Anne Shirley ep1: Yet another adaptation of the beloved classic Anne of Green Gables, and as I've never seen any of the others I have absolutely no idea how this one stands up. Fortunately, no prior experience is required to dive straight into this new version; the story is easy to follow. It has lovely production values and Anne's lively, excitable personality makes it easy to want her to succeed. My partner has been thoroughly charmed already.
Food for the Soul ep1: It's the obligatory first episode of every modern 'school club' show where some people want to start a Food Research Club but lack the minimum numbers to get it approved by their teachers, making it necessary for them to bring a new person into their group. That new person is an anxious girl who loves food but second guesses everything she does to the point of ridiculousness, and she's eager to make friends she can go out to eat with. It's set in university rather than high school but everyone looks and acts like they're younger so the setting is rather immaterial, and the twist at the end didn't do much to make the girls appealing. I don't feel that this brings anything new to the table unless you cannot get enough of cute girls delightedly eating crunchy cutlets and just want something comfy to watch (there are crunchy delicacies in Kowloon Generic Romance too, though, along with a lot more mystique).
Teogonia ep1: Another fantasy isekai, though this one is a lot more ambitious when it comes to embedding its RPG-style mechanics properly in the world (such as consuming organs from vanquished foes to strengthen a person's spiritual power, which is a lot like a mana/level-up system except it's properly explained in-world). The lead is a (fairly annoying) young boy who is understandably displeased with his lot; the most powerful hoard the spoils of battle and low-ranking soldiers like him have to survive on scraps. On the other hand, he's not actually much use in combat and feels more like a liability. That all changes when he decides that he wants special powers like the ones he vaguely recalls in fiction from his intermittent otherworldly memories, and then, moments later, conveniently manifests them, so things are probably about to change for the hero. It looks nice and the designs are better than most of the usual generic self-insert RPG-lite nonsense, but nothing has really grabbed me so far.
Wind Breaker s2 ep1: Finally time to start watching some of the new shows that I already know as we're running low on new material and I'm not convinced that HIDIVE's meagre selection is worth the cost of resubscribing! This whole episode was a big fight scene to draw people back in. It took me most of the episode to actually remember why these particular groups were fighting but it didn't really matter since this isn't the most complicated series of its kind. I'm looking forward to getting to the meat of this arc because mostly-faceless goons in hoodies aren't the most engaging enemies (ok, some had names but it didn't really matter). The character animation looked pretty great and the background CG for the massive brawl was crummy; I'll keep watching since I'm invested at this point.
R
