Tales of Wedding Rings ep1: My partner has been a fan of the manga for a while now but thought that I would find the anime adaptation dull because 'nothing much happens until it gets going later on'. Surprisingly I didn't find it that bad, even though the animation is cheap-looking and I'm not a big fan of the inconsistent art. It's effectively another daft isekai story about a plain guy being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the hero actually chooses to be there by making an impulsive decision on his own, which is - tragically - novel, and in spite of his infuriating inability to speak his mind at pivotal moments he does seem reasonably motivated. Since it's a harem show its long term appeal is going to depend on the girls he collects, so I'll give it another episode and see how I feel next week.
Blue Exorcist s3 ep1: It's been so long since I last watched this show that I can hardly remember anything about what was going on, so I laughed when they made fun of the lead having trouble as well. The first episode was mostly devoted to explaining the setting and what went before for the sake of confused people like me which was nice. I'll give it another episode; shounen stuff doesn't do much for me these days but I like the cast and the way that this season is shaping up, I'm likely to have free time on my hands.
The Strongest Tank's Labyrinth Raids -A Tank with a Rare 9999 Resistance Skill Got Kicked from the Hero's Party- ep1: Every bit as rubbish as its title implied. It's got everything: a hero unfairly ousted from a successful party, stupid combat which wouldn't make any sense outside of a videogame, zero-effort worldbuilding, a subhuman female slave with no clothes, disloyal former friends who happen to be hot girls, arbitrary RPG-style stats and rankings, an obsession with the power of the Identify spell and at least half a dozen underage-looking girls in the opening. Everyone has one character trait at best. It was unimaginative dross from start to finish and a chore to watch. Also, who lets their backstabbing ex-friend take their only sword and then signs up for guard duty without acquiring at least some kind of weapon first?
Solo Leveling ep1: There's been a lot of hype for this one but I had mixed feelings; the production values were great, which made it a lot more watchable than most of these 'idiot would-be adventurers grind a dungeon to make a living' shows, and the modern day setting with (so far) minimal badly-written RPG nonsense made it more interesting than most. It feels as though the staff actually cared about the content this time. On the other hand, however, the premise isn't very inspiring and the super-weak main character is lame to watch, though of course that's likely to change in the coming episodes. Probably not one I'll continue unless I stumble upon some spoilers for awesome twists later on, but if you want to watch just one of these shows then this is a strong contender visually so far.
7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy! ep1: A different take on the usual 'villainess' nonsense as the titular villainess hasn't done anything especially evil so far on-screen, and at least this one doesn't bother pretending to masquerade as an otome game. The heroine keeps reliving the last few years of her life and dying early so due to a series of improbable coincidences (fuelled by her increasingly ridiculous built-up knowledge of what happens during the period she's repeating) she ends up engaged to the sexy evil guy who killed her in the previous loop. Some of the gags are quite funny, intentionally or otherwise, and the designs aren't bad. I don't think it really needed seven time loops for her to try to do things differently, and she doesn't really try to do anything significant to change her fate - she mostly passively lets the plot come to her like a bad D&D player. But it's far from being the worst show of its kind. There's potential here.
