It's rather past time for my traditional look back at what I watched in the Winter 2020 anime season (after abandoning the fall 2019 season), to follow up on my earlier impressions. As seems to be typical these days, this wound up being a season where I didn't watch very many shows.

Great:

• Magia Record: This sustained its pace and impact pretty much all through, although it didn't resolve anything; this is just the first half of a split cour show that resumes at some point (predictions of exactly when seem premature at the moment). It was all sorts of good in its own right without trying to be a re-telling of the story of Madoka Magica.

• BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense: This stayed enjoyable in a fun, goofy way all through the show, although some of the hijinks may have gotten repetitive after a while. The show may be unrealistic, but it's definitely fun (and sometimes the game developers deserved what Maple did to their game). In fact, I'll repeat my Twitter summary of the show:

  BOFURI as a whole was a fun romp with some nice depths of characterization, a solid grasp of its overall comedic tone, and good handling of action. The cunning plans were good ones and there were surprises (and yes, Sally is the ruthless planner behind the throne).

  I probably wouldn't mind watching more BOFURI, but I don't feel there's any need for more of the show and it might get a little repetitive. The further adventures of Maple, Sally, and so on are probably best left to our imagination (or the other media you can get it in).

  (Of course, reading the Wikipedia entry just told me that there's a second season coming, so someday I'll get to swallow these words.)

Dropped:

• In/Spectre: I would say that this show had too much of people talking to each other, but that's not quite it; its fatal flaw was that there was no conflict in those conversations. I got too bored.

• Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken: This stayed suspended and thus became dropped. I never got around to watching the fourth episode, but perhaps someday.

The Winter season was a pretty good one all told. Although I regret that Eizouken didn't click with me (and In/Spectre wasn't better), the two shows I did watch were both quite enjoyable in their own ways.