Tiger & Bunny 2 episodes 38-50 (Complete. A fun second season, though the antagonists were one of the weaker elements of the overall story.) 3.5/5
To Be Hero episodes 1-12 & To Be Heroine episodes 1-7 & Bonus (Complete. Fast-paced fun shorter episodes with a sense of silliness throughout, though some of the gags did become repetitive.) 3/5, 3/5
Originally, I was a bit indifferent to this as I'd not seen or heard anything about it beyond the pervasive advertising on Crunchyroll and it just seemed like something they were shilling, but it actually seems pretty good - I always enjoy the 'condemned prisoners on a mission' gambit. It's certainly darker and considerably more visceral than I was expecting. Some of the images in the OP make me think it might become something more lightweight as it goes on, but we'll see.
I would like if they'd gone a little more realistic with the character art though. If they had, you could squint a bit and pretend you were watching something Kawajiri did in the 90s...
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury s2 e1
Open day.
Buddy Daddies eps 11 & 12 (complete)
Family matters.
I'm torn on this, I think because the tone was a bit uneven with lots of light fluffy stuff, but equally very dark stuff. It also had the same thing happen as with SPY x FAMILY where most of the action stuff was put on the back burner for the domestic stuff. And as cute as she was Miri was annoying on more than one occasion. The titular Daddies had good chemistry and each had a bit of personal growth over the course of the show. I was kinda bummed at the end that it didn't go the root of Leon and have Miri join them in the hitman game, but I suppose she'd been through enough to get mixed up in that. In fact I wonder how much they told her, as that stuff would **** someone up normally, but she seemed like a happy high school girl at the end.
Art and animation were very good. 7/10
My Clueless First Friend ep 2 (dropped)
Seems it's going to be the same thing over and over again. Child is cruel to FMC, MMC takes it the wrong way and thinks what they say means she's cool, and then says something that makes FMC blush! Rinse and repeat.
Shame could have been cute.
My Home Hero ep 2
Gardening.
World Dai Star ep 1
Seems like a show similar to Kageki Shoujo, but less fun, ATM. Bit of twist there at the end!
Demon Slayer: Swordsmith Village Arc ep 1
This was a double length episode setting up this arc. It definitely felt padded out, especially the first half.
Thanks to the bank holiday weekend, I've been able to sample a bunch of first episodes from the new season.
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls Golf Harder with Revengeance
I'm happy to see this make a return. We're still not back to the levels of crazy from season 1, but there's a girl whose brain short circuits when she concentrates on golf for too long, so we're on the right track. Watchlist
Gundam: The Witch from Mercury
Another pretty good return, though I'm annoyed at the heavy-handed way the plot has backpedalled from the events of the previous season climax, especially regarding the troubling questions around Suletta's personality. Watchlist
The Cafe Terrace and its Goddesses
This seems like a quite pedestrian ecchi harem show so far, despite its next-gen censorship light shafts. On probation
Rokudo's Bad Girls
There's a depressing number of shows opening with the protagonist being relentlessly bullied this season. This was definitely one of the weaker ones. The premise has a flicker of potential, but this was not a good first episode. On probation, leaning towards dropping
My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv.999
Romance between gamers, but it's josei for once. It's odd how much I enjoyed this despite the characters all being pretty unlikeable and the game they play being yet another ultra-generic F2P MMO. Maybe it's the significantly above average art and direction that held my attention, or maybe it's just my soft spot for josei romance. Watchlist
Magical Destroyers
Easily the worst first episode I've seen so far this season. It makes a right hash of starting in media res and fails to present any compelling reason for why Grumpy Glasses Dude should be the leader of the otaku resistance instead of Grumpy Magical Girl. There's some flashy animation on display, but the individually impressive shots don't add up to good scenes thanks to its scattershot structure. I'll give this one more episode in case it was just one of those openers that jumps ahead to the climax, but I have a bad feeling about this one, like I've been dropped into the middle of a B-tier Trigger show after the alien twist. Hanging on to probation by its fingernails.
Tonikawa
I could watch these characters talk about nearly anything and it would probably be entertaining. Watchlist.
I Got A Cheat Skill in Another World and blah blah blah
Another one where the protagonist gets bullied all the time. Cue stock isekai setup, but where he can easily go back and forth between worlds and bring perks back with him. It's yet another fantasy world that doesn't bother to hide that it's just a generic RPG, and the protagonist becomes tediously overpowered in the first episode as usual. This had shockingly good art for what it is though. I'll give it one more episode. On probation
My Clueless First Friend
Decent classroom comedy with younger characters than we normally see these days for this kind of thing. It gives off mild Watamote vibes, but with a relentlessly chipper boy brightening up the mood. I don't know how much mileage its premise has though. On probation
Skip and Loafer
Decent school romance. It's not doing anything to stand out from the crowd yet, but it looks like it could be reliably pleasant, and I like the protagonist. Watchlist
Konosuba: Rising of the Explosion Hero
Decently entertaining, though Megumin is the last of the Konosuba regulars I would have wanted for a spin-off. The others have quirks that can be worked into many different scenarios, but Megumin doesn't stand out when she's not blowing things up. First impressions are this could be reliably entertaining, but not exceptional. Watchlist
Yuri is My Job
As a major GL fan, I was dismayed at the tepid reaction I had to this. I don't like any of the characters. Its premise of press-ganging a girl into working a job where she gets yelled at for not following rules that no one bothered explaining to her really rubbed me the wrong way. The fact that the romance is all just a performance at this stage doesn't help either. I'm hesitant to drop a GL show, but this doesn't even feel like GL outside of the window-dressing so far. On probation
The Irresponsible Captain Tylor OVAs (English dubbed) COMPLETE - The first time I tried watching these a few weeks or months ago I stopped in the middle of the first episode, but I really got into them this time around, and I would say they are worth watching if you liked the TV series, with the caveat that I'm aware some people are fans of only one or the other - as a fan of the TV series I found this offered more of what I liked about it
Now watching Rideback (English dubbed), I'm partway through Episode 3
I've had a really good time watching Samurai 7 again, it has the right blend of action, comedy and character interest and it stands up really well. One of the bonuses of having the blu-ray is that it comes with an excellent Dolby TrueHD soundtrack that is incredibly detailed and very immersive and sounded fantastic on my surround system.
Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer (Blu-ray)
I was just in the mood too watch this again for no particular reason. I last saw this in the mid 00's when the only Oshii films I had seen were Ghost in the Shell and the two Patlabor films. Watching it again now having seen the rest of Oshii's (often very experimental) works, you can see a lot of early ideas germinating and a scene with a tank would be used again almost verbatim in Angel's Egg. It's an amusing and very entertaining film still and something else that has stood the test of time well.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury - Episode 13
Picks up where episode 12 left off and sets up some interesting plot threads for the rest of the series.
Was curious about this so I checked sakugabooru and I'm assuming the scenes were animated by Hisashi Mori. He did quite a lot of scenes in episode 7. His style does seem quite similar but funny enough it looks like him and Yuasa have only worked together on two projects before. Kemonozume and Wanwa the Puppy.
That was one of the scenes I was referring to (and thanks for looking into it btw), to be honest I didn't expect there to be any connection but the similarity was too great to not pique my interest.
This would not have been on my radar at all, but the really rather great OP animation popped up in my youtube recommendations, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much in agreement with Dai's assessment on the previous page. There are some pleasing bits of animation peppered throughout, but otherwise it's just all over the shop - it's self-indulgent nonsense with little rhyme or reason, like someone's doujinshi that accidentally got greenlit. If there's a twist coming that recontextualises everything before it, I might reconsider, but I'll most likely be dropping this one.
Blue Orchestra ep 1
Seems like Your Lie, but both leads play the violin. IIRC the MMCs stories are very similar, played when young, something happened and they drop it, and now they're picking it up again. FMC is different in that she's only just starting,
but she hangs around the nurse's office so I wonder if she also has an illness or it's just a place to practice? Although she seems to do it during class time, so...
From the title and artwork it'll go a different way though and be more Kono Oto Tomare! where they put together an orchestra, although not a full blown Sound! Euphonium sized one.
Think I'm going to like it though. No idea why it hasn't been picked up by anyone yet!
Insomniacs After School ep 1
Seems like Call of the Night except the boy is a high schooler rather than middle schooler and the girl isn't a vampire! So all the chill moments without the horny moments for a straight up romance.
A better start than Skip and Loafer was.
Dead Mount Death Play ep 1
Really intriguing first episode, to say too much would spoil it. Glad I didn't watch the OP when it popped up on YouTube (they put it at the end of this episode) as it would have spoiled it. Loved the twist at the end. After thinking the good guy from the fantasy opening was the one isekai'd to our world it turns out it was the bad guy!
Skip and Loafer ep 2
Introductions.
Better than the first episode. A bit more substance to the main 2 and the support characters.
The Marginal Service ep 1
The Men in Black on crack!
Only 1 first episodes to go for Spring shows.
The Tale of Outcasts eps 11-13 (complete)
Started out as a knock off Magus Bride (unfortunate girl joins up with magical entity) and didn't really pick up from there. The plot was rather lame and the bad guys were bad because they were demons and demons should do bad things! A lot of characters had plenty of plot armour too! There were a few good moments, but most of it was just a bit meh!
Art was OK, as was the animation, but the art went off model at times and the fights were a bit dull. 6/10
That's pretty much it for Winter apart from delayed and on going shows. Speaking of: NieR: Automata Ver1.1a ep 8
Gone fishin'
Seems it's been delayed yet again!
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