Villainess Level 99: I May Be The Hidden Boss But I'm Not The Demon Lord ep1: Yet another snooze-fest soulless 'parody' of otome games with the gimmick being that the reincarnated isekai heroine is the villainess (again) and she's accidentally super-powerful in spite of wanting to live an easy life, due to having done nothing other than grind for experience points from the moment she realised her situation (I'm not spoiler tagging that, it's in the title). I just finished last season's I'm In Love With The Villainess (WataOshi) recently and it's weird how such superficially-similar parodies can hit so differently; WataOshi came across as though it was made lovingly by someone who might conceivably have played otome games before and had a (silly) idea for a way to make their story entertaining, whereas this one - like most - seems more like a bandwagon-jumping mess of assumptions and stereotypes without a single original thought to its name. Utterly unenjoyable, and the repeated use of the same PS1-era CG carriage in at least half a dozen scenes was unnecessarily offensive to anime as a visual medium.
Cherry Magic! Thirty Years Of Virginity Can Make You A Wizard?! ep1: The latest incarnation of the BL series inspired by an old joke, interpreted here as virgins who reach the age of 30 gaining the ability to read minds of people they touch. It is, of course, the perfect setup to force shy, awkward people into reassessing how other people see them (and others), though whether they use their newfound powers to turn things around for themselves is still in the hands of the individual. The first episode whizzes through the lead's understandable shock at his newfound powers and goes straight to the awkward discovery that one of his coworkers unexpectedly has a crush on him (I appreciate that BL tends to move quite quickly!) Having already watched the live action drama and read some of the manga I'm probably not going to go through the story all over again in anime form at this point, but I checked out the first episode to be nosy and it seemed like a decent enough retelling of a series which, while not especially groundbreaking, is fun enough to be memorable.
Doctor Elise: The Royal Lady with the Lamp ep1: Mixed feelings. I liked the art style and the thinking behind this isekai (?) double reincarnation fantasy but the haphazard way that the story was actually told felt unnecessarily messy. A bratty rich girl dies young because everyone hates her (this sounds familiar) and then ends up being reborn as an orphan in Japan, who struggles against adversity and becomes a genius, sought-after surgeon who attracts gushing fangirls and never fails to save a single patient. Unfortunately, when her new life also comes to an abrupt end she's sent back to her original life with an opportunity to right the wrongs and be a better person there as well.
Why the doctor's story involved jumping back and forth in time every couple of scenes made no sense to me - the chaos didn't seem to add anything positive to the narrative - and some of the setup was excessively silly. I understood that she was trying her utmost not to take her second chance for granted but the lead's angelic, self-sacrificing attitude was almost comical at times, and the supposed 100% success rate for her life-and-death procedures just felt awkward. It made the doctor part of the storyline seem unrealistic and silly. In spite of those complaints, though, this wasn't a bad first episode and if the storytelling settles down long enough to provide some answers it might be a decent series - but the real problem is that I think I'd rather watch the modern surgery show set in Japan than another pseudo-historical European-ish fantasy (which may or may not be an isekai, I'm assuming that it is but if that was confirmed I blinked and missed it). We didn't get to see much of the not-Japan setting in the first episode and nothing about it especially appealed.
Metallic Rouge ep1: A rather good first episode. Sometimes, after watching a dozen wimpy isekai rehashes, it turns out that all you want to do is watch cool-looking androids in power armour punching one another to music, evoking memories of the good old days of 90s anime with a modern aesthetic update. I have no idea what's actually going on in this 'buddy' spy series about an android and her human(?) handler/hacker/friend but the first episode did a good job of getting my attention, so I guess I'll keep watching and find out.
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