Eromanga Sensei-Episodes 9
Elf is 100% the Ruri of Eromanga, only more trash.
Alice and Zouroku-Episode 9
Sana might be my favorite character this season. There are probably better characters, but in terms of the one I unequivocally adore the most, Sana wins by a landslide.
Haikyu!!-Episodes 12 and 13
Alright, I'm at the halfway point of Haikyu!!, and as I said in an post, I wanted to compare my thoughts to Yuri on Ice, to determine if my issues with that series were sports-centric or not. If I'm honest, even I'm surprised at the result, but I am enjoying Haikyu so much that I can certainly write off the counter argument I've had thrown at me in the past of 'sports shows just not being for me' when criticising Yuri on Ice. To be fair to YOI, I think that Volleyball just lends itself better to being in an anime due it being generally more action orientated and high energy. As I've made abundantly clear in the past, a lot of the issues I had with YOI came down to the abysmally repetitive nature of the ice skating, and Haikyu avoids this by constantly changing up the angles and creating a sense of energy by using quick cuts. It would've been easy to make volleyball look as boring as ice skating looked in Yuri on Ice, so by that same metric I see no reason why Yuri on Ice couldn't have used similar techniques in order to make the tedious skating sequences more engaging for an audience with no vested interest in the sport. I did only want to compare the sports aspects of both anime, but I can't help but acknowledge how big a role investment in characters plays in said sports sequences. I was very cold on both Yuri and Victor from the go, but Haikyu has a cast of characters that I genuinely love, and the dynamics between the teammates in the game add to my enjoyment too. The weak link as far as Haikyu is concerned is Tsukishima, as he just seems like a dick with no real depth as of yet, comparable to Russian Yuri, but I'll give both series the benefit of the doubt and assume they'll fix this later.
This was a bit rambly and perhaps a little shoddily written, but I am rather happy to report that yes, I can in fact like sports shows. There is an argument to be made about if I just don't like non-shounen sports shows or not, but that's a bridge to cross another time, me thinks.