What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Seto Kaiba]

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics remains an... unconventional choice.  For a comedy, it's somewhat odd that it takes the time to address the realistic struggles of homelessness in Japan.

Spoiler

Though, of course, it can't seem to resist the opportunity for fanservice... so the homeless lady knight Livia looking for her lost princess is stuck working in a cosplay hostess club after volunteering for a job where she could "make money quickly" while accepting food handouts in a park.

There's another odd reality-ensues moment almost immediately thereafter where the club gets raided by the police and, as an illegal immigrant, Livia elects to flee rather than be questioned and possibly arrested.

By sheer dumb luck, when she goes to a private detective agency that takes jobs for as little as 30,000 yen she conveniently bumps into the princess she's been looking for and ends up being hired as his assistant after some prompting from the princess she serves.

(Reality immediately ensues when it turns out that, as a knight, Livia is absolute rubbish at detective work, office work, etc.)

Sara's actually a rather entertaining character in her own right.  Instead of being the helpless isekai victim, she's actually quite resourceful and independent.  

(And I'm terribly amused that the author decided to put realistic limitations on something as broken as invisibility magic... because it bends light, it's double-blind.  If you make your head invisible, you can't see!)  It shows a lot of consideration in the writing to ensure that the fantasy aspect wouldn't break the story any.

Not gonna lie, I am legitimately enjoying this one... in no small part because Sousuke and Sara's rapport is just good.  The writing definitely brings across that these two weirdos are genuinely having fun and enjoying each other's company, and it's easy to get swept up in that as a viewer too. 

 

A Condition Called Love is one I'm still torn on... mostly because the main guy is still giving of serious stalker vibes.

Spoiler

Honestly, the way he behaves, Hananoi is one of those examples of how a book like 50 Shades of Gray would come off like an episode of Law & Order: SVU if it weren't for the fact that the male lead is handsome and wealthy.

Hananoi gives off a lot of creeper vibes and says a lot of cringe-y things, but seems to get a pass on it because the girls all find him so darn good looking.

Mad respect for Hotaru then taking Hananoi aside to establish some boundaries and goals.  This girl's going places.

Intensely creeped out that Hananoi jumps straight to being buried together.

This interaction just repeats over and over... but Hotaru is at least savvy enough to realize that there's something very badly wrong with how Hananoi expresses himself.

This honestly gets worse when Hotaru visits Hananoi's home, and he has a corkboard family photo collage that is composed entirely of cropped pictures.

All in all, I hope this series will develop in a less creepy direction... it could be a cute romance if Hananoi stopped giving off such intense stalker vibes.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Todays Mushoku Tensei was so heartwarming.  Rudy just loves Sylphie.

[Seto Kaiba]

Astro Note continues to be a weird throwback of a series.

Spoiler

Mira's on Earth looking for some kind of key hidden on the grounds of Astro Manor.  A key that will make her the heir apparent to the throne of her home planet Wid.

The episode basically rolls things back a back and retells the previous story from Mira's perspective, focusing on her attempts to find the key she's been sent to find, her frustration with her orders, and her growing affection for Earth's culture.  

The art style continues to be this delightful throwback to the 70's and 80's stylings of Leiji Matsumoto, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and Haruhiko Mikimoto.  If anything, it feels like everything's been made extra-colorful in this episode to emphasize that fact.

There's some business involving an alien spy called a Hub that shows up disguised first as a bird and then as a roomba, and a great deal of confusion because the show's protagonist half-hears several conversations and assumes Mira is a widow (not a person from planet Wid) and that the invading Hub is a romantic partner (a hubby).

Mira eventually realizes that the former owner of Astro Manor was probably from Wid as well, and tries to build her new search along those lines.

As goofy as it is, Astro Note continues to be a delight to watch for both the visuals and the story.  The reactions these characters have are over the top in a wonderfully old school way.

[Seto Kaiba]

Crunchyroll's 2024 Spring lineup is providing a veritable bumper crop of unusual shows... I've added The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, Yatagarasu: the Raven Does Not Choose Its Master, Mysterious Disappearances, Unnamed Memory, KonoSuba 3, and a few other titles to my watchlist. I'm up to 27 this season. 

 

First up on my lunchtime watchlist is Vampire Dormitory Ep2.  I missed, last episode, that this is a commemorative work for the 70th anniversary of Nakayoshi magazine.

Spoiler

... so, yeah, the protagonist gets to remember that all that hot nonsense from the previous episode actually happened. 🤣

Pulling a sweet polly oliver on a gynophobic vampire who thinks you're a boy is an awfully risky strategy to get free room and board but whatever.  Ruka's morning meal veers straight into "does this remind you of anything?" territory, complete with an indecent number of sparkles.

(If anything, it's slightly impressive just how well Mito is handling this.  The indoor bat that's actually the butler is treated like an unusually uninteresting sight until it turns into a second vampire.)

Mito now gets to continue the sweet polly oliver routine while being forced to attend an all-boys private academy with her new vampire master.  You have to admire Ruka's commitment to the vampire aesthetic, finding a private school where the uniform's a black suit and red dress shirt.  She also gets to keep the act up at work, having taken a job at the same cafe where she met Ruka.

We're finally getting some elements of the love story here, with several people seemingly being jealous of Ruka's relationship with Mito.  Not sure what direction they're building in individually but it seems like they're piling in with considerable haste.

(I have to admit, the idea of vampires having some kind of magic item to measure blood quality is a bit bizarre... especially a tacky heart-shaped choker.  If you think about it even a little, it's like... one of those pop-up turkey timers but for people.)

After spending half the episode on Ruka being as cool a shoujo manga male lead as humanly (vampire-ly?) possible, we learn his terrible secret.🤣

Super cool vampiric pretty boy Ruka is, to quote his butler, a "huge otaku vampire who's only into 2D girls".  He has a HUGE hidden bookshelf in his dorm room that's packed to bursting with magical girl merchandise.  Honestly, I absolutely lost it at the faces Mito is making as she judges the everloving hell out of him for it.  Worse when he starts quoting their catchphrase in falsetto and doing the poses. 🤣

(Poor Mito can't even tell her new classmates and coworkers that Ruka's fine after an accident in the storeroom because he spent the rest of the day at home doing cheers with a pair of glowsticks while watching his favorite magical girl show.)

There's a little bit of drama with the rough guy, Ren, who seems to be aware that Ruka's a vampire... and after saving Mito, Ruka immediately undermines himself by revealing that his reference material for romance is magical girl anime.

After a rough first episode, Vampire Dormitory's made some massive improvements and this new episode is quite a bit of fun.  In no small part because Ruka is just such a dork.  He and the protagonist Mito have surprisingly good chemistry that I wish had been more visible in the first episode.

 

 

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio is a rather unusual little drama/comedy about two high school students who, on being cast on a radio series, each discover that the other is ALSO a high schooler who's been moonlighting as a professional voice actor.

Spoiler

This is another one I picked up just because the premise was out-there enough that it seemed like a change of pace.

There's an interesting bit of reality ensuing in that both of the main characters, as small-time celebrities, take pains to change their appearance so that they can go about their daily lives without being harassed.  (Both also keep their profession a secret for similar reasons.)  Yumiko's public persona is a neat-and-tidy girl when she really favors gyaru style, and Chika's public persona is a girly-girl who in reality is the quiet and plain girl.

They end up finding out each other's secrets when the local radio station has a show drop out of its schedule and the producer pitches the idea of having two high school voice actresses they'd been auditioning do a show together.  They both meet in the pitch meeting after having just had a fight in school.

... I'm a bit worried about the writer.  Like, I know this is an anime, but god damn the writer for the radio show looks like she's got one foot in the grave.  She's introduced in sweats, wearing a compress, and with dark circles under her eyes so big she's in danger of being mistaken for a panda.  

It poses some interesting character drama as the two voice actresses with wildly different tastes try to get to know each other and get along.

I'm definitely gonna keep following this one... it's a ways outside of the usual, and it seems like it'll offer some good character development.

 

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World seems to be shaping up to be one of the few new isekai titles to offer a reasonably original take on the premise.  Instead of the reincarnatee being stupidly overpowered, he seems on course to rise to power by being a superhumanly good judge of character and bringing out the true potential in others by leveraging their hidden or unrealized talents.

Spoiler

With the first episode behind us, we're getting some actual exposition.

It looks like the driving force behind the plot is the gradual decline of the Summerforth Empire, in which the protagonist lives.  It was founded over 200 years before the start of the story when one of the seven kingdoms on the continent of Summerforth annexed the other six by force.  The Empire's authority is eroding rapidly because the current Emperor is an eight year old child whose retainers have usurped increasing amounts of power for themselves to wield in factional conflicts.  This is why the local lords like the protagonist's father have begun bolstering their forces and acting on their own, as factional warfare and outright rebellion are on the rise.

Some extra encouragement is added in the form of a local succession crisis, with the governor of the province being an old man in poor health who can't make up his mind which of his sons should inherit his position.  So the prospect of a civil war in the province is looming large over everything.

After last episode, Ars's father Raven (is this an Overlord reference?) seems to firmly believe in his son's supernaturally good judgement and asks him to seek out someone with talent in magic.

Ars goes to castle town looking for someone who is a talented magic user, and after some shenanigans they get robbed by a pickpocket who turns out to have an absurdly high latent talent for magic who turns out to be a girl who was sold into (and escaped from) slavery after being caught stealing from a noble household's larder.

This is definitely one to follow this season.  It keeps going to interesting and unconventional places.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Spice and Wolf was great again today. Holo is just too smart.

[Seto Kaiba]

I've had an unusual amount of time to watch today, since it's "annual mandatory training" season and those things are always so easy you'd have to be blind drunk and suffering a severe concussion to actually get those questions wrong. 🤣

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability feels like a show worth skipping.  It's one of those isekai adjacent titles where the world's a fantasy one that runs on RPG logic and the protagonist is basically just pure power fantasy.

Spoiler

TBH, I think I checked out on this one somewhere around the seventh or eighth "completely impossible" thing the protagonist did.

It's unapologetic about being power fantasy, but at the same time that's literally all it brings to the table... the protagonist is so stupidly powerful that nothing can threaten or even mildly inconvenience him.  There are no stakes to his story.  

This one's a hard pass if you actually want an engaging story.

 

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is exactly what it says on the tin.  It's a more literal application of isekai tropes with the only real twist being that the main guy was already living in a fantasy RPG world and got isekai'd to a subtly-different one.

Spoiler

It's not very good.

The protagonist whose name I have already forgotten is a random clerk who gets summoned to another world as The Hero and gets scoffed at because his stat line is trash and he has no cheat skill.  They kick him out of town and as soon as he levels up ONCE he has a stat line of all INFINITY and godlike power.  The only real gimmick is that he doesn't seem to actually realize he's gone from desk jockey to physical god in the space of exactly three slimes.

So since the King clearly tried to have him killed by sending him to a forest contaminated by evil magical toxic waste and monsters with monster-attracting magic on all the items he was given, he resolves to use his new broken-as-hell powers to live as he pleases under an assumed identity while the jackass they think is the hero goes off to get his arse beat by the dark lord.

They're definitely leaning hard on "waifu" appeal when he accidentally bullies a top-level wolf demon into submission without realizing how dangerous she is and she ends up swearing loyalty to him.

They really seem to be making a meal out of the gag that the protagonist doesn't understand that he's exponentially more powerful than the "hero"... it's basically their one plot device.

All I can describe this one as is "eminently skippable so far".

[Seto Kaiba]

Unnamed Memory is definitely a bit of an odd one for a fantasy series...

Spoiler

The story starts with a local kingdom's crown prince, Oscar, having snuck away from his official duties with his manservant Lazar to find and consult the Witch of the Azure Moon about a curse.  After climbing the witch's trap-laden tower and reaching the witch, Oscar relates that he and his father were cursed by the Witch of Silence to have the royal bloodline die out by being unable to father a heir.  The Witch of the Azure Moon, Tinasha, offers some exposition on the nature of curses and then reveals that what he is actually under is not a curse... but a blessing of protection on an unborn child so powerful that it'd kill any normal woman.  Tinasha volunteers to try and find the prince a suitable wife who could withstand the magic, and after some protesting about the possibility of the few women (if any) being underage, elderly, or married he opts to cut to the obvious solution and asks her to marry him and bear his children instead.

(Honestly, the protagonist having derring-do'd his way through the challenges of the witch's tower for the promise of a wish granted only to decide his wish is basically "lemme smash" is unintentionally hilarious.)

After some protesting on her part, which includes the guarded admission that his great-grandfather made the same request (without a curse prompting it), Tinasha ends up agreeing to live with him (platonically) in the capital for a period of one year to try and break the curse/blessing while he tries to convince her to make her stay something a bit more permanent.

Not really sure what to make of this one yet.  Oscar and Tinasha seem to have pretty good chemistry right off the bat, though it's almost hard to say what the genre here is meant to be.  It starts out feeling like fantasy/adventure but seems to course correct into a romance/drama partway into the first episode.  

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World is an OK show.   I will watch 1 more and then decide.

[Seto Kaiba]

Gave Mysterious Disappearances a whirl last night, and first impressions were frankly terrible.

It's usually not a great sign if a show's OP has multiple shots of clearly-intended-for-fanservice nudity in it.  Mysterious Disappearances seems to be hoping its audience will be too entranced by the "tracts of land" on display to notice the writing is hot garbage.

Spoiler

To be frank, the whole first episode feels like an excuse plot.

Two bookstore employees are stocking shelves and packaging store-exclusive bonuses with books when the manager comes up to them with a clearly old and battered book he found had been left in their store.  Instead of writing it off as a lost item and depositing it with the shopping center's office, the manager insists it must be an item that was "reverse shoplifted" (i.e. deliberately left there) in an argument even the characters seem to find painfully stupid and presents it to the lady clerk as a birthday present.  When she takes it home, she starts reading it shortly after midnight and discovers it's full of poems written in classical Japanese.  She reads one, and then goes shopping.  While in the store, she inexplicably shrinks to child size and somehow fails to properly notice that something is not on about all this.

Rather than panic, or have any kind of believable reaction... she goes home and starts writing.  And then wanders around town and is making random notes for a story she's writing.  As a child.  In the middle of the night.  While bleeding heavily for no adequately explored reason.

Then her coworker finds her and explains the book is actually a spellbook whose extremely specific spells are activated by reading the poems in the right conditions.  She'd activated a reverse-aging spell by being over 28, a virgin, and reading the poem by moonlight on the night of the full moon.  He talks her through reversing the spell, and she pops back to her proper age, then takes off because she doesn't want to give back the book that was literally killing her by making her leak slasher movie quantities of blood from her eyes and mouth like five seconds ago, repeatedly changing into a kid and adult to evade capture before she gives up, returns to her adult form, and lets her coworker who is seemingly well-versed in the occult take the book.

Don't get me wrong, I adore bad horror movies... but Mysterious Disappearances' first episode is bad on a level that's less "so bad it's funny" and more "flies clean off the end of the critical spectrum into the cloying void of dispassionate loathing" bad.  It almost feels like what you'd get if you asked Bing's version of ChatGPT to write a j-horror short story.  The characters seem to be on a mission to react in the least believable way at all times.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Date A Live V was great again today. 

 

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

OMG Date a Live V has given us 2 episodes of solid plot progess!!!

The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse are upon us..  repent!    lmao.

 

2nd Ep of Konosuba did not dissapoint either.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Watched Mysterious Disappearances Ep2 today.

Honestly, I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to review it properly.  It's as bad as the first episode, and yeah it still feels like a vaguely horror-themed contrivance used to excuse shots of the protagonist's massive rack.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

An Archdemon's Dilemma How to Love Your Elf Bride was great today. Poor Nephy but it had to be done for her safety. Poor Zagan thinking he has do it to begin with.

[Seto Kaiba]

A Condition Called Love is definitely one of the creepier romance stories I've seen.

That Hotaru is basically romantically tone deaf is about the only thing keeping Hananoi in the game, because this guy is constantly engaging in stalker-tier behavior.  It's actually kind of weird nobody has called him on it and that word hasn't gotten around his school considering how many acrimonious exes he supposedly has.

 

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics is definitely keeping things fresh and unusual with its changes in perspective from the princess working as a detective to the homeless lady knight.  It's a comedy, but it gets weirdly frank about several hard-hitting topics like homelessness, illegal immigration, and now the predatory behavior of cults in Japan.

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Mushoku Tensei was great today.  Rudy had his liar liar pants on fire moment with Sylphie.

[Seto Kaiba]

HIGHSPEED Etoile is still a very strong contender not only for most skippable series of the Spring 2024 lineup, but of the last year and CY2024 as well.  A dumbarse protagonist can work in a shounen adventure series where their only concern in the world is being strong enough to beat up the next bad guy.  It's less believable or excusable if the protagonist is in a profession with an extremely high skill floor and they're forced to operate in a professional context.  Like Ep1, Ep3 feels like a waste of an entire episode because...

Spoiler

... protagonist Rin Rindo is too goddamn dense to realize that the person she's mistaking for a fan and bragging to despite her being disqualified in the only race she's ever been in is the #2 ranked racer in the entire league.  There are half a dozen different people who try to clue her in to the fact that she's talking to the racer called "The Queen", and she's making zero attempt to disguise her identity or appearance, but Rin is too stupid and arrogant to figure it out even when this "superfan" is absolutely stomping her during a simulator race.

There's a limit to how much idiocy you can excuse in a protagonist... and when Rin Rindo not only doesn't know the rules of the sport she's debuting as a professional in but also doesn't know who the people she's competing against even are, it strains believability too much.

 

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride was good again this week.  They're trying to build some tension in the story, but all it really feels like is the author showing that they at least looked up the list of demons in the Lesser Key of Solomon on Wikipedia.  There's some good character moments though.

 

Vampire Dormitory is feeling increasingly like one of my standouts for the season.  It's surprisingly good fun with Mito and Ruka having some good banter and some nice moments together.  It's very reminiscent of Ouran High School Host Club in some ways, with Mito being very similiar to Ouran's Haruhi.  

 

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World is still pursuing its unconventional approach to the isekai genre, and I'm happy to see it.  It's not quite as exciting as the other titles that made names for themselves by subverting the genre's expectations (e.g. Overlord, KonoSuba, Yojo Senki, Re:Zero, and Shield Hero) but it's still very engaging character drama right now and it's undeniably satisfying watching the classist but not unreasonable Lord Raven repeatedly eat crow as his son Ars brings him various incredible talents that he can't bring himself to reject.

 

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is not really developing in any new, interesting, or unconventional directions.  It's very much a form letter "overpowered protagonist" isekai fantasy, though it's at least a little less lazy about it than many of the other entries in that category like Isekai Cheat Magician.  It's watchable, but thus far the series hasn't brought anything to the table we haven't seen other shows do before and do better.  It mostly seems to be veering into the obligatory harem part of the mandatory tropes, with the main love interest Rys spending most of the episode chasing away other girls she thinks are trying to capture her "husband's" attention romantically.

 

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability is also not developing in any new, interesting, or unconventional directions.  It too is more form letter isekai-style power fantasy and unlike Chillin' in Another World it's INCREDIBLY LAZY about the fact.  The story has no stakes because nothing in it can do more than to harmlessly amuse the incredibly overpowered protagonist Prince Lloyd.  It's just boring.  It feels like if you were to cut out all the scenes of people ranting about how amazing or impossible the things Lloyd is doing are, the show would probably be only about a quarter of its total runtime (and a good chunk of that would be the OP, ED, eyecatches, and the omakes).

 

Re:Monster still has yet to do anything to really distinguish itself as an isekai series, with the last several episodes having been devoted almost entirely to a standard isekai binge acquisition of new Skills in the inexplicably game-ified fantasy world.  Nothing about it really feels original or interesting, and the only thing it's really doing differently from other titles with essentially the same premise like So I'm a Spider, So What? and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is that the protagonist has a harem who seemingly all love him simply because he's not a standard-issue rape-y j-fantasy goblin.  Otherwise, it's pretty much pure form letter isekai power fantasy writing so it's incredibly dull with little-to-no sense of direction or purpose to the story.  There's some hilariously bad copy-pasted animation in this latest episode though, with all of the summoned skeleton warriors using exactly the same looped animation.

 

The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases could only politely be described as incredibly tedious.  It's never moved beyond being one of those isekai-adjacent titles that has an obligatory overpowered protagonist with cheat powers from the gods in a j-fantasy world with unexplained game mechanics.  It doesn't even do anything with its one halfway original idea about the Power of the Hero leading to the Hero inevitably being as hated and feared as the dark lord they've been created to destroy.  Eminently skippable.

 

Tadaima, Okaeri is one I'm starting this week.  It was billed as a more straightforward story about a gay couple raising a child together and dealing with discrimination because of their orientation... and that description turned out to be more than a bit wide of the mark.  A more accurate description of the setting reads more like a prompt for an mpreg fetish writer than anything, so I'm not surprised they didn't mention that...

Spoiler

... the story takes place in an alternate Japan wherein Humanity is divided into three groups based on the presence or absence of certain genes that allow for same-sex biological reproduction due to being functionally pseudo-hermaphroditic.

People with the "Alpha" gene have a secondary biological sex of "male" regardless of how they present, and people with the "Omega" gene have a secondary biological sex of female regardless of how they present.

These three genetic groups are treated like distinct social classes or separate races, with both "Alpha" and "Omega" gene holders being discriminated against and society frowning upon relationships between people of different genetic statuses.

It's not lewd in any way, thank goodness, but the bait-and-switch premise makes the story a lot less topical, interesting, or impactful.  It honestly feels like kind of a wasted premise and a weak effort to dodge a potentially controversial topic in the laziest way possible that inadvertantly makes the story unnecessarily complicated to no useful end.  I'm actually rather disappointed by this one, as there've been a number of shows recently that've tackled similarly thorny topics without resorting to such cheap cop-out moves and done them justice.

 

 

 

Edited April 22 by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers. Rys will do anything to please Flio. Uliminas appears, I laugh it is Tamura Yukari.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

Just came back from going to see Spy x Family Code White.     Not bad,  not stellar either.    It is a self contained stand alone story and can be skipped as it does not further any of the plot in the TV series.    If your a Fan of the series then I say go see it,  plenty of Anna hijinks and the climax is pretty over the top,  more like a studio trigger title then studio Wit.   

[Seto Kaiba]

Caught both the KonoSuba movie and the The Irregular at Magic High School OVA over the course of a long and particularly tedious road trip.

The KonoSuba movie God's Blessing on this Wonderful World!: Legend of Crimson is about as frustrating to watch as I remember the same story arc was to read in the light novel.  It isn't actually padded, but it feels padded because of how much of the story is spent sitting around doing essentially nothing.  There's a little bit of humor in how cringeworthy all the residents of the Crimson Demon village are as an entire (designer) race built on the concept of chuunibyou but it wears out its welcome relatively quickly and that leaves a lot of the humor in the hands of jokes about how Yunyun is friendless and Megumin's family is broke.  It's beautifully animated, at least, and the anime adaptation skips over a lot of the light novel's worst moments of Kazuma's lack of character development.

The Irregular at Magic High School: Reminiscence Arc is a lot less fun.  It's basically just an exposition dump about Tatsuya and Miyuki's backstory and a lot of it is stuff that already had been established earlier in the series.  It's mostly just an excuse to show off that Tatsuya has always been stupidly OP.

Spoiler

The only part that's really new to the audience is the exact circumstances of how Miyuki came to regard her life as belonging to Tatsuya... which could've been summed up in all about three sentences of dialog and left in a conversation in the main series.

 

Starting The Irregular at Magic High School S3 over lunch.

Spoiler

Considering last season ended with Tatsuya's classmates aware of a bunch of his secrets including that he's an active duty Special Forces soldier, that his lackluster skills with normal magic are a consequence of wielding some of the most broken powers imaginable, and that he's a Person of Mass Destruction even by the standards of the 10 Master Clans... it's beyond weird that absolutely nobody is behaving differently around him in school.  They literally watched him bring the dead back to life and vaporize all kinds of enemy soldiers and vehicles.  It's a safe bet they can put two and two together and realize that he was the architect of the Scorched Halloween incident.  Even well before that, Juumonji and Saegusa had already basically figured out that Tatsuya was from the 10 Master Clans.

Given how serious the series has been up to this point, the first episode of season three has several very out-of-place moments where the animation style changes to support physical comedy.  One female character goes super deformed and sprouts a Warner Bros-style wheel of feet to charge across the classroom and a protracted bit comedy in the middle where multiple characters slide across the screen without walking.  It feels especially out-of-place by the end of the episode where the Chinese representative is seen to take orders from some kind of cybernetically puppeteered corpse.

[Seto Kaiba]

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio is shaping up to be one of my favorite titles for this season.  Yumiko and Chika's dynamic makes their interactions a lot of fun, and the premise is a fresh and interesting one.  I'm very keen to see where this goes in the future.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

An Archdemon's Dilemma: How to Love Your Elf Bride started off so sad,  I am glad that Nephy found her resolve.  Barbatos is just a jerk.

[Seto Kaiba]

Watching HIGHSPEED Etoile's latest episode, and while it was already easily the worst thing out this season it's actually getting worse with each episode... which is impressive in its own very strange way.

Episodes 3 and 4 are almost the exact same story of Rin bumping into a top-ranked driver in public, missing absolutely every clue as to who they are even though the're making ZERO effort to disguise their identity and doing things like signing autographs for fans, and spending the entire episode with them blissfully unaware of who they are until they spell it out to her.  She's also apparently so bad at racing that the series decides to stop showing the races... it skips straight to the results and when she's not disqualified she's in dead last against even the unmanned cars.

[Seto Kaiba]

Starting Yatagarasu: The Raven Does Not Choose Its Master... it feels like it might be a very similar series to The Raven of the Inner Palace, which would be quite welcome.

(If nothing else, there's certainly a fair bit of courtly cattiness in the first part of this medieval fantasy series...)

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Dang, Mushoku Tensei was great today.  Glad to see Norn and Aisha back.

[Seto Kaiba]

Started Mushoku Tensei today while I was dogsitting.  Ended up marathon-ing about 14 episodes of it.

It's not a bad series by any means, but it does lose me pretty reliably every time Rudeas starts perving on an underage girl... which is distressingly frequent.  

Spoiler

The usual anime curious teenagers is one thing, but Mushoku Tensei isn't shy about reminding us that Rudeas is a 40 year old Japanese man on the inside while he's making sexual advances on an actual child.  There's an extended moment early on where we have to witness his internal monologue as he attempts to manipulate his twelve year old cousin into having sex with him.  It's no less creepy when he later attempts to solicit someone he believes is a child (but is actually a 300+ year old demon lord) for sex.

I kinda want to ask the Tokyo PD if they've paid Rifujin na Magonote a visit to make sure he's not engaging in the same... collecting... that Nobuhiro Watsuki was arrested for.  His editor too, to be honest.  I cannot imagine what kind of lapse by the light novel's publisher caused them to think that was something that's OK to put in a story.

Thus far, I'm feeling like the series is a more-or-less capably written isekai story with an engaging plot and some likeable characters that's mainly brought down by its protagonist's whole family being slimeballs.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Spice & Wolf was great again.  I love Holo.  This show is a good as the original.

[Seto Kaiba]

So... if there's a Most Improved award for an anime season, HIGHSPEED Etoile might be in the running.

The director and animators seem to have finally figured out how to animate a race in an exciting and visually appealing manner.

If everything else weren't still horrible, I'd almost believe it was a completely different show.

It's not exactly a dignified plot twist that the protagonist Rin Rindo suddenly goes from propping up the bottom of the rankings to the middle of the pack as a result of...

Spoiler

... turning on the car's AI driving coach and having her blindly obey it.

There are AI-driven cars in this.  Rin Rindo is so bad as a driver that right now she's basically just spam in a can while the car's AI does all the heavy lifting.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Mushoku Tensei was great again. I am glad Rudy is learning from his previous life.

[Seto Kaiba]

At about the halfway point of the Spring '24 season, I'm feeling pretty disappointed in most of the 25 titles I've picked up.

The ones I'm following are:

Spoiler

• Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included
• The Irregular at Magic High School season three
• HIGHSPEED Etoile
• A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics
• The Misfit of Demon King Academy season two cour two
• Astro Note
• A Condition Called Love
• An Archdemon's Dilemma: How To Love Your Elf Bride
• Mysterious Disappearances
• BARTENDER: Glass of God
• The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio
• Unnamed Memory
• Tadaima, Okaeri
• Vampire Dormitory
• Re:Monster
• Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers
• As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World
• I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability
• The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases
• Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation
• My Hero Academia season seven
• Konosuba: God's Blessing on this wonderful world season three
• Viral Hit
• Wind Breaker
• God's Games We Play

Compared to previous seasons, Spring '24 has a lot more variety in terms of genres and approaches to them.  There are only a few genuinely bad titles in this season, but there are quite a few that definitely feel like they're a bit half-baked or needed more development before production.  

The best of this season, IMO, are Viral Hit, Astro Note, An Archdemon's Dilemma, The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, Vampire Dormitory, and As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World.

Viral Note in particular is a very unconventional title that's kind of hard to watch not because there's anything wrong with it, but because it's both a lovingly rendered martial arts story with a fairly dark plot and a scathing critique of influencer culture at the same time.  Its story of a young student who's bullied by his influencer classmates repeatedly and works part-time jobs to pay for his mother's cancer treatment learning to fight after discovering he can make a fortune livestreaming fights against his bullies is an underdog story that's easy to get into and more than a little depressing to follow.

Astro Note, An Archdemon's Dilemma, and Vampire Dormitory are all light fluffy romance comedy fare with sci-fi, fantasy, and modern light fantasy spins.  If you liked Ouran High School Host Club you'll probably like Vampire Dormitory.

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio is both a slice of life comedy and a fairly honest portrayal of the toxic working conditions of Japanese celebrities at the same time, and it does a fantastic job of getting its audience invested in the characters.  

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat stands out especially prominently in its genre (isekai) with a particularly unusual take.  It's not an accident that the really successful isekai titles are all ones that subvert the genre's core power fantasy themes in significant ways, and As a Reincarnated Aristocrat's subversion is especally odd and handled in an intriguing way.  Ars's reincarnation superpower is authentically useless in almost any context.  His ability to see the potential of other people expressed numerically means that the challenges he faces are resolved indirectly.  Instead of solving problems himself through force or trickery, the driving force of the story is Ars needing to understand the situations of the people that he confronts and find the right way to persuade them to join his cause becuase they hold the key to solving some greater context problem his family faces.

 

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Mushoku Tensei was great again today.  I am so scared to see what happens. I know already but still.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

So this season has been pretty meh.    I have much on my plate but very little to really get excited about.

Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu 2nd Season -   I almost feel obligated to keep this one going.    Very bland now had a good starting premise and as of late got lost in the weeds with an unnecessary arc about a magic school.      At least as per Episode 19 this arc seems to be wrapping up.. thank god. 

Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo! 3 - Just wrapped Episode 5 and Kazuma literally carries this show.   I'm liking the inclusion of Darkness more and more as she is a Noble.    The princess arc has me amused.

Lv2 kara Cheat datta Motoyuusha Kouho no Mattari Isekai Life -    Gonna be honest I started watching this show because of the link to Zero No Tsukaima with the VA cast.   Hearing Louise is Dere, Dere mode is hilarious.    Just sayin.    However.. meh   I think this series has some promise if it can get out and do its own thing.  

Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii? -  Meh.    I was told to read the manga,  but got bored and lost interest.   

Ookami to Koushinryou MERCHANT MEETS THE WISE WOLF -  This is literally the same as the previous version,  not trying to throw shade on it.    Still waiting to see if it goes further.

Tensei Kizoku, Kantei Skill de Nariagaru -  Not gonna lie the Well Endowed Mage is the only memorable point of this series for me.    Looks like it might pick up but so far its kind of a snooze fest.

Dungeon Meshi - I am enjoying this one quite abit,  its got that Gainax vibe going and I am just along for the ride.

Date A Live V - Looks like this is probably the last hurrah of this series.   With the way its going I expect a wrapup if not this season then with a movie.    Good stuff and worth it if you stuck around with the franchise this far.

One Room, Hiatari Futsuu, Tenshi-tsuki -  So far its turning into a Rom-Com Harem with supernatural elements.    At least the MC is not totally clueless.    Yuki-Onna is best girl.

Kaii to Otome to Kamikakushi - Weird.   Only 2 episodes in and its weird.    Not necessarily a bad thing but not on my list of to dos.    More like I will get there eventually.

Shinigami Bocchan to Kuro Maid 3rd Season -  Another last Hurrah.   They are gearing to wrap this up in short order.   I enjoyed the Manga and the anime still jars me with the CG look.  I don't expect this to Age well in the long run visually.

Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku? -  Another weird one.   I am only 6 episodes in so abit behind but I am enjoying it so far.   Its very much a "my pace" type of anime and I can dig that.

Astro Note - I am liking this series,  its almost nostalgic in regards to how it presents itself.    Feels like something I would have seen back in the 80s.  

 

And I think that's it?    most likely not.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Maou no Ore ga Dorei Elf wo Yome ni Shitanda ga, Dou Medereba Ii? was so cute today. Zagan and Nephy would make great parents.  Foll (LN Spelling) is just so cute.

[Seto Kaiba]

As ever, I am absolutely gobsmacked by just how consistently terrible HIGHSPEED Etoile manages to be.

Bile fascination is the only reason I can keep watching this hot mess.  It's not just that the full 3D CG animation looks like absolute arse and looks like an embedded video from a 20 year old console game, it's that the writing is if anything even more detrimental than the animation is.

In a way, I guess I can commend it for being an unflinchingly accurate depiction of what would happen if a professional racing team decided to hire a teenage kid whose only driving experience was playing a console port of Forza.  They'd do a pretty awful job, fail constantly, and probably crack under the stress.

Spoiler

This episode has not one but two races, and starts with Rin Rindo wanting praise for finishing the race in 11th place... as in, she wants to be praised by the whole team for not either coming in dead last or failing to finish.

There's some minor faffing about, and it skips to the next race where it seems like Rin is about to luck into a non-sh*tty place when it starts raining heavily just as she's making a pit stop near the end of the race, allowing her to move up the field to second while everyone else is slowing down and then making a pit stop to swap to rain tires.  Being the idiot she is, she decides that having a shot at the podium through sheer dumb luck AND NOTHING ELSE means this is the time to take risks.  So she tries to pass the vastly more experienced driver in first using the turbo boost gimmick the show never really explains consistently while coming out of a turn into a straightaway and then promptly spins out on the wet pavement and crashes so hard she not only fails to finish the race at all... she's informed the car itself is out of action for the rest of the season.

Having the main character be arrogant in a very dimwitted way AND incompetent to the point that failure is the ONLY option is a very strange way to write a sports anime.  The audience is supposed to be rooting for the main character to grow and move up the ranks and become the champion, right?  HIGHSPEED Etoile's protagonist seems to be actively getting worse as time goes on.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I watched this weeks Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again.  Wow a beach episode.  But it was tasteful.