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86: EIGHTY-SIX (Japanese audio) - Episodes 18-21 (On-Hold until 22-23 air in March 2022)
Banished from the Hero's Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside (Japanese audio) - Episodes 11-13 (Completed)
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Entertainment District Arc (Japanese audio) - Episodes 3-4
The Faraway Paladin (Japanese audio) - Episodes 10-11
The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat (Japanese audio) - Episodes 8-12 (Completed)

And that pretty much wraps up my Autumn 2021 simulcast backlog catch-up, with 86 delayed to March 2022, Demon Slayer is on-going and Faraway Paladin concluding its run in early January.

Winter 2022 looks pretty lackluster in terms of the offerings from first glance, but for obvious reasons I'll be watching Attack on Titan weekly while the rest may be saved for the end of the season.
 
RUMBLE GARANNDOLL eps 10-12 (complete)
Filling an empty shell.
Turns the interesting idea of a universe where Imperial Japan is still a thing invading our universes' modern Japan and oppresses it into a fun campy action romp with mecha. As the oppression is mostly directed at Akihabara and the "depravity" of Otaku culture within it's up to said Otaku to fight back and our MC has to pilot a mech driven by the passion of "battery girls" each representing a different sub-culture of Otaku-dom, and the mech changes design accordingly. The 3 girls in the MCs "harem" were all fun with different quirks, but the MC wasn't as fun and his attitude kept flip-floping which was, sort of, to do with his backstory, but happened a bit too much. The enemy characters were a bit too numerous meaning they didn't get enough screen time.
The art was very vibrant and the character designs interesting. The animation was good, but some of the action was a bit confusing.
6/10
 
Seitokai Yakuindomo season 2 and movie: and so the dirty jokes continue. There is a thin thread of continuity in amongst the horde of filthy (often incomprehensible) humour. I wouldn't have minded the fact we don't have all the OVA's (which were apparently only given away with limited editions of the manga) if they didn't keep referring to them. Overall it was entertaining, but inconsistencies include what was bleeped (Golden Week was fine, but the subsequent mention of a g***** shower wasn't) and Aria was either not wearing underwear (apparently always) or she had a chastity belt (also apparently always). Also, was the chastity belt for the protection of the men around her, I wonder, as she was the feistiest one of the lot. For such a dirty show, it was surprising how little fan service there was.
 
Sasami-san@Ganbaranai episodes 1-6: Weird and hard to understand in the first couple of episodes but it's settling down to an interesting story.

Photo Kano episodes 1-7: boy joins school photo club which is only interested in getting voyeuristic shots of the schoolgirls. All got creepy very quickly, especially the blackmail parts. Not sure I have the will to put the second disc in.
 
SAKUGAN eps 10-12 (complete)
To be continued?
This started with a vague destination and was mostly episodic as the characters moved vaguely towards said destination before suddenly deciding to have an actual plot with about 4 episodes left. Even so the bad guys aren't clear in what they're after.
The 2 MCs are annoying though so I didn't particularly care about them, although there's a bit of a revelation about the daughter at the end, but again pretty vague.
And then it ended without an ending!
Art and animation were very good though.
6/10

Decided to drop Platinum Edge End. The "hero" characters were mainly wet blankets and the "villain" characters were all edgelords. Don't know how the person who wrote Light Yagami could write such one note characters!
 
Lupin III: The Last Job (2010)

My expectations for this one were very low, as I vaguely remember hearing that Last Job was a stinker, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. The character writing is a bit rough and it does struggle to get away from that formulaic ‘assembly line’ feeling that dogs so many of the TV specials, but it struggles pretty hard; the set pieces are lively and there are some nice touches in the animation. As the plot concerns the Fuma ninja clan, I also couldn’t help thinking this might originally have been conceived of as a sequel to The Fuma Conspiracy - it’s never acknowledged, but one of the good ninjas could easily have been Goemon’s love interest from that story. With a bit of tightening up and a reasonable injection of cash, this could have been a decent theatrical feature, but as is, it’s still above average for the tv films.
 
The Irregular at Magic High School: Reminiscence Arc (Special) A fairly enjoyable prequel story for Miyuki and Tatsura. 3.5/5

Neon Genesis Evangelion (Rewatch)
episodes 20-26 & The End of Evangelion (Film) (Complete. A great rewatch and series, though I’m still not sure where I stand with EoE. I will be checking out the rebuild films in the future.) 4.5/5
 
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Sorairo Utility
Pretty great for an OVA based on the director Kengo Saito's Twitter timeline. Given Saito and Akira Amemiya's previous work this short feels somewhat reminiscent of SSSS.GRIDMAN in its direction and storyboarding. A nice short to start the year with and hopefully a sign of good things to come with Yostar Pictures' upcoming Arknights anime. With their connections I wouldn't be surprised if an episode gets outsourced to TRIGGER with a guest director like Amemiya or Yoh Yoshinari.
 
Blue Period eps 11 & 12 (complete)
Testing times and the result...
An interesting show about discovering a passion and the highs and lows of persuing said passion. It did get a bit repetitive with the MC discovering something new, gaining confidence, but then in the next episode having a crisis of confidence, before discovering something new again, gaining confidence, before in the next episode, etc, etc.
The side student characters mostly had some backstory to their journey and the sensei characters were fun and informative especially Oba-san. However the side character with the most interesting story was Ryuji-san and their struggle with their identity. The best 2 episodes (9 & 10) were centered on them with a couple of really impactful scenes with one in 9 seeing them at their lowest ebb talking about leaving everything behind as a train was coming into the station which made me tense up so much, I don't remember being so nervous for a character before, and then in 10 when they and the MC drew themselves naked and confronted themselves.
The art of the art was really good, but even though the character designs were good there was something about the style that was a bit off, which I can't put my finger on.
8/10

Aquatope on White Sand
eps 22-24 (complete)
Looking to the future.
At first I thought this was going to be similar to Sakura Quest by the same studio, but as it approached the halfway mark it became more obvious that it wasn't the case, these episodes dragged a little, but after the halfway point and a little time skip the second half was probably a bit more interesting as the characters faced different challenges than in the first half. The ending felt a little rushed with so many characters to get their stories tied up and there was the occasional side plot that didn't go anywhere.
As I mentioned there were numerous characters, most of which had enough about them to be interesting which meant lots of different types of interactions. I liked the vast majority of them.
The art and animation was nice. The character designs were more on the naturalistic side, no wild hair does or colours, so a few of them looked very similar to others.
8/10
 
Nyan Koi! episodes 1-12 (Complete. Started the new year by giving a series I had dropped a second chance and found it to be fairly humorous if a bit repetitive when it came to the characters and their respective tropes.) 3/5

Otaku No Video OVA
This OVA series acts as a pseudo-biographical piece combining an animated storyline with mockumentary-style live-action interviews about the otaku lifestyle. The result is a bit mixed in places but feels like a fascinating time-capsule as well. 3.5/5

Paranoia Agent (Rewatch)
episodes 1-5
 
Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles (English Dub) Episode 1

The World's Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat (English Dub) Episode 6

Banished from the Hero’s Party, I Decided to Live a Quiet Life in the Countryside Episode 13 (Complete)
 
Sasami-san@Ganbaranai episodes 7-12: good action packed second half with a very open ending. In some ways, I feel we have all become a little hikikomori thanks to Covid.

Girlish Number episodes 1-6: a look at the inner lives of some aspiring voice actresses which, sadly, stars a very shallow, vain and patronising girl. Another cheap Christmas pick-up that I'm unlikely to finish.
 
Killing Bites
Rumble in the Jungle. Fairly ridiculous and pretty extreme at times but was pretty entertaining.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable
Slice of life Jojo. A very different feel to the previous globe trotting save the world stories, with it's one town, episodic storytelling. But it was still a fun and weird watch. Josuke was a fun new protagonist and Jotaro was much better than in his own series.

Jyu-Oh-Sei
This was surprisingly good actually. Wasnt sure at first but it steadily improved as it went along and had some pretty interesting scenarios and surprises along the way.

The Watch
Decided to finally give the live action adaptation of the Terry Pratchett chatacters a go. Although some of the changes are pretty egregious on balance I did enjoy it once I'd settled down into what this show wanted to be. Angua and Carrot were especially well done.

I've put the abomination that is the Librarian under a spoiler as it's not an image for the faint of heart

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Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Entertainment District Arc episode 5 Going underground.

Paranoia Agent (Rewatch) episodes 6-13 (Complete. This is a great anime and a showcase of Satoshi Kon’s talent and storytelling- a creative mind we lost way too soon.) 4/5

Persona 5 the Animation (Rewatch)
episodes 1-15
 
Blue Period
One of the more serious seasonals I started last year and yet Yaguchi is still one of the most moe characters. Really enjoyed this series and its portrayal of the struggles artists face. Great ensemble of supporting characters too. Would love to see a sequel.
 
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