Liar Liar ep1: It's that show where some clueless dude transfers to a specialist school and ends up entangled with a feisty redheaded tsundere against a backdrop of silly regulations and magical pseudoscience (we've all seen a dozen versions of this over the last few years). The twist this time is that there's a convoluted game of ranks overlaid over long-established lies and misdirection, which could have come really close to being interesting had the writing resisted the temptation to make the female lead a ragey idiot with no critical thinking ability. If you like the genre (or have more tolerance for tsundere girls in short skirts than I do) this is probably ok.
The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today ep1: I hate all of the CG. The animation on the actual characters is fine, save for the occasional attempt at artsy camera angles and slightly vapid expressions, but it feels as though 50% of the content in this first episode looked horrible which isn't a great experience in a visual medium. The actual series is a bit like Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid without the fan service, where the lead (an office worker) has to carry most of the show via monologues reacting to her uncannily gigantic feline housekeeper. The human interactions were very flat and it was only the scenes with the cat which were interesting to me.
Saint Cecilia and Pastor Lawrence ep1: Is this meant to be set in our world or another one? I'm starting to lose my grip on reality. Like last season's Edomae Elf this is a show about a religious figure beloved in the local community who has a few personality flaws which come through as soon as she's away from her worshippers. In this case, Saint Cecilia has a huge crush on her father figure/tutor/boss/attendant/landlord, Pastor Lawrence. The worldbuilding felt really weird; even putting the ambiguous setting aside they occasionally mentioned details which didn't make sense. For example, it's a plot point that their church seldom performs weddings, even though there were many visitors throughout the day and the 'village' seemed to be stuffed to the gills with women and children. Is there a rival church? Is marriage not really a thing in this society? If the village is simply tiny, why does it always seem so big on screen? I also felt as though I wanted to understand basic facts such as the characters' ages and origins instead of being dropped straight into their (non-existent) romance shenanigans, because those details are extremely important in deciding how to interpret some of the characters' more questionable interactions! Is Lawrence overprotective (probably) or is Cecilia just a preteen (I have no idea)? It all looked nice but the lack of explanation really didn't work for me.
Dark Gathering ep1: What a confusing tone this has! I quite liked the surreal/horror moments, but the kid character isn't really compelling and the initial investment in the school backstory (which was then ignored) made the first episode feel jumbled. Which might be intentional, since it feels as though there's a lot yet to be explained, but the first episode didn't really hang together for me. And the female lead's behaviour was very confusing throughout, which increased the spookiness at the expense of her making any sense as a character. Even though the premise of 'traumatised guy who can see ghosts' has been done many times before, this is a fresh spin on the formula and I can see why some people would be intrigued.
Synduality Noir ep1: Pretty interchangeable with all of the other mixed media mecha game tie-ins we've had over the years, this CG-heavy action show ploughs through staples of the genre, like finding a hot girl with amnesia and the lead's status struggles, and doesn't achieve much else. There's also a lot of Namco product placement. It's not terrible. The mecha and monsters all feel floaty in CG which spoiled the action elements for me, and the weird background horniness was too PG to be meaningful. But I quite liked the effort put into setting up dynamics between characters (and there were quite a few characters, not all of whom were spiky-haired teen boys), so it ended up being more watchable than I'd expected.
The Great Cleric ep1: Yet another isekai-by-numbers where some nameless dude dies and is inexplicably whisked away to a fantasy world by a benevolent deity. He decides to become a healer because he used to be in sales and thinks that it's a good way to establish himself in an unfamiliar world (even though it's the most generic fantasy world imaginable, down to its SNES RPG status screens and guilds), and the usual hijinks follow as his real-life work ethic helps him to adapt to the lethargic isekai world. It was a bit weird that he made up his own tragic backstory to give a fake grounding for how heroic he's meant to be simply for not setting out to be a scammer from the outset. Overall this show was inoffensive in every way - the animation is mediocre but serviceable, the voice performances are fine, the script masterfully avoids the needless creepiness of most of these shows - so there's no real reason to hate it other than for its complete pointlessness as an entertainment property.
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