Recap episode.

The Day I Became a God Episode 12 Remembering. (Complete. An emotionally-charged bittersweet anime series with some good episodes early on. The MC's actions later on did make him rather insufferable.) 3/5

Warlords of Sigrdrifa Episode 12 (Complete. With plenty of character interactions and high flying action sequences this certainly didn't lack in the entertainment department whilst remaining solid throughout.) 3.5/5
 
The Day I Became a God eps 9-12 (complete)
Memories.
I really liked a lot of the carefree memory making episodes before the drop, but the twist just seemed to be "haha, now I'm going to make you cry!" and was super manipulative. I mean it worked and also made those memory making episodes work because as fun as they were the plot seemed a bit aimless during them. I think I agree with others that Yota was a bit annoying and also had very little growth by the end other than changing what he wanted to do with his life.
The art and animation were very good.
7/10

Noblesse eps 12 & 13 (complete)
Well that was a rubbish ending.
The first arc was entertaining enough when in action mode, but the SoL stuff was boring and the second arc was worse as it was confusing and then ended with the explanation for all that conflict as being a dumb misunderstanding because the previous Lord didn't tell his daughter that he was offing himself and then the one person left alive didn't explain that Raizel had nothing to do with it. Talking of Raizel, he had the personality of plain toast or should that be dry ramen noodles!? And not many other characters fared any better.
The art wasn't great and most of the designs seemed like fujoshi bait and the animation wasn't all that either. Whilst I said similar for Moriarty the Patriot by the same company at least the characters and story were much more interesting.
5/10

That's Crunchyroll finished for the year.

Taking of, the Crunchyroll Originals have been a bit of a bust so far. In/Spectre and Noblesse had very promising first episodes, but went down hill from there, The God of High School was certainly a ride, but the plot was way too rushed, Gibiate is probably the second worst, full length episodes, anime I've seen. Nothing is beating the Joan d'Arc one. And I dropped TONIKAWA as it just wasn't funny. That only leaves The Tower of God which wasn't that bad dispite its own pacing issues.

Next up you have EX-ARM, just watching the trailer it looks like a video game cut scene from 10-15 years ago.
And finally So I'm a Spider, So What? I hope this is good, certainly sounds fun and the trailer doesn't look bad!

I'm not sure what's happened with these, some seem to be bad choices of original material, for example In/Spectre was very wordy and seems totally unsuited to be made into an anime, whilst for others the big companies they chose seemed to not bother putting the effort in or CR chose inexperienced people to work on them like the producer of Gibiate insisting on writing it when he has almost no other credits and the director of EX-ARM having no experience in anime and insisting on picking other people with no experience to help him!
 
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Noblesse episode 13 An underwhelming conclusion. (Complete. Underwhelmed best describes my overall feeling for this series as aspects like characters and story sadly weren’t very memorable.) 2.5/5

Patlabor: The Mobile Police The Original Series (Rewatch) OVAs 4-7 (Complete. A solid set of stories and one bigger ploy towards the end - a solid place to start with the series.) 3.5/5

Patlabor: The TV Series (Rewatch) episodes 1-16
 
Hokuto no Ken - Episodes 13 - 33

Through the Shin arc and onto Jagi/Toki, such an enjoyable show can easily watch lots in one go, the characters are so good.

Demon City Shinjuku (Blu-ray)

Better paced and a more interesting story than Wicked City but otherwise very similar style and content.

Highlander - The Search for Vengenance

Staying with Kawajiri, I have wanted to watch this for ages and thought it would be interesting to compare to his earlier films, I have to say I really liked it, definitely a Kawajiri film but maybe a bit more restrained and I liked that it remained faithful to the original film and didn't take the mythos in some weird direction.

Vladlove - Episode 1

Nothing special but enjoyable, lets see where it goes!
 
I've been showing Snow White with the Red Hair to my mother over the past three evenings, we got through Episode 21 as of last night, so only 3 eps to go. She is really enjoying the series. She also saw the trailers for Yona of the Dawn and Wolf Children at the beginning of two of the Blu-rays, and now wants to watch both of those after Snow White. I'm pretty sure I've shown Yona to her a few years ago, but her memory is not so good anymore, so she'll enjoy it as if from scratch again, lol.

I've been watching Hanasakeru Seishonen on my own, and have finished streaming through episode 10. A pretty fantastic series so far - and it's 39 episodes in total, too. I'm liking it so much I added the Blu-ray of this series to my last order from Rightstuf, so I'll show that one to my mom too, once the Blu-ray arrives.
 
Assault Lily: BOUQUET eps 9-12 (complete)
A Yuri bait show with a paper thin plot to get a bunch of girls together in one place. When it tried to anything deeper like episode 9 when Yuri (too on the nose name) is going to be taken away by the authorities because she was born of an experiment with the DNA of the enemy mixed with that of humans. Our MC runs away with her and in the meantime the scientist one proves to the suits that she is pretty much human and thus should live and then a monster attacks and Yuri dies killing it, all in one episode. No angst over whether she is truly human, no surviving for weeks on the run and all the drama wrapped up so quickly it was hardly worth starting the subplot at all! It probably stems from the fact that the characters came first in the form of a range of figures and thus there is no deep lore to begin with.
Having said that the visuals were very good with some flashy moves in the action scenes.
6/10

Akudama Drive eps 9-12 (complete)
**** the system!
Man what a ride! The plot did go a bit wonky after the first part in which the characters all had one direction to go towards, after that it sort of wondered around a bit, but the ending was pretty epic. All the characters were unique in their attitude, motivation and design, and were mostly enjoyable in their own unique ways.
The art and animation were great and the cyberpunk design of the city was cool. I also loved the transitions between scenes.
8/10

Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle eps 10-12 (complete)
Oyasumi! Suya...
Saving the best till (almost) last, Doga Kobo do it again with this hilarious and endearing story of a Princess' quest for the best nights sleep in the Demon Lord's castle after being kidnapped.
Art and animation were up to the usual standard.
9/10
I was going to say this was my first 9 for one of their shows, but then realised that they did Nozaki-kun (which I think was my first show of theirs I watched)

1 Funimation show left, but it's just a short which for some reason got a weeks delay at some point during the season. And also Great Pretender to watch.
 
Ep 13 of Noblesse...loved it. Liked the source material and i liked the anime. It was a good adaption, the only downside was that it was a little rushed.
 
Just finished rewatching SSSS Gridman. What a great show. I gave the English dub a go this time, and it was pretty good. One thing though, Shiro Sagisu's score is on iTunes, but I'd swear only half of it was used in the show. I can't remember the last time I saw an anime with so little music; pretty much the only time it kicks in is during action scenes.
 
Great Pretender eps 1-5 (or case 1)(dub)
So far it's a great crime caper story with so many twists it gets a little preposterous. There's some very interesting choice of colours for the art. Also an interesting choice on the part of the dub team, they kept the start as is from the Japanese where the Japanese VAs talk in English up until the point where there's a note on the screen that says that the VAs are speaking English, but translated into Japanese! So the characters English suddenly get better 😄

Wasteful Days of High School Girls (dub) (re-watch, complete)
Hey, can I say something amazing right now?
Dub's not bad, most voices suit the characters apart from Baka and Lily who both sound way too old. Lily might have been a choice to sound a bit more mature as that seems to be part of her character. It's been a year and a half so I can't remember how the Japanese VAs played them.
Still an 8/10
 
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? III (English Dub) Episode 7

Konosuba: God's Blessing on this Wonderful World! Legend of Crimson (English Dub) (Film)

Little Girl President (Youjo Shachou) Episode 1-13 (Complete. An amusingly and somewhat hilarious series of shorts that depicts the random and bizarre antics of a 5 year old CEO.) 3/5
 
Patlabor: The TV Series (Rewatch) episodes 33-47 (Complete. Just as fun upon rewatch, with a generally solid run of episodes throughout. Ota still is the weak link of the cast for me but usually doesn’t detract too much from the proceedings.) 4/5

Patlabor: The New Files (Rewatch) OVAs 1-10
 
Lupin III: Part 2 ep21 (English dub)

With little help from the English credits, it can be hard to say who did what in a given episode of red jacket, but with its absurdist dream logic, this shaggy dog story about Lupin being bossed around by a mafia don claiming to be Fujiko's aunt, certainly feels like Seijun Suzuki had a hand in it. Not a complete success, but the willful disregard for narrative convention is quite an experience. Unusually, it also references a previous episode, which is something you rarely see in Lupin at this time.
 
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