Roving Thoughts archives

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2021 anime season

Yes, that really does say 'summer' up there. As before I've collected my reactions to the first episode of the only show I actually started watching in the summer season.

• The Case Study of Vanitas episode #1: That was stylish and reasonably interesting, although as usual it doesn't really tell me very much about what the rest of the show will be like. It hasn't left me solidly hooked, but I'll be watching the next episode. ♯

I watched three episodes of Vanitas before growing bored, and I never watched anything else. Both Magia Record and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime had continuations in the summer season, and at some point I hope to watch both (eg), but I didn't feel enthused enough to watch Slime live and Magia Record aired late and I forgot about it by the time it started.

(My experiences with the Winter 2021 season of Slime didn't leave me feeling thrilled about watching it week by week.)

Instead I spent summer 2021 reading random manga, and may mostly do that again for Fall 2021. I have feelings about the differences between reading manga and watching anime and why one has been working out better than the other right now, but I don't want to try to put them in this entry.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2021 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them). This is delayed for various reasons.

• Mars Red episode #1: I'm pretty sure I didn't understand all of that and I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it was definitely different and interesting because of that. I don't know if it can sustain everything it's trying to do and hold my interest, though. ♯

• Thunderbolt Fantasy S3 episode #1: All of these good characters are back, bantering back and forth. We got some plotting and a bit of a fight too, but that part was really all just a warmup (but the demon is totally up to things, she always is). ♯

• SSSS.Dynazenon episode #1: Our protagonists clearly have plenty going on but at the same time they didn't really do anything this episode; they were at the mercy of fate (which may be the point, but still). That left the big fight feeling disconnected and floating. →

• Super Cub episode #1: That was quietly great, or at least very my thing. The great scenery, the mood, the understated bits of (sad) story, various little details, everything clicked for me. The night ride was all beautiful and of course she fell asleep in her entryway. →

• Blue Reflection Ray episode #1: That felt perfectly okay but also underwhelming and rather slow. I got lost in the barrage of characters, and I don't think it quite had the chops for its 'show don't tell' attempts (or the command of atmosphere to pull off its pacing). ♯

• I've Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level episode #1: That was inoffensive and ordinary. I can believe this could have charm and appeal (and I see some gestures that way), but the first episode didn't particularly hook me. ♯

• Joran The Princess Of Snow And Blood episode #1: That was reasonably interesting, although it also had a pretty ordinary presentation and a certain amount of cliches (and one spot felt like it was trying too hard to be edgy and adult). ♯

I've had vague ambitions of watching some more shows that looked potentially promising, but at this point it's clear that they're not going to come to pass; as I write this, some shows are on their fifth episode. My overall hit rate from first episode previews has also not encouraged me to try more, as I'm already down to three of these seven.

(Super Cub, SSSS.Dynazenon, and Thunderbolt Fantasy S3, in my order of enthusiasm.)

As is customary for me, reactions to later episodes are in a twitter conversation chain from my first episode tweets, up to where I stopped following a show.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2021 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them). This entry is delayed for various reasons so I'm throwing in some bonus additional notes.

• Otherside Picnic episode #1: That was okay at what it did but as a stand alone work I felt like it lacked some vital spark of engagement amidst the frenzy of weirdness, action, and horror-ish mood. I'm not unbiased though, since I've looked at the manga. →

• Laid-Back Camp S2 episode #1: What can I say? Seeing young Rin was great (especially the failures (and learning) and then the curry cup), and then we got all the current day stuff. The magic is 100% back (or, if you prefer, continuing). →

  (As you would expect, Laid-Back Camp has continued to be excellent.)

• So I'm a Spider, So What? episode #1: I'm predisposed to like this for various reasons, but it was still reasonably fun although limited by all of the setup work it had to do. I hope it gets better in future episodes once our spider gets to do more interesting and active things. ♯

• Horimiya episode #1: This was fun and charming and nicely done. None of these people are your usual potatoes and I can believe what's happening with them. I don't know where the show is going to mine drama from, though, and if I'm going to be happy watching that happen. →

  (I only just got around to watching the second episode of this, so I don't know if I'm really going to stick with it.)

• Hortensia Saga episode #1 is unfortunately not interesting enough for me to finish. It's a collection of cliches with one of the least convincing 'girl cosplaying as a guy' cases I've seen. I can only conclude that everyone on her side knows it. →

• Kid from the Last Dungeon episode #1: That was decently funny, although not very deep. One of the things that made it work is that some but not all of the people around Lloyd knew how powerful he was, which led to a certain amount of tension. But it's painting pretty broadly. ♯

  (I would up abandoning this part way through episode 3.)

• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime episode #25: Partly re-introduction to things and partly a slow-moving setup episode, although they did put in some show-off fights at the end. It's still fun but I kind of wish it was more engaging right now. ♯

  ('I wish this was more engaging' is part of my reaction to a lot of this season of Slime so far.)

• Log Horizon S3 episode #1: My immediate reaction to this episode is that I'm not a fan of either the focus on politics or the theme of everything falling apart. Maybe there will be a triumphant ending to the season but right now it doesn't feel like getting there will be fun. →

  (Although I haven't dropped this officially, I haven't watched the second episode. It may turn out to be another Full Metal Panic.)

• Wonder Egg Priority episode #1: Oh wow, that was beautifully done. Also periodically painful in a quiet way and sometimes brutal, mostly in a 'the implied made real' kind of way. There were some very visceral moments. (What concretely happened is basically beyond summary.) ♯

• Sk8 the Infinity episode #1: That was okay but not compelling, especially in this busy season. I don't think the over the top nature of some things clicked with me, but the characters and the core gimmick of the episode were okay. →

  (I didn't watch any more of this.)

In continuing shows, I'm still enjoying Jujutsu Kaisen.

Brief impressions of the Fall 2020 anime season so far

As before, it's time for my current views on how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. At this point I've watched four episodes of everything I'm following, which is long enough for shows to establish themselves and usually for my views to stabilize. After a drought that kind of started when I abandoned the fall 2019 season, I'm apparently back to watching plenty of anime.

(I have some thoughts on that but I'm not sure they fit within the margins of an entry I want to write.)

Good:

• Warlords of Sigdrifa: This is my surprise of the season, because it's unreasonably good (well, for its genre); the third episode was an especially good standout, but it has great touches all through (including in incidental background details). As I put it on Twitter, the show might have good fights but it's about people, and that's what gets me hooked.

  (With that said, it's not an entirely serious show.)

Entertaining:

• Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear: This is a fundamentally charming story that I'm enjoying for that, and also for Yuna's faces and periodic nature as a little gremlin. I have an advantage in that I've been exposed to the story in manga form, where I also enjoyed it, so I'm happy to see it animated even if this is not a top notch flawless adaptation. Unfortunately the various flaws of this probably mean that people who don't know the story (and aren't fond of isekai in general) won't like the show at all.

  (Also, the protagonist is a girl, which is unusual and refreshing.)

• Akudama Drive: On the one hand, the setting and most of the characters here are ludicrous in a stylish cyberpunk way, with the redeeming virtue that the show commits wholeheartedly to it (and has the animation to make it look good). On the other hand, I have gotten steadily more caught up in it every episode, as it reveals another twist and turn, and it does have one normal character that we can root for and care about as she gets caught up in everything. This has definitely become engaging watching where I care about what happens next.

• Jujutsu Kaisen: So far the show is well executed shonen action with aspects of horror, which is basically what I was expecting from its genre and pedigree. It's adopting an ongoing Shonen Jump series, so I'm expecting lots of battles, little progress in any overall plot, no real conclusion, and a decent chance that I'll get bored with it before it ends. It has one solid female protagonist, but I'm also not expecting the show to treat her well, because shonen action shows (and manga) almost never do.

• Assult Lily Bouquet: This is another 'fighting girls' show, and as usual I have slightly conflicted feelings. Overall I'm enjoying it and I find a number of the characters appealing; it's pretty well made and it knows how to do action and how to make action interesting (which aren't quite the same thing). It's also got a surprising streak of subtlety in its storytelling (both visual and in dialog). On the other hand, it is playing to a certain degree of fanservice and is somewhat over the top even for its genre.

  As an instance of its genre, it's pretty good, and I happen to like its genre when it's done well. However I don't think it has much appeal if you're not a fan of the genre and it certainly has some peculiar aspects if looked at objectively.

On the edge:

• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle: This is lightweight and only has one core joke, but so far it's managed to remain both funny and charming (sometimes through unexpected twists). It's been an entertaining way to pass some time so far, although I wouldn't be surprised if I grew tired of it eventually.

  (It helps that each episode is divided into several segments, so the jokes move along fairly briskly.)

• Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon: This is reasonably fun, has a cast of female protagonists in an action series, and I like some of the characters. On the other hand it has all of the stately pacing and lack of a real spark that I expected from a follow up to Inuyasha, although this is an anime only thing so we have some hope of a conclusion. I'm casually enjoying it so far but I rather expect I won't make it all the way through (especially if it's more than one or maybe two cours).

• By the Grace of the Gods: This is a pretty wholesome isekai and also quite bland and ordinary, in characters, situation, animation, and directing. That makes it basically a time filler. I'm apparently willing to keep watching for now but I'm probably going to wind up dropping it.

  (If it was the typical power fantasy type thing I would already have dropped it, but it's just charming enough to hang on for now.)

I don't currently have any urge to watch more than this (or to watch less), so I probably won't have any mid-season pickups. If I did, Adachi and Shimamura is the leading candidate for a look. There are other fantasy and isekai shows and I like the genre in general, but I think I have enough of them as it is this season.

PS: My ongoing impressions of each episode of the shows I'm watching are linked in a Twitter thread from my first episode reactions for each show. Twitter works better for these quick reactions than blog entries do, at least for me.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2020 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them). Although I was pretty dormant in anime watching for the past two seasons (or longer), this time around I seem to have woken up with a new enthusiasm for watching things.

• Jujutsu Kaisen episode #1: That was a pretty good action show first episode, although I probably cheated by reading the first three chapters of the manga beforehand (that's what's free online). It definitely leaves me intrigued and wanting more, which is its job. →

• Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear episode #1: If I didn't already know and like the story here, I'm pretty sure I would have bounced off this episode. It's rather flatly made and kind of incoherent, since it's starting part way into the story with no background. →

  (The second episode was much better.)

• Assault Lily BOUQUET episode #1: That was a decently done instance of its genre, with more interesting and better staged fights than usual. I even chuckled a few times, and it's not made the protagonist into a complete potato; she has some interesting bits. ♯

• Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle episode #1: That was definitely lightweight but also reasonably entertaining and funny. I can see this wearing out the joke soon enough, but for now I'm interested enough to watch another episode. ♯

• By the Grace of the Gods episode #1: That was decidedly ordinary, by which I mean 'bland'. I'll likely watch some more, mostly because it's there and I like the genre in general, but I suspect I'll drop it before the end of the season. ♯

• Akudama Drive episode #1: That was fun and crazy and stylish, and I like our protagonist, but it's not flawless. Most of the characters are deliberate cliches, this episode tells us nothing about what the show is about, and the whole thing is over the top in a slightly tired way. ♯

• Yashahime episode #1: As someone who has only a glancing exposure to Inuyasha, most of this episode was pretty empty and relatively opaque. It was also pretty bland and only okay as an episode of action, with a pretty empty monster of the week core. ♯

  (Much like Kuma Bear, the second episode was much better.)

I was considering looking at Wandering Witch, but the commentary I've seen on Twitter suggests that it's not my kind of thing. Talentless Nana has some good reviews, but fortunately I've been spoiled on its shock twist because the shock twist shifts it into a genre I'm not interested in. It's possible I'll try out some other shows as junk food, but that's about it for things that look actually attractive.

(Adachi and Shimamura is somewhat tempting because I very much enjoyed Bloom into You, but I'm not sure if it would recapture Bloom's magic.)

And a surprise update:

• Warlords of Sigrdrifa episode #1: That was really good in general but what completely sold me are all of the good characters and the character interactions. This might have had good fights but it was about people, and that makes all the difference in the end. →

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2020 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them). Well, that's the standard wording, except this time around I only watched one premier.

• Deca-Dence episode #1: That was a hell of a ride, and fun as hell to boot. Our heroine is so expressive, I was not expecting how the climactic weapon worked, the whole setting is fun, and we have several mysteries set up on top of all the great stuff. I can't wait for more. →

Nothing else that's airing this season sounds appealing to me, although some of them are getting good reviews. The Sakugablog season preview does a good job of praising Japan Sinks 2020, but a show revolving around a disaster is not something I want to watch these days for various reasons.

Brief impressions of the Spring 2020 anime season so far

As before, it's time for my current views on how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. This is rather more delayed than usual, but I want to write down my impressions so far before these shows end (and how they end changes my impressions of them).

Surprisingly tense but sometimes flawed:

• Gleipnir: This is one part battle show and one part psychological horror and tension; the two parts go together surprisingly well and make it the most interesting show I'm watching this season. The show has a very good command of atmosphere, which helps, but then it also has various flaws (many of them revolving around fanservice), which hurt a bit.

Entertaining:

• Princess Connect! Re:Dive: This is a fun goofy show where the male protagonist being a potato is actually a feature. Karyl is the clear star in our ensemble cast, with Pecorine as the second best character, and I don't think it's an accident that Karyl is the one person who is getting a real character arc. With that said, Re:Dive is not where you should look if you want realistic characters and a deep story. It is nicely put together, though, with good direction, art, animation, and so on.

Sadly on the edge:

• My Next Life as a Villainess: I like the concept and there are some good aspects to it, but by now the basic premise is starting to get a little threadbare and how the show treats Catarina is increasingly grating. If something different doesn't start happening soon, I may get bored with this and drop it.

I didn't continue Kakushigoto and I have tacitly suspended or dropped Listeners because I still haven't gotten the energy together to watch more of it. Things I've heard about Listeners writing have not been encouraging in that regard, and I'm not sure its overall apparent genre of 'teenagers being teenagers in a SF setup' is one that I'm very interested in any more.

Looking back at the Winter 2020 anime season

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.

Looking back at the Summer 2019 anime season

This turns out to be so extensively delayed that I only just noticed that I'd never written it. So, it's very past time for my traditional look back at what I watched in the Summer 2019 anime season, to follow up on my earlier impressions. Since it's almost a year since I saw these, my impressions are a bit faded.

• Symphogear XV: This was basically everything I could have reasonably asked for in a Symphogear show, especially one that basically wraps up the entire project (it may not stay wrapped up, in the way of these things, but it's definitely over for now). Symphogear unfortunately faced some structural story-telling issues in this season, but it still did good work, was quite enjoyable, and did some things to make the Symphogears not the sole saviors.

• Granbelm: This was generally well made and well put together, it had a bunch of characters that I liked, and for much of its run it was quite good. Unfortunately, it took its story in a direction I'm no longer a fan of, and so I can't really judge the show fairly as a result of that. I think the show took its story where it wanted to go and probably succeeded on its own terms (or mostly succeeded, there were some awkward bits), and it was a good spectacle. But the end result left me a bit let down.

I eventually dropped everything else that I was watching in Summer 2019. Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files and Isekai Cheat Magician both failed to sustain my interest, Fire Force was too typically shonen (and there was the horrifying Kyoto Animation tragedy), Astra Lost in Space lost me for various reasons, and I stopped being able to put up with the flaws in Cop Craft, especially in its writing surrounding Tilarna.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2020 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• Listeners episode #1: That was interesting, atmospheric, nicely directed, and had a good climax with some interesting action. The story felt pretty standard and I'm not sure where the show will go next; this was all setup and background. →

• Kakushigoto episode #1: This is beautiful, well made, and reasonably sharply written, but as usual its comedy doesn't work for me (and I'm not sure I'm a fan of the fundamental joke at its heart). It's nice and good, but not for me. ♯

• My Next Life as a Villainess #1: That was fun and funny, and Catarina makes a solid lead. It's nicely put together, too (beyond being my kind of thing). I'm very much looking forward to what happens next and what sort of absurd situations Catarina gets herself into. →

• Princess Connect! Re:Dive episode #1: This was reasonably fun and periodically funny. It's a bit hard to engage with these people as people, instead of cutouts, but potato-kun is definitely improved by mostly not speaking or doing anything. →

• Gleipnir episode #1: That was awkward, uncomfortable, and rather adolescent (male) sexual gaze, all of which was entirely intended. It was also pretty good; intriguing and well put together (although not flawless), with a fine control of atmosphere and quiet hanging tension. →

Actually posting this entry has been delayed because I kept thinking I would watch a few more first episodes, but so far that's not happening. I will probably see some of Brand New Animal sometime but not right away, and I've decided that Sing "Yesterday" for Me is probably not my kind of thing in general and especially with the world and local mood as it is right now.

PS: As has become my habit, I've threaded my reactions to subsequent episodes for each series that I'm (still) watching on these first episode tweets.

The flaw in In/Spectre's conversations

Over on Twitter, I said:

I've realized that In/Spectre's fatal flaw is that these characters are explaining things to each other, rather than arguing back and forth, yelling past each other, or trying to pull fast ones. There's no conflict or drama in their conversations.

In/Spectre is by the same writer as Blast of Tempest, a show which I quite enjoyed (see my Winter 2013 retrospective). Both shows are full of talking and clever dialog (it's one of the writer's signature traits), but I'm not enjoying In/Spectre half as much as I did Tempest; in fact I'm increasingly finding In/Spectre kind of boring.

What I realized is that the two shows have different types of conversations. In Tempest, there was a conflict at the heart of most conversations; people were arguing with each other, trying to persuade each other or do deals, or at least trying to hoodwink and fool each other or hide information. In/Spectre is great when it's doing that sort of thing, when people are arguing or bickering or sniping at each other, but its most recent run of episodes has mostly involved people explaining things to each other or coming up with plans. There's no conflict, just talk.

(The few conversations that were not like this still have the spark to them, both in dialog and how they're staged.)

Brief impressions of the Winter 2020 anime season so far

As before, it's time for my relatively early views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. This entry has been delayed partly because I'm lazy but largely for the traditional reason, which is that I haven't wanted to admit something about one of the shows airing this season.

Great:

• Magia Record: This has completely blindsided me with how good it is and how much I've been enjoying it. The entire show is very well presented, with excellent staging, scenes, direction, and so on, the characters and their interactions are appealing, and the overall story interesting, with a solid balance of mystery and slow revelations.

  (The show's staging is very deliberately unnatural, but that fits its mood and setup, and it's doing very good things with that staging.)

Good:

• BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense: This is my kind of thing so I'm biased, but even then I think it's solidly entertaining and above all simply fun. The show has an infectious joy of people playing this game and having fun at it, and it communicates that well along with the inherent comedy of Maple and her friends quietly breaking the game by doing things that the developers didn't expect.

• In/Spectre: I like this style of show (it's from the same author as Blast of Tempest) but sometimes it has a little more talking with a little less compelling things than I'm entirely happy with. People making clever plans is all well and good, but sometimes I want a bit more. However, the show routinely does excellent character interactions, with the core cast interacting with each other in nice and often funny ways. Seeing Kotoko being taken down a peg is never not amusing, and everyone has believable chemistry with each other.

Tacitly suspended:

• Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken (#3): This is an excellently made show about animation, with some appealing characters and all of that. But it hasn't really clicked with me and watching it often makes me feel that I'm sort of being lectured at (with a lot of love, but still). Some of the little things the show does with the characters don't appeal, either.

  Many people really love this and I'll probably watch episode four (which is apparently very good). But episode five is apparently all about giant robots and the various issues around the genre, which sounds exactly like what I'm not interested in at several levels.

That Eizouken hasn't clicked with me makes me feel both sad and guilty, because this is theoretically just the sort of thing that I should really enjoy and watch as an anime fan. It's even made by one of the best directors working in anime, someone whose previous shows I've generally quite enjoyed or at least appreciated. But my gut is just not interested and these days I listen to it.

(My gut actively looks forward to Magia Record, enjoys BOFURI a lot, and is okay with In/Spectre.)

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2020 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• BOFURI #1: I rather liked this, but I was biased towards it because I've enjoyed what of the manga I've seen. I'm scoring it solidly entertaining in a deliberately silly way; Maple is gleefully (but unknowingly) breaking the world in her own fun way. →

• Eizouken episode #1: That was a bunch of fun and a paean to animation, and I like these kids. I definitely hope that this show is going to go interesting places; I'll find out next episode. →

• In/Spectre episode #1: This is my kind of stuff in general so I'm biased, but this was sharp, interesting, nicely done, and with all sorts of lovely touches in dialog and action. And I like these two (I can't call them 'kids', all things considered). They bicker well. →

• Magia Record episode #1: That was a decidedly interesting start, often told in an interesting way that I liked. Iroha is an intriguing person with undercurrents, the whole show looks good (and had some decent action), and I want to watch more. →

This pretty much covers anything that I feel likely to watch. I've heard good things about the story of Infinite Dendrogram, but from all reports the implementation in animated form is not particularly impressive. There's also Heya Camp, but two large parts of what I loved about Laid-Back Camp were Rin and the actual camping and I understand that neither of them are in these shorts, which doesn't make me very enthused.

(There's also sort of Dorohedoro, but it's apparently so mired in what is sometimes called the 'Netflix jail' that it wasn't even covered in the ANN review of this season's first episodes.)

I ended up abandoning the Fall 2019 anime season

It's time (and past time) to officially note this. In the end, after my first episode reactions, I wound up effectively entirely abandoning the Fall season, eventually watching no shows. I explicitly dropped everything except Fairy Gone, and while I didn't officially drop it I haven't watched more than the first two episodes. I may finish it (or watch more) at some point, because I was reasonably enthused after episode 14, but somehow that never translated to spending 24 minutes to watch episode 15.

This marks a low point in my anime watching; I haven't been this inactive for a very long time. I think that Winter 2020 will be better (there are certainly more promising shows in it), but I'll have to see. I don't think I'm burned out, but I'm definitely distracted by various things.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Fall 2019 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them). There aren't many this time around, and I haven't been watching them very fast.

• Make My Abilities Average episode 1: This was one part ordinary overpowered isekai and one part interesting in a meta way because of where it starts the story. It has potential as popcorn entertainment for me, so I'll watch it until I get bored. →

• Assassin's Pride episode 1: This was rather melodramatic and over the top, but at least it was conscious of it. Probably the tone fits the material. But this was setup and we don't know much about what the rest of the show will be like. →

• Fairy Gone episode 13: I question re-starting this with an episode full of relatively slow flashbacks, but at least we have a bit more context now. And Suna turns out to have been about as superstition-ridden as you'd expect in its situation (ie, a lot). →

At this point it doesn't seem likely that I'm going to watch any more series this fall (as you can tell from how delayed this entry is; some shows are airing their fourth episode). There are a number of quite good series (as reported by people), but they're all in settings or genres that almost never work for me, so I've not felt the energy to check them out just in case lightning strikes this time around.

Brief impressions of the Summer 2019 anime season so far

As before it's time for my relatively early views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. At this point I've seen three episodes of everything I'm watching, so it feels like things are starting to stabilize (although maybe not).

A great Symphogear experience:

• Symphogear XV: This season builds on everything that's come before (and is in many ways the second half of AXZ), so it's not a good place to start, but after three episodes it's a pretty great season of Symphogear. Everyone is being themselves and we're getting sustained epic things, melodramatic twists, ancient secrets, and so on.

Good:

• Granbelm: I'm a minority that finds the giant robot fights to be not so impressive, but fortunately the characters and their interactions more than make up for that. This is really a character piece hiding inside what is nominally an action show, and it's pretty good at that.

• Astra Lost in Space: The show is more or less written for kids and it shows, but I've wound up sucked into its charms despite that. I like watching it, even though bits of writing and other twists irritate me from time to time.

• Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files: So far, this is basically a series of fun romps that use the Fate/* world as a background setting. People snark at each other, interesting things happen, a problem gets solved, and it all wraps up neatly by the end of the episode. That makes it an enjoyable watch for me, one that I'm willing to continue for as long as the charm and novelty holds up.

  (I refuse to use the show's gigantic full official name.)

Cannot evaluation fairly:

• Fire Force: This had a very impressive first two episodes and then the horrifying Kyoto Animation tragedy happened. While I can still watch the show, I don't know if I really want to and the KyoAnime tragedy has unquestionably changed my reaction to it. I was much less taken with the third episode and its flaws and irritations stood out much more. Some of those flaws and irritations were present even in the first two episodes; did they get worse in the third episode, or have I become more sensitive because I'm now less enthused about something involving fire? I don't know.

  I will probably keep watching Fire Force, but it's now very much on the edge in a way that it wasn't before and probably wouldn't have been without the KyoAnime tragedy.

Okay:

• Cop Craft: I really liked the first episode, although even then its limited animation was noticeable, but I'm afraid that the wheels have started coming off by the third episode. There is the core of a compelling story and show in here, but it is not being realized so far; things are too rushed and abbreviated, and the great characters are not being given enough of a chance to interact with each other naturally. That it cannot really animate what should be exciting fight scenes is just the unsatisfying icing on the cake.

  However, there is still enough good stuff here that I'm willing to keep watching, partly in the hopes that everything will improve again. There are flashes of excellence in the show, even in the third episode.

Popcorn:

• Isekai Cheat Magician: I have no excuses; this is a terribly bland show that somehow makes what should be an exciting, enthusiastic situation into a boring one. There have been far better shows with the same fundamental premise. But so far apparently I want to watch a popcorn isekai show with vastly overpowered protagonists.

  I expect to drop this sooner or later.

Dropped:

• To the abandoned Sacred Beasts: The second episode opened with a charming orphanage, and nothing good ever happens to those in a show like this so I decided that I didn't want to watch any more.

I've also dropped last season's Demon Slayer, which basically wore out its charm. Zenitsu very strongly pushed me to drop it, but even without his presence I probably would have given up. I'm just not very interested in watching a long parade of shonen fights any more, and that was what Demon Slayer has transitioned into.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Summer 2019 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• To the Abandoned Sacred Beasts episode 1: That was a whole lot of setup and backstory, but it was okay overall and has some flashes of interest. We're not getting anything stunning but it might be competent and watchable, which is sadly rare. ♯

• Astra Lost in Space episode #1: That wasn't bad for what it was, and it had a decent amount of subtlety (not huge amounts, but). But it had some irritating things, and it doesn't have enough characterization to entirely cover for them. →

• Fire Force episode 1: Wow. What a feat of visuals and direction, and the story itself wasn't bad either. I'm pretty stunned with just how good this was & how much I enjoyed it. It gets points for being subtle, and many points for making me really want to see more. →

• Granbelm episode 1: That was certainly trying, but it doesn't feel like any of what it could manage lived up to what it aimed for. The result was a bit underwhelming, although still okay. It really needs better writing, though. Please. ♯

• Symphogear XV episode 1: Symphogear is back in all its glory and it is very Symphogear, in a good way. I can't have asked for more from this first episode (okay, better songs, I know that I'm a heathen here). We even got some good stuff with Miku. (They are so married.) →

• Cop Craft episode #1: Pretty much everything here was spot on for me, especially the writing, and the show's doing all sorts of things I like (including being subtle and having good characters). And then that final scene. →

• Lord El-Melloi II's Case Files episode 1: This was an okay re-introduction to how Waver got here, but it probably doesn't say anything about what the show is actually going to be like. I have enough lingering affection to give it another episode so I can find out. ♯

• Isekai Cheat Magician episode 1: This is a trifling confection of nothing much, partly because it was all setup; we'll get to interesting things next episode. But I'm okay with another run at a popcorn show like this while my interest lasts. ♯

• Dr Stone episode 1: That was essentially okay and it certainly has a mood, but the mood is one that involves a lot of shouting and dumbass energy, which is not really my thing in shows. And I'm sure there's going to be fighting sooner or later. →

There's a number of other shows that I've been on the edge of trying out, but this season is already busy enough. If my gut thinks that a show's premise, setup, and early reviews are too marginal, I should probably listen to it.

(O Maidens in Your Savage Season is getting very good reviews, but it's almost certainly not a show that's going to work for me. Vinland Saga, while getting quite good reviews, but I think it falls into the same category as Golden Kamuy, which didn't work for me. I may try the manga instead.)

Looking back on the Spring 2019 anime season

It's time for my traditional look back at what I watched this past Spring season, to follow up on my earlier impressions. This was a decidedly small season for me, since I only finished two shows.

Good:

• Fairy Gone: This cour of the show wasn't flawless but it was interesting and generally well done, and it's certainly enough to get me to watch the next cour (which will air in the Fall season, starting in October). Marlya basically carried the show for me, and in general it was at its best when she and her compatriots in Dorothea were on the screen and doing things. As always, I enjoyed it partly because it was doing something different from the run of the mill shows that we usually get.

Decent except for Zenitsu:

• Demon Slayer: The show is generally pretty good as a shonen action show (although it sometimes stumbles) and I continue to like Nezuko and her interactions with Tanjiro. Unfortunately it is less successful elsewhere, such as in its non-fight writing, and in particular Zenitsu is extremely terrible; he embodies a great deal of shonen character cliches that I hate and find extremely grating. It also looks like it's about to settle down into basically a series of 'monster of the time interval' fights, now that the initial setup has been done. Due to both of these factors (but primarily Zenitsu), I expect to drop the show soon.

  (I read spoilers for Zenitsu's future developments and he does not improve the things that irritate me. If anything, he gets worse.)

Dropped (unless I get very bored):

• Wise Man's Grandchild (#9): It slowed down so that it was basically leaning on reaction faces to keep my interest, and that wasn't enough. I skimmed episode 10 very briefly, and apparently a lot of it was trying to give the main villain a vaguely sympathetic background and, well, I'll pass; Wise Man's Grandchild does not have writing that is anywhere near good enough to succeed at that. Probably further episodes pick up with some fighting, which would be popcorn entertainment if I decided I wanted that and can't get it from new shows in the Summer season.

I did not continue Sarazanmai. Various reactions from people with opinions that generally agree with mine make me feel that I made the right decision, however much I feel like I should watch an Ikuhara show.

Although this was a slow season, I feel satisfied with what I watched. I enjoyed Fairy Gone and Demon Slayer was entertaining and well done for what it was.

Brief impressions of the Spring 2019 anime season so far

As before it's well past time for my views on how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. A good part of why I'm only writing this basically half way through the season is that there has been something that I didn't really want to admit about my watching this season, and I kept hoping that I would get up the energy to change it before I wrote this entry.

Good:

• Fairy Gone: This is the most interesting show I'm watching this season, although perhaps not the best made one. Part of why I like it quite a lot is that it's simply different from the usual run of the mill stuff we get every season, and since it's decently put together it automatically gets positive points from me. It also gets positive points for a competent female protagonist.

  (The character names are amusingly terrible, but at least they're trying.)

Perfectly decent:

• Demon Slayer: This is a quite well made and somewhat atypical shonen action vehicle, with pretty much all of the things that you would expect from the genre and only a few surprises. We had our training episodes, we had our 'prove yourself in this killer test' episodes, and so on, although we recently had what could be a major deviation from schedule (but probably isn't, because this is an adaptation of an ongoing Shonen Jump manga). I find it nice to watch but not compelling, and Nezuko remains tragically underused.

Popcorn entertainment:

• Wise Man's Grandchild: This is mindless and not particularly great entertainment. I am enjoying the hijinks so far because I am easily amused and right now, I'm willing to spend some time watching this (often over actual popcorn). There is no real tension in the show; the only real question and most of the amusement is how deep a hole Shin is going to dig for himself this time around, and what crazy things are going to ensue. I do appreciate that all of the other significant characters are getting to power up too; this is not just the 'Shin is awesome and everyone else sits around' show.

On hold:

• Sarazanmai (#2): I have a somewhat rocky relationship with Ikuhara shows; I stalled out on Penguindrum and ended up with divided opinions on Yurikuma Arashi where it didn't really connect with me. Watching Sarazanmai feels like something I should do and portions of it are perfectly entertaining, but after two episodes I haven't really connected with it and it has my Penguindrum problem (cf) where at least some of the people we are supposed to follow and like are actually currently kind of terrible people, which is hard for me to get behind. Perhaps I will like it more if I watch more, but so far I am many episodes behind and that keeps not changing.

In my current slow and relaxed level of anime watching, I'm thinking of this as a decently good season. I have one show that is outright interesting and two that are okay at different levels, and in theory there is some good stuff that I'm just not watching (right now).

Looking back on the Winter 2019 anime season

It's time (and well past time) for my traditional look back at what I watched this past Winter season, to follow up on my earlier impressions. I've been lazy about doing this entry, partly because there is not a lot to talk about.

Good:

• Kemurikusa: In the end, Tatsuki and his crew came through with a worthy follow on to Kemono Friends. The show started slow and had some early speed bumps, but it picked up as it went along and even ended up giving us a decent bunch of explanations for things and fully sold the love story that orbited through the show. This isn't flawless but it was unquestionably good.

Decently okay:

• The Magnificent Kotobuki: The show remained perfectly entertaining on an episode by episode basis and the last two episodes were really something; they were compulsive and genuinely tense in a way that I hadn't expected at all. But the show's problems also remained, which is that it didn't really have a compelling long-term thread running through, although it did develop a plot for the climax. We did get a bunch of nice character moments, though, and maybe even a few things that could be called character development.

In shows that didn't start this season, I enjoyed That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime all the way through; it retained all of its good virtues as fine popcorn entertainment. However, it wound up ending with quite weird pacing, where it rushed through portions of the final storyline (dropping or significantly altering a number of plot elements in the process), then abruptly slowed down to a very leisurely pace and outright did a final recap episode. A show that both drops elements of the original story to save time and then does a recap episode is a rather odd thing, and I can't avoid some obvious speculations (although these speculations are often wrong; 'production problems' is an all-purpose idea that the fandom has and is usually not right).

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Spring 2019 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• Fairy Gone episode 1: That was a solid introduction and first episode. It had a certain amount of exposition, but it didn't explain everything, it had a bunch of action and progression, and it did some nice work. I'll watch the next episode. →

• Apparently I was not in the mood for One-Punch Man S2's first episode's story this night. I will probably take another run at it another time, since I skimmed the rest of the episode to see where it was going. ♯

  Spoiler: I did not try to watch the episode again, partly because in reading the ANN preview reports for it I discovered that there had been major staff changes (and a decided drop in the amount of interesting animation, which matches my vague feelings from what I did see of the episode).

• Wise Man's Grandchild episode 1: This was perfectly okay, but it is no Slime or Knight's & Magic and this episode was all setup. I'll watch another episode to see if it gets more interesting once it's actually doing something. ♯

• Demon Slayer episode 1: That was a strong, well done start that makes me want to watch more even though I can pretty much predict it's going to get mired down in the usual slow-paced way sooner or later. For now, it's exciting and appealing, and that's enough. ♯

• Sarazanmai episode 1: That simultaneously made perfect sense and very little sense, which is probably more than I expected. I have no other coherent short term reactions except that I'm definitely going to watch the next episode. →

• [...] In theory I could watch Fruits Basket, but in practice I saw the first version years ago and I don't remember loving it so much that I want to basically watch it again (although it was a decently nice show). ♯

By this point it seems unlikely that I'll watch any other first episodes. Carole & Tuesday has been getting some good reports, but it doesn't seem like my kind of show and my results with Shinichirō Watanabe's past shows have been decidedly mixed, with me bouncing off Kids on the Slope and Terror in Resonance.

Looking back on the Fall 2018 anime season

It's well past time for my traditional look back at what I watched in this past Fall season, to follow up on my early impressions and my midway views. This past fall season was unusual because I passed on Bloom Into You during the season and then became very taken with it when I watched it all just after the end of the year. Since I watched it so close to the season (and before I started the Winter 2019 season), I'm declaring it a Fall 2018 show for the purpose of this retrospective (and my eventual 'best N in 2018' entry).

(This entry has been delayed mostly because of laziness.)

Somewhere between excellent and amazing:

• SSSS.Gridman: The show started out being decently good and only got better from there, climaxing as an excellent if not amazing show. I had things to say in the aftermath of the last episode. Although Gridman starts out looking like a giant robot/kaiju show, it almost immediately becomes really an increasingly good character drama (interspersed with kaiju fights, which become necessary for the character drama). And as a character drama, it's excellent and affecting all through. The presentation is top-notch, with great directing and very interesting sound design.

  SSSS.Gridman is not flawless, but despite its flaws it's quite a lot my thing.

Excellent but effectively unfinished:

• Bloom Into You: This is a great show, beautiful, dramatic, full of small touches, and many other things that drew me into it. It's that rare thing, a high school romance that wholeheartedly works for me; it's almost become my new gold standard for that (taking over from Toradora). It only has one unfortunate flaw, which is that the story is in no way finished and the show has to just stop abruptly. Bloom is adopting an ongoing manga and apparently there is just no good pause point so far; the show picks an okay one, one that shows off character growth and so on, but it is forced to leave all of its big plot threads just dangling. I finished the show very much wanting a a second season (or perhaps to read the manga).

  That Bloom Into You has to stop so abruptly means that it really isn't a standalone work in the way that SSSS.Gridman is. In my opinion Bloom is better and less flawed than Gridman, but Gridman tells a whole story and Bloom does not, and it turns out that I care about that too.

Good fun entertainment:

• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: Above all, Slime is a cheerful, good-hearted show that is out to make us smile. If you want conflict and challenged characters and so on, this is not for you; it's all about Rimuru solving a succession of problems and running over a succession of obstacles as they build a home and make friends with people and various great character interactions go on. The show fundamentally likes pretty much everyone, and almost every enemy gets a chance at redemption. In an ocean of grim shows where terrible things happen to people and certain sorts of characters are walking cliches that are used only as the butt of jokes, Slime is a breath of fresh air.

  Slime is not flawless, and in a certain way it's boring. But I always enjoyed it and it reliably brought a smile to my face when I watched a new episode.

Not as good as the first season:

• Thunderbolt Fantasy S2: This was a good wuxia puppet show with various sorts of interesting things going on (and one stinger in the ending), but I'm not entirely taken with some of the things that Urobuchi wrote into the story (cf) and it can't (and doesn't) measure up to the first season. The original Thunderbolt Fantasy was amazing; this is merely a good adventure show with fun dialog and some amusing things going on.

  Looking back at the story structure in retrospect, I can't say that I'm entirely surprised by this; it would be very hard to duplicate the things that made the first season so special. We're unlikely to get that sort of revelations and twists and character developments again, because we've already had them once.

I feel satisfied with this season as a whole. Two shows were basically amazing (counting Bloom and ignoring the non-ending), one was solidly pleasant, and one was at least reasonably entertaining.

Brief impressions of the Winter 2019 anime season so far

As before it's time (and well past time) for my views of how this season has shaken out so far, following up on my first episode reactions. The short version is that it is not a good season for me so far (for various reasons) and as a result of that I am a week or two behind on the two shows from this season that I'm still watching.

Decently okay:

• The Magnificent Kotobuki: This is a perfectly entertaining show on an episode by episode basis; every episode is generally funny and well crafted, with various subtle touches. However I have realized that one of my problems with the show overall is that there is nothing there to pull me from one episode to the next other than the pure entertainment value. After the four episodes I've watched so far, there is no real ongoing plot or continuing developments, just episodic shenanigans.

  If I want to feel entertained, watching Kotobuki is a decent option. But it turns out that I have a lot of ways of entertaining myself and Kotobuki has often not been the most compelling one.

Uncertain:

• Kemurikusa: On the one hand, there is some good stuff here (it's quite atmospheric, for example). On the other hand, after four episodes I continue to find the show to be slow moving overall and Wakaba remains irritating as the genki idiot (cf), and some apparent subplots involving him annoy me by their very existence.

I have dropped everything else from my first episode reactions for an assortment of reasons, including Boogiepop and Others (cf), which makes me a bit sad. I have decided not to write those reasons up because they'll just consist of me being grumpy.

(I have been watching people watch Endro! on Twitter and it seems like a pretty entertaining show on the whole, even if it didn't work for me.)

I continue to fully enjoy That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime as fine popcorn entertainment. The goings-on of Rimuru and friends never fail to bring a smile to my face and it's the only show I'm current on this season.

My (Twitter) reactions to the first episodes of the Winter 2019 anime season

As before I'm collecting here all of my tweeted reactions to the first episodes I've seen (in the order that I saw them).

• Boogiepop and Others episode 1: That was okay, I guess; it certainly wasn't actively bad, but I don't feel terribly inspired by what I saw. Stuff happened. Some things made sense; other things might be deliberately obtuse. There's a lot of mystery and little reason to care. →

• Kemurikusa episode 1: That was a pretty decent start with a bunch of solid stuff, but I would be much less worried about where it's going if it had not added a boy. It's also pretty much all setup and lacks the propulsive push forward that really compelling shows have here. →

• Girly Air Force episode 1: That was generally decently fun and I especially liked the research boss; he's an enjoyable character. It's no Sky Girls, but I like the genre in general and I'm willing to watch more to see what happens next. →

• Dororo episode 1: That was perfectly well done and it definitely believed in 'show don't tell', although maybe it went a bit overboard on it; I would have been a bit lost if I hadn't known the premise. But it may not be distinct enough to keep me; it feels pretty generic action. ♯

• Magical Girl Spec Ops Asuka episode 1: This could have been interesting, but it has middle of the road aesthetics and mostly came off as kind of ridiculous and over the top (not in a good way). There were some decent bits but on the whole it felt entirely too lazily calculated. →

• Endro! episode 1: That was reasonably decent and reasonably funny, as people have said, but unsurprisingly it wasn't funny enough to keep me watching the next episode. (Anime comedy almost never works for me, so I expected this result.) ♯

• The Magnificent Kotobuki episode 1: Now that's how you do a first episode that nails me to my seat. Not just fun and thrilling along with subtle storytelling that showed instead of told, but also decent introductions to a bunch of fun characters. →

I won't be looking at Kemono Friends 2, not after what Kadokawa did to the scrappy little team that completely unexpectedly turned dross into gold. Anyway, early reports are not positive, which doesn't surprise me at all under the circumstances (I'm sort of surprised that Kadokawa found anyone who was willing to work on KF2 for them). The creative team behind Kemono Friends (the original and only real version) is doing Kemurikusa this season, so watch that instead.

I liked Overlord's first season but I'm not watching any more

I skipped Overlord when it first aired, but then back in the summer season I started watching it for no particularly strong reason; as I said at the time, it's ridiculous and overpowered in a way that amuses me. At that point I'd watched up through episode 7 and stopped. At the end of the year, in the between-season doldrums, I finished off the rest of Overlord's first season (after being annoyed because it had moved from Crunchyroll to Funimation in their great split, and Funimation is a pit of annoyance).

While I pretty much enjoyed the first season of Overlord as a whole in much the same way as I enjoyed the first seven episodes, I will not be watching any more of it. The short version of why not is that starting with episode 8, Momonga is revealed to be an extremely unpleasant person; he is basically a cruel and casually murderous sociopath. Although none of the incidents involved are significant bits of the story (and they don't happen very often), all of them happen without the story so much as raising an eyebrow. For me, this irreversibly taints the show as a whole, because it is actually following a villain and getting me to cheer for him in his goofy, overpowered antics and so on.

It's to Overlord's credit in a way that it's possible to watch the rest of the show, enjoy the spectacle, and to root for Momonga in it. It's very easy to forget that a few episodes ago, Momonga had some perfectly decent people murdered because they were making his life inconvenient, and I'm relatively confident that in the future, the incidents of murdering and cruel killings and so on will be few and far between. In a way that's why I don't want to watch any more of Overlord; I don't want the feeling of the show persuading me to cheer on someone I know is actually a nasty person.

(And the revelation of Momonga's nature has destroyed my interest in him as a character.)

My tweets from watching Bloom Into You

Right at the start of 2019, I decided to try out Bloom Into You (which I had initially passed on) and wound up quite enjoying it. In the spirit of not doing all of my blogging on Twitter, I'm copying my tweets about Bloom to here.

Overall, Bloom Into You is the best high school romance show I've seen since Toradora. Romance shows almost never work for me (which is one reason I didn't even try out Bloom at the start of the Fall season), but Bloom completely pulled me in. The one caveat I have is that the show is not a complete story, because it's based on an ongoing manga (and one that doesn't have a good stopping point where the story conveniently pivots from one thing to another).

Bloom Into You episode 1: That was solidly fun and I quite like Yuu's voice. I don't know if the show will be my thing over the long term, but it's more than earned a second episode and I'm quite looking forward to it.

(I should have tried this out last season, when it aired.) ♯

Yuu's internal voice and out loud dialog were a treasure all through Bloom. Yuu's not a conventional protagonist so she has an edge and a different angle to her thoughts and words, and the actual spoken voice her seiyuu used is a great fit for Yuu the character. The show fit in Yuu's internal thoughts and narration quite well and they're an important part of the story as a whole.

Bloom Into You episode 2: This continues to be a good show, partly on the strength of Yuu's voice but the other people are good too. My experience is changed and probably improved by knowing a certain amount of spoilers, which illuminate various little moments and exchanges. ♯

There are a number of things about various characters which the show drops hints about before it actually tells you. Because I had seen other people watching it on Twitter, I had already heard about a number of those things, so I could pick up, understand, and enjoy the hints in early episodes.

Bloom Into You episode 3: And Nanami has her first moment of genuine emotional honesty (more or less), all because Yuu is actually pretty smart and aware of things. This show is actually selling all of this, which I definitely appreciate; too many romance shows work only by fiat. →

One of my little regrets about watching Bloom Into You (even without spoilers) is that I'm pretty sure that Yuu is eventually going to end up with feelings of love, and while I want her to be happy (& she's sad now), I do enjoy the puzzled, aromantic observer Yuu we have so far.

I would be totally down for a version of Bloom Into You where Yuu simply enjoys Nanami's company more and more without romance coming into it on Yuu's side, and perhaps with Nanami moving to appreciate the companionship as well without feeling she has to be 'in love'.

One of my peculiarities in my spate of tweeting is that I deliberately started out using Nanami Touko's last name to refer to her and later switched to her first name. I did this because in early episodes I didn't feel the show was putting us close enough to her to really think of her on a first name basis. Koito Yuu was always Yuu because the show puts us close to her (in fact in her head) from the very start.

Bloom Into You episode 4: I can't help but see Maki as a male more or less mirror image of Yuu, less self-conscious about how he's 'supposed' to be experiencing love. Also, things are moving and little moments of revelation are adding up (to things I already know from spoilers). ♯

Bloom Into You episode 5: Flustered Namami and more or less innocently whatever you want to call it Yuu is a powerful combo. Nanami has seemed so in control for so long that this is an interestingly different view. (Poor Nanami.) →

Bloom Into You episode 6: This is not a healthy relationship on either side, but then that is sometimes the messy nature of life. Perhaps in time it can grow into something more than two people sort of using each other, even if they're currently sort of happy with what they have. →

Bloom Into You is very good at being very good, and it is beautiful. These people, all of them can say so much without really saying much, and the direction and presentation of the anime is quietly so very good.

Bloom Into You has a mastery of character gesture, tone of voice, expression, how and when characters look at each other, and so on that communicates a whole host of things that lesser shows would have to handle in dialog or in far more obvious character interactions.

Bloom Into You episode 7 is beautiful (and sort of sad, on multiple levels), although I suspect I may be reading things into it about silent societal pressures and prejudices that aren't entirely intended. Such a powerful set of moments, though. Poor Sayaka. →

Given what Bloom Into You is about and what it's already shown us, the comfortable definite moment with the two adults is not unexpected, but it was still great. I admit the initial shot of their legs made me wonder if the show was going to be coy, but no, that was a fake-out. →

Bloom Into You episode 8: This delicate balance is already falling apart, whether any of you know it or not, and all three of you are each falling and lying to yourselves in your own ways. →

Bloom Into You episode 9's first half has such an important conversation. Maki is good for something (very) important after all, not just stirring the shit for his own amusement. →

Bloom Into You episode 9: This show remains absurdly good at illustrating all of the tangled emotions and drives of these people without actually having to spell anything out. Poor Touko, who did not get to feel wanted the way she wanted to be. →

Bloom Into You episode 10: Everything was going so well and then that epilogue AAAAA. On the everything going so well front, those dorks need to give in and see each other in person more. It makes them both so happy just to talk to each other. →

Bloom Into You episode 11: The tensions are stacking up and the illusions are crumbling (and in some cases, revealed as pre-crumbled, it's just that certain parties didn't reveal their knowledge). As great as always. →

Bloom Into You episode 12: And the tensions boil over and the crows come home to roost at last. Yuu gets the answers she implicitly wanted, and they don't please her. Also, I think Touko is balancing herself on a knife-edge even though she doesn't realize it. →

Bloom Into You episode 13: The aquarium overshadowed almost everything else in the episode except the heart-stopping moment at the train station. I have to root for Yuu being selfish for once and getting what she wants. →

Now we get into some of my overall views and quibbles.

I completely enjoyed watching Bloom Into You as a show, but unfortunately episode 13 doesn't end anything so much as it just stops, and I don't know how that makes me feel about it overall. There are a lot of big things left hanging over the story at this point. →

Also, I'll give Bloom Into You points for Yuu still arguably not being 'in love' with Touko, although she clearly likes her company and all of that. Perhaps the story is quietly crafting a message in the combination and contrast of Touko and Yuu here.

Touko is unambiguously 'traditional romance love' in love with Yuu, and shows it in tons of ways. Yuu is not ostensibly feeling this way, but she clearly equally has genuine affection and caring for Touko. I can imagine the show asking 'is this not love too, just different?' →

Quite possibly this interpretation of what Bloom Into You is doing is me thinking too hard.

(But I do so dislike the 'character X is in-love in love and just doesn't realize it' trope that shows up so often. I'd like it to be that Bloom Into You is different.) →

I don't know how I'd have felt watching Bloom Into You week by week during the Fall 2018 season, especially not knowing various spoilers. I'm absolutely sure that my experience was changed by marathoning the show, especially with some spoilers in hand. I suspect that I enjoyed the show more because I was marathoning it and could take it at whatever pace I wanted (which turned out to be a fast pace; I ran through the entire show over the course of a few days and found the last few episodes so compelling that I stayed up very late to watch them).

(Part of the pace was that Bloom wasn't competing with anything else in my anime watching or life at the time, because I was off for my work's winter break and there was nothing else airing. This lack of any activity was part of why I wound up trying Bloom out in the first place; I was plain bored and all sorts of people had said lots of praise about it during the fall season.)

An appreciation for Laid-Back Camp and Shima Rin

Looking back, I think that I fell for Laid-Back Camp right from the real start of the show, after the first episode's OP. The whole sequence of Shima Rin biking along (on a compact bike, loaded down with gear) through the autumn surroundings, then setting up camp and settling in, all amidst quiet beauty and just in general quiet was compelling for all sorts of reasons. I like seeing people set up things like this, and the show loved camping (complete with its little educational interludes) and the surroundings, and the whole thing was quiet and unhurried, but beyond all of that it just worked for me. Then the whole thing wakes up and makes me smile when Nadeshiko walks into the scene; it's a different feel entirely, but no less enjoyable.

I don't have a nice pat answer for why Laid-Back Camp is a show that I enjoy so much. Instead it is a show much like Flying Witch, where I simply like it without being able to completely articulate why. However, I can put my finger on some of what I find so appealing, because out of all of the characters and all of the activities in Laid-Back Camp, what I'm most drawn to are Shima Rin's outings, especially her solo ones. Like Shima Rin, I think of myself as a bookish loner, and I have enough experience of the outdoors to appreciate and enjoy her camping adventures (even if I have no desire to emulate them, especially in cold autumn weather). And the show is more than willing to let the surroundings speak for themselves on Rin's trips, lovingly dwelling on the outdoors and making the situation seem inviting despite the temperatures.

But Shima Rin is not precisely a loner. Even if she doesn't camp with other people very often, she's connected to them through her cellphone (as covered very well in @SpiritusNoxSA's great article) and through direct friendships and interactions. In many ways the heart of the show is this slow growing interaction, especially between Rin and Nadeshiko, who is herself a solid and appealing character.

The obvious heart of Laid-Back Camp is the simply gorgeous sequence in episode 5 where Rin and Nadeshiko text photos of their respective beautiful night-time views back and forth, comfortably separate and together at once. But for me, the bit I will remember most strongly is the epilogue at the end of episode 12, where Nadeshiko goes solo camping, exchanges texts with Rin (who is also solo camping), and then Rin reveals that she's at the same campsite. To me, it says so much about both Rin and Nadeshiko, and about how both of them they have both changed and not changed over the show (and also).

I may not know why I like Laid-Back Camp, but I do know that it lives in my heart, like a warm campfire at night. So here's to you, little show, with all your warmth and funny moments and great characterization and goofyness and quiet and beauty and contentment.

(The OST is pretty great, too. Laid-Back Camp's background music is an important part of its mood, and its mood is a big part of why it works so well.)

PS: It's not completely clear if Rin's and Nadeshiko's bikes are folding bikes or merely ones with small wheels and frames, as we never see them folded. But there's very little reason to make a non-folding compact bike, so I rather suspect that they are folding bikes.

PPS: Yes, that bikes feature in Laid-Back Camp is indeed one thing that initially attracted me to it. Sometimes I'm a sucker for bikes, although not for bike racing.

(This is part of the 12 Days of Anime 2018.)

Rewatching Black Magic M-66

Black Magic M-66 is a fun little 1987 action OVA of an early 1980s short story manga by Masamune Shirow. Among other things, it is one of the few anime adaptations that is directed or co-directed by the manga author; Shirow is credited as co-director and for storyboards. The story itself is pretty straightforward, and is usually summarized as 'the efforts of a female journalist to save someone from an out of control military android'. As an early Shirow work and a short story, it's pretty much free of the ornamentation and twitches that show up in his later and longer works (you will not find much philosophical rambling here, for instance). With its limited run time and limited story scope, it's pretty much all action and setup for action, although it covers a surprising number of additional bits and pieces in the process.

Animation and production wise Black Magic M-66 is quite 1980s (with elements that feel distinctly old fashioned), but in a different way than Crusher Joe (which I watched last year); it's more Bubblegum Crisis than early 1980s. Part of this is that it's infused with Shirow's general design sense, which even then seems to have been pretty cyberpunk (in the military flavour). There are a certain amount of what are now amusing 1980s anachronisms, like the reporter's giant video camera and tape reels, and some of the outfits, and a cameo of a video telephone terminal (once a 'sure to come in the future' thing). But despite its 1980s origin, the whole thing stands up perfectly well today; it looks different, but not bad.

Black Magic M-66 may be straightforward, but it's also fun. The story (such as it is) is solid, the characters (such as they are) are amusing and good, there's periodic amusing bits, and both the action and the tension are well done. This is a race against time and against an opponent, and it works even when you have a reasonable guess of what's generally going to happen next. The M-66 is an implacable, persistent, and even clever opponent, but not an infallible one, and it has weaknesses. Also, the entire story is driven by a core mistake, where the M-66 was transported with test target data loaded that aimed it at a real person, and sadly this core mistake is all too realistic; over and over again us programmers use real data in testing and have it blow up in our face.

I first saw Black Magic M-66 a long time ago, and I rewatched it now for a tangle of reasons. Certainly part of it was that it was there and not very long (it's about 45 minutes), but also part of it was in reaction to not rewatching Full Metal Panic!. To some extent I wanted to rewatch something old that I had fond memories of and actively re-confirm those memories, so I could have more confidence in my past taste and my fond memories of past anime. Black Magic M-66 fits the bill nicely, and I think I liked it as much this time around as I did originally.

There's a number of things I noticed this time around that I either didn't spot or didn't remember from the first time. There's a military unit involved in the story and Black Magic M-66 is a lot less down on them than I would have expected; it's actually pretty sympathetic and also gives them some moments of humanity. The military and the reporter are effectively partners in saving the M-66's target, although each of them might object to that description. It's a little bit hokey that the military didn't use better weapons against the M-66, but the story does provide a couple of justifications and you can read between the lines to it being important to the powers that be to recover the M-66 in reasonably intact condition, never mind what it does to the people who have to achieve that.

(In fact, looking objectively at the story you could argue that the reporter's heroism is potentially unnecessary and the military would have done fine on its own, despite what she believes. I'm not quite sure this is true, because there are a couple of times where the reporter is there before the military is and saves the M-66's target, but it's at least close. This is an interesting angle for a story that is ostensibly about the reporter's heroism to take, although her heroism is genuine (and gets her respect from the military).)

I suspect that my current reactions to parts of the story are touched by this post 9/11 world we live in. Tall buildings more or less collapsing have a bit more bite than they probably did in 1987, as does a military unit running around ordering people in secrecy, shutting down news, and so on (although I suspect that this always read differently in Japan than in the West).

(There is also that Black Magic M-66 has 'flying cars' in the form of more or less planes that fly around at low level inside the city and have parking areas and so on. And yes, we have one getting shot down and crashing. This is very 1980s SF for anime from what I remember and shows up all over, but it reads quite differently today. In the 1980s it was futuristic and imaginable. Today, not so much.)

In my personal rating of Shirow animated works, Black Magic M-66 probably ranks highest of all anime that is directly based on a Shirow story instead of simply drawing from it. The Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series is significantly better and deeper, but it draws from Shirow's GitS manga instead of trying to animate it. The GitS movie, well, I have complicated feelings about that one and don't rate it very highly.

This sort of elaborates on some tweets of mine, because I feel like it.

PS: There are any number of things I find neat about Black Magic M-66 that I'm not mentioning here, because this is already long enough. There are all sorts of little details about it that I enjoy.

PPS: This time around I discovered that the M actually stands for something; specifically, it's 'Mario'. Really. It's even in the title card. I really don't have anything I can say here, except that I'm going to try to forget it again.

(This is part of the 12 Days of Anime 2018.)

My tweets in the aftermath of SSSS.Gridman's last episode

In the spirit of not doing my blogging only on Twitter, I'm copying what I said about SSSS.Gridman's ending and it as a whole to here. The actual tweets start here, and there are interesting discussions with people who replied to me that I'm not copying here.

There are some spoilers here, but that's how it goes. Some expansion on bits of the tweets that involves spoilers is hidden behind HTML abbreviations.

SSSS.Gridman episode 12: Oh wow. Certain portions of that were kind of as expected, parts were pleasant surprises of the Gridman 'no beating around the bush' variety, and then the extended ending was really something else (something great). The final coda, too. Good work, Anti.

In the end SSSS.Gridman made the extremely smart choice of basically not explaining a lot of things, which I am perfectly fine with. It nailed the emotional and practical landing, and in retrospect it was carefully never framed as having mysteries.

To expand on this, SSSS.Gridman had things that it didn't explain, but it never presented those things to us as mysteries. No one ever asked 'why X' or 'how did Y come to be' or 'where did Z come from', and since those questions were never asked and were never part of the plot, it was easy to not answer them without letting people down (or at least I didn't feel let down). If a show is going to have things it doesn't answer, carefully keeping them in the background is in my opinion the best approach. Call this the anti Checkov's gun principle; if you don't want to have to shoot the gun, don't put it on the mantelpiece.

I still think the SSSS.Gridman OP and ED are probably saying some interesting things, but I'm not sure about it and the final episode didn't provide clarity. But they probably are strongly talking about the show's overall theme.

Before the last episode, I increasingly came to think that SSSS.Gridman's OP and ED were pretty meaningful; they not just had things to say about the show itself, but also gave us hints about what was really going on and had happened before the show started. In light of everything in the last episode, I no longer think that this is literally true. For more on the ED specifically, see Emily's great article on it.

Also, I know just enough about the surrounding context of the overall Gridman series of shows to know that the very ending of the show is perfectly fitting and a great callback. (I actually wondered earlier if the show would go that way and yep.)

As covered in Sakugablog's notes on episodes 5-7, among other places, SSSS.Gridman contains a fair number of fairly important links to the original live action Gridman the Hyper Agent.

Oh. I suddenly realized the obvious reason and meaning for why Anti stayed behind in the end of SSSS.Gridman, given what Anti is. Well done, show. And I bet he's going to hang out with Rikka to a certain extent, which ... really makes sense and casts another light on him & Rikka.

The expansion of this, which involves a more detailed spoiler:

It's strongly implied that Anti is effectively a piece of Akane's heart. Akane had to leave her dream world, but at the same time she loved it and sort of wanted to stay in it with the people there. So, with Anti staying, a piece of her heart is staying in the dream.

Back to my thread:

In fact, looking back a whole lot of Anti's interactions with Rikka are now really quite interesting if you look at them from the right angle. Poor Akane, in a way.

Another SSSS.Gridman thought: Alexis Kerib could be a metaphor or it could be real, and in fact it could be a mixture of both at once. Certainly as a metaphor, Alexis is eternal, as it said. And you cannot just beat it up; the real fix is something else entirely.

As a metaphor, Alexis Kerib is clearly the whole cocktail of depression, self-hatred, isolation, and so on, a cocktail that is eternal and cannot be directly defeated, only banished from the current sufferer. SSSS.Gridman did amazing work in showing us how much Akane hated herself and suffered from this cocktail all on her own.

In light of the very end of SSSS.Gridman, I think we have to rule out certain interpretations of the OP and ED. They now seem at least unlikely to be portraying Akane's real pre-series life, although they can be metaphors touching on it.

Also, the show gave us the meaning of SSSS, and it was well done. SSSS indeed.

Also, another important thing to note about the ending, from a Twitter conversation thread:

I choose to believe that the ending shot implies that there is, since Rikka's present is there in Akane's room as she wakes up. (Perhaps that present is in fact the trigger, lingering in Akane's subconscious all this time.)

You can read this many ways, but if nothing else the show wants us to know that the transit pass case Rikka bought as a present for Akane and finally gave her lingered into Akane's new life. It is very explicit about showing it as the first thing visible in the final scene of the show.

(And, in light of SSSS.Gridman's unusual soundscape, it strikes me as potential interesting that this final scene does have a background music track. Of course this might just be for practical reasons, in that there's no particularly appropriate basic environmental noises to use and dead silence would feel wrong.)

Update: Sakugablog's episode 12 coverage has a nice rundown on what we can reasonably piece together about the narrative from clues and allusions in the show, and also the things we have no idea about (of which there are any number).

SSSS.Gridman's unusual soundscape

It's no secret that most anime is generously slathered with background music. Unless characters are talking, and sometimes even if they are, there's almost always BGM running in the background, a constant soundtrack for what's going on in the show. It's even a cliche than when the BGM cuts out, something serious is going on. Sometimes this BGM is used to communicate mood or comedy or the like, but often it is simply there.

SSSS.Gridman is an exception. From the start, one of the quietly unusual things about the show has been how little it uses background music. Rather than BGM, its passing moments and full scenes are filled with incidental environmental sounds; things like little noises of things thumping and squeaking, people's footsteps, the warning bells of railway crossings, the flapping and cawing of passing birds, doors opening and closing, rain falling, thumping machinery in the distance, the natural noise of busses humming along, and insects. Even when the show fills a silent time with background noise, it's not music; it's with, say, a quiet drone.

(There are times when music crops up in Gridman as diegetic sound, which is to say that it exists in the world and the characters hear it too.)

SSSS.Gridman does have background music, but it's rarely used. When the music starts up, things are about to happen, usually the kaiju fights or other climactic events touching on them. And generally the moment the fight is over, the music cuts out too. If there is music and it's not a fight, something important is happening and the show wants us to know.

(And Gridman generally considers fights over, at least for BGM, once the decisive blow has been struck. There is an explosion afterward, but the BGM does not continue through it in the way it might in another show.)

I'm sure that this is a deliberate decision on the part of the production. If nothing else, designing and putting together this soundscape has to be a lot more work than commissioning some BGM tracks and mixing them in underneath the vocals and any important foley sounds. But I don't know enough to guess why the show handled its sound this way. Perhaps it's for the same reason that the show had its animators draw a lot of what would normally have been background art, which is apparently to make the show's world feel more alive and real; see the Sakugablog discussion of this in their coverage of the first two episodes.

(Without knowing enough about anime production to be sure, I suspect that the prevalence of BGM in anime in general is because it is the simplest and cheapest way to fill in what would otherwise be completely dead silence (or voices talking in otherwise dead silence). Live action works can at least do scratch recordings during filming to have a basic 'bed' of background noise, but anime doesn't have that unless you deliberately go collect field recordings. Dead silence is somewhat unnatural in real life, which is probably partly why it's used for emphasis in anime.)

Looking back, one of the surprising things about this is how little I consciously noticed and notice both sides of BGM usage. For SSSS.Gridman, I didn't realize just how little BGM was used and how soon it cuts out. For other shows, I didn't realize how pervasive BGM usage was until I was spot-checking things as part of writing this and discovered, for instance, that it seems to be not unusual to continue BGM underneath even people talking, which is something I wouldn't have expected to need or use BGM. On the other hand, how pervasive BGM is seems to vary from show to show; I encountered others that had significant sections with only ambient noises and no BGM, although none that went anywhere as far as SSSS.Gridman.

(This is part of the 12 Days of Anime 2018.)