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With the release of Bofuri today I think I have my round up of episode 1's for the Winter season ready.

This is a really early assessment so stuff may change with EP 2's. Stars from 1 - 5 where 1 = drop and 5 = awesome so far.

Sequels

BOFURI S2 EP1 - I thought this was OK but being honest I can barely remember anything from Season 1, I simply remember Maple putting all of her points into defense and becoming OP. I'll see how the rest goes but it hasn't gripped me much yet.
★★☆☆☆

Nagatoro S2 EP1 - I think in real life I'd hate Nagatoro's character, but in the anime I just love watching wholesome bullying and seeing how far Nagatoro can push the boundaries. Harmless and the VA's have a lot of fun with it! 🥰
★★★★☆

Tokyo Revengers S2 EP1 - A bit like Bofuri I've forgotten a lot of this anime. I thought Season 1 was OK but nothing ground-breaking. It's hard to sympathise with the characters and Takemichi is irredeemable. Still, Season 1 was entertaining at times so I'm hopeful that Season 2 will also be more of the same.
★★★☆☆

Vinland Saga EP1 - I thought this was a really good start to Season 2. This is another MAPPA taking over from Studio Wit production but I think MAPPA have done a great job here carrying the mantle, everything looked great except for the CGI wheat. I think I'd give this my most solid #1 position for episode 1's of the season.
★★★★★

New shows

Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte EP1 - This was fun, I liked the premise and think that the concept is interesting and lends itself well to having some funny misunderstandings. Also, everyone likes tsunderes!
★★★☆☆

Farming Life in Another World EP1 - I am not sure on this one. I get that it appears to be turning into a sort of harem thing and I must admit those aren't really my thing, but I like watching stuff get built up so I kind of wish they didn't show me the end result straight away, instead I think they should have just gone straight into the beginning. This may wind up being a bit too slow or ridiculous for me, I'll give it at least another episode.
★★☆☆☆

High Card EP1 - This is definitely one of the more unique starter episodes of the season. A series where bishounen take up strange real life card battles where each card in a deck of cards grants the bearer a unique power. This feels a lot like Great Pretender kind of, but at the same time not really. It's got some style and the power system is quite flashy, but despite all of this, I am not sure it's going to be enough to sucker me in to watching more. I was hoping for more gambling focus seeing as it's the same writer as Kakegurui, and with how the PV made it look like it would be, but in reality this doesn't feel like a skill based gambling anime to me.
★★☆☆☆

NieR EP1 - I've played the game but it was a very long time ago, still I could recall the basics of the intro section and the finale of it. My overall gut feeling here so far is that the 2D/2B stuff was animated really well, I thought the general set design looked great, and of course the OST is a banger coming from the same OST as the game. The thing that lets this one down a bit for me is the CGI, this is the worst use of CGI I've seen in all of the starter episodes this season. It's a real shame because if they'd had better CGI effects then it could be overlooked and ignored, but it's so glaringly bad that it's now forever going to slightly spoil the episode (but hopefully not the whole series). For such a high profile IP I would have hoped for better. A1 did 86 I think and the CGI in that was really good, because whoever made it took the time to blend it in to the anime and make it look like part of the overall whole.
★★★☆☆

Revenger EP1 - Gen Urobuchi returns and this time it's a samurai era tale of revenge. I liked the beginning of this well enough to see where more episodes will go here. The kite gets 10 points for Gryffindor. Gets some extra points for not being set in a school and it has a proper cast of adults for a change.
★★★☆☆

Spy Classroom EP1 - This is one of the more questionable ones in my list, I really don't know what to make of this at all or whether the goal is just a silly one or a serious one. I'll just have to watch more and see.
★★☆☆☆

Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady EP1 - I really liked this and I'm definitely up for checking more out. It's a yuri so I'm all in anyway, and the production quality was decent, better than expected going in.
★★★★☆

The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague EP1 - This looked really nice but it's far too mofu mofu for me. I don't mind some drama/romance but I think I want some actual drama in it, this seems quite episodic and is gunning for slow/feel good, the first episode was a bit all over the place in terms of what was going on, felt like some mini-episodes strung together.
★☆☆☆☆

My Life as Inukai-san’s Dog EP1 - Oh god dog ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
★★★★★★★★★★
 
BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, So I’ll Max Out My Defence Season 2 episode 13 Christmas in January.

Bungou Stray Dogs 4th Season episode 39 Twist.

Don't Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack episode 14 Zoo visit.

Kana of the Great Snow Sea episode 1 Risen

The Eminence in Shadow episode 15 Master of disguise.

The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady episode 2 To be free.

Tomo-Chan Is a Girl! episode 2 Dropping truths.

Tsurune -The Linking Shot- episode 15 Tempo.

Sgt. Frog episodes 336-342, 345, 356-358 (Complete. Sgt. Frog is a very fun series to check out - on this occasion I chose to stick to the manga canon episodes and the movies due to the steep number of episodes but I may revisit the rest of the series one day.) 3.5/5
 
Revenger ep1

Eh. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, it just feels a bit ordinary to me and I was not sufficiently interested to want to continue it. I think the story needed a stronger hook.

Bastard!! (1992) OVA 1 English dub

After some deliberation, I decided to try watching some of the original OVA before attempting the Netflix series, but gee whiz, that was rough. At the very least, going for the dub was a mistake, it took me all my time to get a handle on what it was doing tonally. Certainly, I didn't have much idea what to expect from the show; in my mind I thought 'What if Berserk, but Guts was the Gigachad', although this seems closer to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, except the jokes aren't landing. Depending on how the Netflix version pans out, I may yet give this another try in Japanese though. Why am I not just watching Slayers? I miss Slayers.
 
Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle episodes 1-7: More like callous heartless princess who will kill anything and anyone to get good night's rest. (As a shift worker I can sympathise).

Now watching The Beastmaster, which looks like the DVD was copied from an old ex-rental VHS tape (maybe even the one I rented when I last saw this movie as a teenager).
 
ActionFaust said:
While A1 did indeed produce 86 it's important to note that most of the time CG animation gets outsourced to other studios. Nier's CG seems to be done in-house at A1 while 86 was outsourced to the more established Shirogumi.

No matter how high profile an IP may be it's still gonna be subject to the mess known as the anime industry. Very rare that a series can reach its full potential these days whether it be due to scheduling conflicts, executive meddling or some other issue.
Click to expand...

It's just a shame because I think it's going to permanently prevent the show from being as good as it really could (or ought to) be in my view. Chainsaw Man kind of got away with it despite some ropey CGI as well but we'll see how much it impacts things.

Maybe a few episodes in and it will be less of an issue.
 
ActionFaust said:
By ropey CG what scenes do you mean? There's quite a few scenes in CSM which many assumed to be CG until MAPPA posted the original key animation. Quite a few animators work is easily mistaken for CG these days lol
Click to expand...

Bits like near the start when Denji was fighting the zombies, I'm mentioning the starting bit as this won't really spoil any of the later events.
 
High Card ep1: I wanted to like this. A flashy action show about a bunch of guys with magic cards which give them superpowers; it should be awesome. Unfortunately I think the staff's ambitions to make a stylish series visually outstripped their actual ability to do so and it lacked the personal hook that Buddy Daddies nailed so well. I really liked the concept and the lead seems interesting enough yet I don't feel any real attachment to anything that happened. Also, I was getting way too angry at the lead not using the card during his getaway scene! Why would he leave it all to chance like that?! Not terrible but not one that's going to make the cut for me.

Mononogatari ep1: A hot-blooded young hero is poised to succeed his grandfather in the family business of defeating (or negotiating with) invading spirits who possess objects, weaving light Japanese folklore elements in with a typical action show formula. The lead is (understandably) traumatised after a past incident but the outcome of that is that he's surly, stubborn and unwilling to listen to anyone, which aren't exactly endearing traits - and as a result he's sent away to live with a bunch of trustworthy spirits and the girl who manages them. It's nothing that hadn't been done before and the designs are kind of ugly, which is unfortunate; if the characters had been a bit more likeable this might have been worth watching.

Ayakashi Triangle ep1: Wait, the first episode of this is identical to the last show, only hornier. We watched them right after one another so the glaring similarities were even harder to ignore. I won't be continuing either but of the two this was surprisingly the more entertaining. As puerile as this was - it's unapologetically pandering to its shounen audience - it was at least upfront about it instead of masquerading as a complex drama like a lot of the fan service shows which annoy me. The abrupt sex change right at the end of the first episode was so abrupt that I'm not even sure what to think, but again, these characters aren't treated like well-rounded people with relatable emotional ranges in the first place; it's more Ranma 1/2 than Onimai. If you watched Mononogatari and only wished that it had more boobs, this is your show.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea ep1: What sounded like an interesting sci-fi show ended up let down quickly by sluggish, ugly CG and pacing which made the already slow plot feel even slower. If it had at least looked more like TRIGUN STAMPEDE I might have survived this premiere without nearly falling asleep multiple times but watching the world building was a tedious affair in spite of a few elements being interesting in themselves. And the final mystery - the arrival of the girl who features prominently in the credits - is so tropey that it didn't really excite me on its own. The show did remind me to finish Children of the Whales sometime because I liked that way more.

The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten ep1: A wish-fulfilment show about a cynical, cranky, pathetic jerk of a generic schoolboy who lives alone next door to the famous darling of his school, a perfect girl who is cute, popular, chaste, smart and apparently willing to invest hours of her free time in helping her useless idiot of a neighbour with everyday tasks that he's too lazy to do on his own. He never reciprocates or shows any desire to grow as a person but she latches onto him anyway after he did one moderately selfless thing at the start. There's obviously something going on with the love interest's backstory - the fact that the lead refuses to pay attention to it or ask what's going on is really annoying - but it's probably not worth sticking around to find out what. I also found the first half of the episode needlessly confusing because the lead's strange inner monologues made it unclear whether he could actually tell that the perfect girl from school was the same one he'd helped, who was also his neighbour. Wilfully helpless characters in romance stories really rub me up the wrong way.

Unite Up ep1: Mixed feelings abound! Watching the weirdly-staged formulaic CG musical number I was ready to write this off early as yet another copy-paste idol show about a guy going through the usual tropey nonsense of joining an agency and working his way up with a new idol group (which is exactly what happens). The apparently-toxic relationship between the lead and his friend, who was secretly turning him into an online star without his knowledge, was also awkward. But then (somehow) everything was reasonably tied up and the friend turned out to be responding to the lead's own shut-away feelings the only way he knew how. I think that's where this does well, its characters have heart even if they're all playing stock roles. The 2D animation is also very easy on the eyes, so if they stick to that and ditch the rubbish CG this could easily end up as one of the better examples of its genre.

Bungo Stray Dogs s4 ep1: I was a bit worried going in as it feels like a long time since I last watched Bungo Stray Dogs, and I wasn't confident about remembering what was going on. Fortunately, there's a shift of focus for this flashback arc and we get a little time with Ranpo, who was always very memorable, together with his future boss. Everything is in black and white which should be annoying but the whole package is so stylish that it looks great, and the suspenseful script makes it hard for my mind to wander. The two leads have excellent chemistry playing off one another too. A great return to form for another show I'll be watching weekly, it's everything that High Card wishes that it was.

R
 
Summer Time Rendering eps 4-6
Back and forth!
We get to see a bit more of what happens as time progress (the end game for the antagonistic force of nature seems to be to swallow the whole island and all its inhabitants to feed some sort of god, but not much beyond that point) and then back in time to see things from a different perspective and then branch off to a different present. Still very intriguing, well acted and animated.

Revenger ep 2
A woman scorned.
After a relatively realistic take on weapons and stuff last week it got a little more fantastical this week with a large compound bow (invented in the 60s c. 100 years after this is set) and retractable spikes on ninja boots! Would have liked it to stay more "in period".

ONIMAI ep 2
Public bath and red rice!

Spy Classroom ep 2
Recon.
This went a bit quicker than I speculated after the first episode. A quick montage of training and some recon before their mission and straight into it next week. You know the life or death mission that we've just found out killed the previous team, although that didn't add up either because they're after a bio weapon which needs dealing with quick sharp, but the previous team died a year ago? Anyway with 9 episodes left after next weeks I think somehow they'll survive!
 
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? IV Episode 13 Fighting to survive.

ONIMAI: I'm Now Your Sister! (Uncensored) Episode 2 Bathhouse and bodily burden.

Spy Classroom Episode 2 Reconnaissance.

The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World Episode 2 Trial and training.

Urusei Yatsura (2022) Episode 13 Marriage fortunes.
 
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? IV Part 2 episode 13 Five minutes.

Spy Classroom episode 2 A firmer resolve.

Shaman King episodes 1-13
 
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