Well, first then, of the ones that I’m watching, the only ones that really stand out to me are the OP and ED for Guild Receptionist (which switched places two episodes back). The current OP is gorgeous and the ED is adorable. Of the ones I browsed for the thread, the only ones that really stood out to me were the Apothecary Diaries OP, which is excellent, and the Aquarion: Myth of Emotions ED, which is awful.

So I started off the past week with the rest of An Explosion on This Wonderful World - Megumin’s KonoSuba spin-off - and loved everything about it. It’s just solid - good animation, voice acting and music, engaging characters, interesting stories, and laugh-out-loud funny.

Megumin, or more precisely her hat, regularly reminds me of an obscure one that’s been on my TBW list for years – Majimoji Rurumo, so I finally sat down to watch it, and it was mostly disappointing. Rurumo herself is a decent character, and the tropish Disciplinary Committee chief/tsundere childhood friend is at least better than might be expected, and… that’s about it. Most notably, the MMC is not only one of those intensely annoying harem protagonists who’s mostly in perpetual cringey horndog overdrive except when the plot demands that he set it aside entirely and become preternaturally noble, generous and wise for exactly as long as it takes to settle the current crisis, but is easily the worst version of that I’ve ever seen.

Then I knocked around for a bit, catching up with the current season series I was watching and adding another one, and bouncing off of a few things.

Honey Lemon Soda is still unremarkable but satisfying, and that’s fine. It doesn’t really need to be more than that. And Guild Receptionist is still on track to be awesome. And I caught up with Zenshu, which is… I don’t know. It started off great - the genre mix of an isekai animator with a mahou shoujo transformation scene was brilliant and the animation in particular has been stellar. But then the story did an abrupt faceplant in the last episode and didn’t really recover much in the most recent one. It’s possible that it’s just in a bit of a slog as it sets up drama to come, but it’s also possible that it just went sideways and isn’t going to recover. We’ll see…

Then, in what I thought was a stroke of brilliance, I remembered a series that’s been on my TBW for over a decade, and is generally considered something of a cult classic - Arakawa Under the Bridge But here I am, two days later and seven episodes in, and I’m pretty sure I’ve dropped it. I just have no interest in watching it any more.

The basic concept is great and the cast is great, with one glaring exception - Rec is just as much of an insufferable and stupidly pig-headed jackass as he was the first moment he appeared. Even after all the time he’s spent on the riverbank and all the experiences he’s had, his character growth remains at zero. And I just can’t tolerate him any longer.

Not sure what’s next…

Interesting episode.

It gives me hope after the unsatisfying conclusion to last week’s episode. I was hoping that that ass-pull that supposedly resolved the last crisis was going to be treated as an unsatisfying ass-pull in-universe, and though they didn’t address that one specifically, that was the broad concept in this episode. Basically, Natsuko was coasting on hubris and unwarranted confidence (not coincidentally just like she apparently was in the real world), and now it’s blowing up in her face.

And Justice looks to be an interesting addition.

Looking forward to the next episode

That was pretty damned awesome. There’s just something really gratifying about seeing Alina curbstomp an enemy. And even in the midst of all of that, I laughed when they thanked her and she went all tsundere.

And Jade, who could’ve been bogged down in cliche, is turning out to be a surprisingly interesting and amusing character. It’s great watching the way he and Alina interact.

And it looks like the next episode is going to focus on Lululee, and I’m looking forward to that.

This series is proving to be a gem.

I caught up on this series last night and absolutely loved it… right up until this episode.

It started off well enough, and it still shared one of the greatest strengths of the series - astonishing art. But the resolution of the crisis of the week wasn’t exciting or funny or even particularly interesting. It was just cheesy and forced and unsatisfying.

I do see a glimmer of hope though - with as self-aware and meta as this series has been, it’s possible that that cheesy solution is going to have consequences somewhere down the line - that it’s going to be recognized as an unsatisfying ass-pull in-universe, and have to be fixed or ret-conned or something like that.

Or I guess it’s possible that a series that had been notably good just face-planted for some reason…

That moment when Ishimori caught herself standing there with her middle school album and suddenly realized what she was doing and started to think that there’s no way anyone could actually be interested in it, so just quietly slunk away - that especially spoke to me. I know exactly how that feels.

I think part of what impresses me about this is that it captures the reality of social anxiety in a way that more exaggerated and stylized depictions - like Bocchi the Rock - never can.

So I get caught up in all of her little victories. They are little, in the grand scheme of things, but they’re also huge in a way. Though even she hasn’t fully realized that yet.

Started off last week with the rest of Scrapped Princess (2003), which was excellent. It has everything - an intriguing story, great characters, fascinating worldbuilding, humor, action, intrigue, drama, tragedy, redemption… And quality animation and music to boot. It was just a pleasure from start to finish.

And then, of all things, I followed it up with one that was even better, and from a somewhat unexpected quarter. Eizouken ni wa Te wo Dasu na / Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! (2020).

It was directed by Yuasa, which is a huge point in its favor IMO - he consistently impresses me. But at the same time, it’s an anime about anime, which is a niche genre that I find to be mostly tedious and self-absorbed, so even with Yuasa at the helm, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot. But I was so, so wrong. It’s glorious, and immediately jumped high onto my all-time favorites list…

One thing is that it mostly skips past the drudgery and workaday world of making anime - the part that most series focus on, IMO to their detriment. Instead, it gets all of that out of the way right off the bat by bringing together a main cast of three who are perfectly suited for their respective roles of director, animation lead and producer, then puts them in a wonderfully run down studio with every tool they might need just sitting there waiting for them. They do of course face problems, but they’re generally more abstract, with the biggest recurring one being that they just can’t stop creating - every idea leads to another idea, every one of which they want to draw.

And that really sets the tone for the anime - what it is is a celebration - a love letter to anime, and further to imagination and creativity and the thrill and fulfillment of visualizing something and striving to communicate it, then watching as an audience gets it, with all the impact you hoped for.

And a wonderful thing about it is that all the while that the characters are coming up with ideas and animating them, trying to capture movement and mood and interesting design, the anime itself, in the background so to speak, is casually throwing in its own wonderful animations. There’s a constant stream of just little riffs scattered here and there - a transitional scene or a bit of background movement or some camera work - that are astonishing, and apparently the same thing the anime is depicting - people creating interesting imagery just for the joy of it.

And even with all of that, the characters manage to be engaging, there’s a satisfying amount of growth and it’s even laugh out loud funny. Even the OP is awesome. What more could I want?

It was almost a relief to follow that up with something… not good.

Duan Nao / Die Now is Chinese, and… well … it shows. It’s very derivative and tropish. The biggest problem with it though is that it introduced what could’ve been an interesting story in spite of the tropishness, and dropped all sorts of hints to apparent multiple layers of mystery… then ended. With another… oh… 30 or 40 episodes, it could’ve been good. Maybe.

So after that I was in the mood for a sure thing, so I’m watching Megumin’s KonoSuba spin-off - An Explosion on This Wonderful World (2023) and laughing my ass off.

Oh, and along the way, and uncharacteristically, I’m following not one but two different current series - Honey Lemon Soda and I May Be a Guild Receptionist, But. Honey Lemon Soda is okay - most notable so far for being pretty good in spite of being very tropish. Guild Receptionist is great though, and with the latest bit of character background, looks like it could turn out to be really special.

First, I’ve been meaning to mention that the ED is just the cutest thing I’ve seen in months, so seeing it switched to the opening was kind of neat.

Ashita no Watashi ni Sachi Are

The episode was interesting. I wasn’t sure if this was even going to have a plot of any note - with the right cast, it likely could’ve worked as gag/slice of life and I would’ve been fine with that. But it’s looking like it is going to have a plot, and it could be interesting.

And the implications of that flashback also go some way toward explaining the other theme - what had been the OP - and the reason why the two were switched. All of that imagery of what appears to be Alina as a well-established adventurer, beautiful though it is, didn’t quite fit with the notion that all she ever wanted to be was a receptionist. With what we know now though…

Perfect Day

Looking forward to the next episode.

All right - I’m sold already, just on that synopsis and the factvthat it’s an original.

Just hoping western civilization doesn’t collapse first.

Still liking this, vanilla though it might be.

This episode faltered a bit, with too many people being too kind to her all at once, which seemed unnatural and forced just for plot purposes. But I’m interested to see how the cliffhanger is going to play out.

I’m up to episode 6, so still fairly early. I have some ideas about where it might be headed (it’s certainly the case that the world that Pacifica is prophesied to poison probably doesn’t actually deserve to survive anyway), but I’m mostly just reveling in the fact that it keeps surprising me, so that’s good news.

Started the week off with the rest of Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita (Humanity Has Declined), which was great - alternately goofy, cozy and surreal.

Then I had the sort of odd experience of “discovering” a director I hadn’t realized I was already a fan of - Makoto Shinkai. I just happened on Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko: Everything Flows and it was wonderful - bittersweet and heartfelt and simply beaufiful, and I liked it so much I looked up the director, and only then discovered that he had also done Suzume and 5 cm per second and Kimi no Na wa, among others. I had completely failed to notice that three of my favorite anime movies were all from the same director.

So then I went on a sort of mini binge, and watched Tenki no Ko, Kotonoha no Niwa and Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, all of which were good, though not quite as good as his certainly not coincidentally better known ones.

Then I just sort of wandered aimlessly before ending up at Tasogare Otome x Amnesia (Dusk Maiden of Amnesia). I read the manga back in the day and remembered liking it, but didn’t remember much other than bits and pieces of the plot. It was good all in all - an odd but actually plot-relevant mix of school life, ecchi rom-com with a dash of harem and full-on Junji Ito style horror.

Then, as a change of pace, I dipped back into my own past and watched Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. It’s one of the first anime I ever owned (on VHS), and I have no idea how many times I’ve watched it over the years, but I haven’t seen it since I last owned a VCR, which has to have been… at least 15 years ago. And it was just as much fun as I remembered.

And at the moment I’m watching an intriguing oddity called Scrapped Princess. At first glance, it appears to be a sort of cheesy swords and sorcery adventure story, but it’s been revealing surprising depth as it goes along and has really been quite good. Remains to be seen how it plays out…