Chillin' in My 30s after Getting Fired from the Demon King's Army ep1: Ostensibly a series about yet another loser nobody rebooting his life after being unfairly dismissed from his lifelong employment (though he doesn't seem to have learned anything during the decades that he worked there), this is actually a showcase about the ditzy female lead's breasts, which bounce pendulously around at every possible moment. The horny camerawork constantly introduces her to every scene boob-first, irrespective of whether or not she is even relevant to the conversations taking place. It's not especially sexy, though, because she's a bore and the fan service is too silly, so it just comes off as dorky and distracts from the weak attempts at comedy from the actual script. I don't need to describe the actual plot because it's all in the title, though the big twist was impossible not to predict within the first few seconds. It also had multiple flashbacks to the start of the episode during the premiere which was really boring, even though the voice cast were desperately trying to make the weak material better. Bleh. Not the worst series this season but I have better things to do with my time.
Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for my Retirement ep1: I've worked out at this point that isekai with female leads generally (but not always) annoy me less, because the self-insert nonsense is less prominent. The core gimmick of this one is that the accident-prone lead can jump back and forth between the generic fantasy world and reality, because she's not actually dead (somehow). She immediately starts to think about the possibilities of such an arrangement where she can lead a double life and make enough money to retire, which is what my partner always wants to suggest to isekai protagonists who fail to capitalise on their advanced knowledge, and a lot of the usual tropes were skipped over thanks to a silly plot device where the lead's dead older brother emotionally prepared her for everything she's encountering by virtue of flashbacks to monologues about his otaku hobbies. I found this show tolerable (despite being kind of dumb) but it's not one that I'll keep watching. At least it seems to be having fun with its concept.
Reborn to Master the Blade: From Hero-King to Extraordinary Squire ep1: I don't know why my partner thought that watching three of these similar shows in a row was a good idea. I could probably summarise this by copy-pasting lines from my other recent posts like the creators of RtMtB copy-pasted elements from other content to make this story. The lead is an overpowered hero from another time/setting (Strongest Exorcist), who is reincarnated as a little girl (Onimai) and then deals with bullies who are irrationally nasty (Iceblade Sorcerer) before eventually growing old enough for the gimmick in the title to seem plausible. Sadly, from the look of the horny opening/ending sequences the hero king is going to become a cute squire dressed in a miniskirt and suspenders rather than a dashing, cool heroine. The reborn hero(ine) initially subdues an attacker as a newborn baby, which I will grant was somewhat memorable for its ridiculousness. Everyone also likes randomly narrating things that happens to explain things to the viewer, which makes sense as a means of conveying information in a LN yet makes me cringe whenever it's overused in anime. I really wish that more care would be put into reimagining the original material to better suit the format for these adaptations so that finding the occasional gems wasn't such a slog.
TRIGUN STAMPEDE ep1: Even though I was in the fandom when saying such a thing was unusual, I didn't like the original Trigun anime and didn't really care when everyone else was gushing about it. This remake (?) is a weird one because I find the CG disengaging - yet it's noticeably better than average and the colour palettes are genuinely pleasant. There seem to be a few divergences from the previous TRIGUN's plot even with my spotty memories of the original so I'm not sure what's going on there. If you're not allergic to CG anime like I am it's worth a watch just to see the art style in action because it's an interesting take on the medium.
Spy Classroom ep1: A typically non-diverse team of schoolgirls are assembled to participate in a suicide mission for nebulous political reasons, in this setting where sending spies off to die in proxy wars spares ordinary people the upheaval (and cost) of actual warfare. The quirk is that the cutesy girls are all spies, and probably each have their own skills and/or dark secrets that will be revealed over time even though they're introduced as a bunch of failures. For some reason they have multiple schoolgirl outfit changes over the course of the episode and all end up wearing uniforms which are spy-themed idol group costumes, each slightly different to play to their individuality, which rather undermines my ability to take them seriously as professionals. I quite liked the climax of the episode where things actually happened to progress the story; unfortunately, the entertaining part with actual spy shenanigans was only a few minutes long and the rest was all boring padding, so I won't be continuing.
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