As before it's time (and well past time) for my no longer early views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. This is another slow season for me, but I'm happy with what I'm actively watching.

Excellent:

• SSSS.Gridman: This is the standout show of the season for me, but not because of the kaiju fights; it's everything else that I really like, especially the character drama. There are all sorts of quiet exceptional things about Gridman that I'm not going to try to summarize here, and anyway many of them are small contributors to its compelling whole.

Good:

• Thunderbolt Fantasy S2: This has been slower than the first season and so not as compelling, but it's still a solid show that is finally starting to develop its tangled complexity, without about three or four things going on at once.

Good popcorn entertainment:

• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: I like and fully enjoy this when I get around to watching an episode, but I haven't found watching episodes to be fully compelling and as a result I'm several episodes behind. I have reasons for this, but the fact is that I'm not behind on my other two shows.

  (One reason I don't find this as compelling is that I burned through the manga, so I know what's coming.)

Dropped:

• Release the Spyce (#2): As I put it on Twitter when I got around to watching the second episode, this is a perfectly serviceable show. But at the moment I'm not really interested in a show that I find merely serviceable.

  (I've also heard that Spyce got kind of messy later on.)

• The Girl in Twilight (#1): In the end I opted not to watch more than the first episode, partly because I heard various things about further episodes that didn't really sound like it was something that I wanted to follow.

I feel satisfied with my top two shows, and when I want some popcorn entertainment I have Slime (as I'm calling it). This is way down on my past watching level, but I don't care about that any more; I'm watching what I want to, and not watching things just because I feel that I should.

PS: Given that we're basically in the middle of the season by now, I don't expect to do a midway views entry this time around, although I might change my mind if I decide to drop Slime.