Mono ep1: A soporific 'all-girl school club' anime about a girl who joins the photography club to take pictures of her senior. All is well until the older girl leaves, at which point the less experienced photographer is suddenly in charge of a tiny club about a topic she doesn't really understand. She teams up with her fellow club member, who is a better character in every way, and together they meet a strange artist who helps them to learn more about working with cameras, images and art in general. It's weird because I didn't hate this at all - it was perfectly adequate as an example of its genre and less annoying than most - but its low stakes, cute adventure which went nowhere meant that the episode really dragged. I think I'd have reacted a lot better if it had half-length episodes to keep the content feeling fresh.
Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary s2 ep1-3: After the climax of season one, this season starts off with the core dynamic having completely changed; Osanai gets a little more focus than Kobato but both are barely side characters as Urino chaotically hurtles through an investigation for the newspaper club. A surprising amount of time seems to be passing in the background as the story rolls on, which makes it stranger that few people are stopping to question some of the details, but I'm curious to see where things are going in this weird mystery show which skilfully makes even the most mundane fluff seem interesting.
SHIROHIYO (Reincarnated as a Neglected Noble: Raising My Baby Brother With Memories From My Past Life) ep1: A young noble in a generic western fantasy world (where everyone can summon pop-up RPG status screens) realises that in a previous life, he was a happy-go-lucky Japanese nerd. The unique element this time is that the lead is a pudgy noble kid instead of a skinny one (I'm struggling to come up with anything else) but his old memories taught him to be less bratty in his new life as a spoiled (and emotionally-starved) rich kid, so he's neurotically earnest in everything he does. Because he used to like sewing and housework he's ended up as a noble with mundane skills in crafting, which is apparently unusual and hilarious. He's then blessed with magic by the goddess of fertility because he sung to flowers in the garden a few times. While this isn't the worst of its genre by a long shot it's so creatively barren that I can't see much point in continuing; the brother-raising element isn't really a factor in the first episode but it's difficult to imagine how it will improve things. The irreverent elf teacher is the best character because he doesn't seem to give a hoot about taking the show seriously.
All caught up on everything now other than the MHA spin-off (waiting on my buddy so we can watch it together) and the shows I can't watch (HIDIVE's exclusives aren't worth the subscription and Lazarus has no stream in the original language). My schedule is reasonably busy this season!
R
