What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Seto Kaiba]

Got back to Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse, having basically forgotten it existed.

After a few minutes of episode six, I remember why I forgot it existed.  It's kind of s***.  The center of a Venn diagram of the worst aspects of Re:Zero and Nobunaga the Fool, both of which are vastly superior stories it's cribbing from without an ounce of shame.  

Spoiler

Honestly, the main thing keeping this story from being over in about three episodes is that its protagonist is an absolute imbecile who's seemingly too dim to figure out anything on his own.

 

Edited Tuesday at 12:18 AM by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I started Yano-kun's Ordinary Days today, I was not impressed at all.  It is on the 3 episode protocol.

[Seto Kaiba]

OK, the Fall 2025 simulcast season has started in earnest... so let's kick the tires on a few of these new offerings and see what we got, eh?

One thing is evident, the translation quality on Crunchyroll is definitely slipping.

 

My Awkward Senpai

The "romance with my senpai at work" genre of romcom is still alive and well.  So's the trend of socially awkward protagonists from last season.  In this case, it's a romance comedy all about an office lady who suffers from severe social anxiety.  Her attempts to mask her anxiety have given her a fearsome reputation as a strict and uncompromising boss b*tch type in her company's advertising department.  Her life is turned upside-down she can no longer avoid social interactions after being tasked with training the department's painfully earnest new hire.  

The first episode doesn't leave much of an impression.  Mainly, I think, because the "comedy" is pretty thin on the ground and mainly consists of the protagonist agonizing over how her social awkwardness manifests as being bossy or standoffish.  

 

Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!

... which is NOT the title of an adult movie!  This one's a fantasy romcom about a Count's daughter who is shunned and even a little feared in noble society for her unseemly enjoyment of eating the meat of magical beasts (monsters).  While attempting to save an elderly couple when a magical beast attacks a garden party held by the King for noble matchmaking, she is rescued by the Blood-Mad Duke, a noble of similarly ill-repute who is infamous as a prolific hunter of magical beasts.  The two of them hit it off almost immediately when they fail to be afraid of each other based on their respective reputations and he takes an interest in her peculiar hobby.

Honestly... I am intrigued and would like to hear more.  It's weirdly cute seeing these two otherwise-terrifying weirdos bond over the intersection of their respective hobbies to a mix of exasperation and delight from their families and retainers.

 

This Monster Wants to Eat Me

Which is also NOT the title of an adult movie!  But it seems fair.  I mean, the previous show's protagonist was eating monsters.  This one's an adaptation of a yuri horror manga about a suicidal teenage girl named Hinako who just wants to die after being severely injured and losing her entire family in a car accident.  While walking home from school one day, Hinako is attacked by an iso-onna yokai who wants to kill and eat her.  She's rescued from this terrible fate by a mermaid yokai named Shiori, who tells her that her flesh and blood are particularly delicious to yokai and vows to protect her... until she reaches the peak of her flavor when she will kill and eat her herself.

I have no idea what to make of this one, to be honest.  What I can say is that the title surely did not lie.  The monster really does want to eat her... just in a very passive-aggressive way.  Then again, this is yuri... so "eat" may end up more figurative in the end.

Edited Friday at 01:29 AM by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

Solo Camping for Two (Second Cour)

It's still a very poor ambassador for very hobby it's trying to promote.  The writers finally decided to get off the dime and do some actual character development right at the end of the show's first cour, but it's all very flat, trite, and generic with no real emotional impact.  The second cour does finally bring a vague hint of a sense of direction to the proceedings, as we learn that Gen's dream is... to own a campsite.  He doesn't seem to be doing anything to work towards that dream, though.  He's just sitting in front of his tent drinking cheap beer by the case until he dozes off.  The series also seems to be taking the Eidos Interactive/Tomb Raider approach to the word "Camping", since apparently renting an AirBNB is "camping" by this show's standards.

It's easy to see how they had the money to do a second cour... the animation quality is never better than mediocre and in more than a few shots looks like it was drawn by interns.  It's pretty boring, mainly because the cast are completely flat characters.  There are apparently FORTY-FIVE outdoor equipment companies cooperating with and/or sponsoring this mess, and it still wasn't enough to pay for actual writing or decent animation.  A hard pass for anyone who's not looking for a sleep aid.

 

A Gatherer's Adventure in Isekai

I yearn for an end to the tyranny of the isekai genre.  It's 99% lazy, derivative slop.

This one is firmly in the lazy and derivative slop category.  Statistically average workaday desk jockey Kamishiro Takeru is bored with his statistically average workaday life.  So much so that he apparently dies of nothing in particular while sitting in front of his apartment's TV and finds himself talking to a being that claims to be a god.  Said "god" sticks him with your average isekai cheat powers and tosses him into a world called Madeus that the god just can't seem to get working correctly in the hopes that he'll fix it.

The animation quality is pretty average.  Predictably, it's the D- form letter isekai writing where this series really falls down.  It's incredibly generic and just as incredibly boring.  The only things about it that really stand out are that its protagonist seems to be too stupid to realize that all of the words to activate his magic are in English and that he seems to be a literal giant who's a full head taller than anyone around him.  A hard pass for... well... I can't imagine anyone this isn't a hard pass for.  Maybe someone who gets their jollies from a recording of Ben Stein unenthusiastically reading the phone book?

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Towa no Yuugure started and I really enjoyed the 1st episode.

[Seto Kaiba]

Let's Play

A satirical exploration of the games industry and gaming culture based on the American webcomic by the same name.  The story revolves around Samara Young, a recently graduated software engineer who dreams of becoming a game developer instead of taking over her father's software company.  Her latest indie project, Ruminate, seems set for success when it gets review bombed into oblivion out of the blue by fans of a popular YouTube Let's Play reviewer who gave it a very negative review on his stream.  Conveniently, that reviewer turns out to be the new tenant of the apartment next door which leads to her discovering an interest in romance and ending up the center of a love triangle between her boss and her new neighbor.

The synopsis on Crunchyroll had me feeling a lot more positive about this series than I am now.  This is pretty cringe, I'm not gonna lie.  This is an American weeb from Kansas trying to write a cliche Japanese office romance and then set it in California because that's basically Japan, right? 🙃

The author of the webcomic wants to claim this is a realistic examination of gamer culture and office culture in the software/gaming industry.  If so, I have to ask "On what planet?"  It sure as **** ain't Earth.  There are no less than six different incidents in this first episode that would have led to either career-ending HR complaints or multi-million dollar lawsuits for sexual harassment and workplace discrimination in the first episode alone.  Most of them from the protagonist's own manager, come to that.  (And I know I'm not being unfair about it because the protagonist AND her father both flag several of those as improper interactions.)

Edited Friday at 09:32 PM by Seto Kaiba

[Seto Kaiba]

May I Ask For One Final Thing?

So... this one is another fine installment in that curiously specific genre of "a noblewoman who was engaged to the self-absorbed second prince until he decided to take up with a girl of lower social status and use malicious rumors and false accusations to ruin his fiancée's reputation and call off the engagement takes her revenge."  It is WEIRD how often that one comes up.  You wouldn't think such an incredibly specific premise would be very common, but this is like the sixth or seventh one I've watched with that exact formula in the last two years.

This one's got moxie though.  Instead of running away in tears until she's rescued by a better love interest or rejoicing and gladly running off to live her life as a free woman, Scarlet El Vandimion is having none of that "the best revenge is living well" nonsense and decides to get MAD.

Spoiler

Then she decides to THROW HANDS.

Three minutes and thirty seconds in and I am SOLD. This series did a better job making its protagonist relatable in three minutes than most shows do in three episodes.  I am not only all in, at the end of the first episode I'm ready to declare Scarlet El Vandimion Fall 2025's Best Girl.

Spoiler

This is a girl who came so prepared to throw hands that she brought a pair of sap gloves to a royal ball and put them on before gleefully applying "percussive correction" to her ex-fiancé's entire noble faction before turning her attention to her newly minted ex.

11/10.  Wife material.  Rollicking good fun and my top contender for this season's best show.

 

 

 

I was so enthused I started the second episode straightaway...

Spoiler

... and promptly lost it when the First Prince arrives late to the scene of the massacre, only to declare how unkind it was for her to beat an entire room full of nobles unconscious when he wasn't there to watch it happen.

 

[Seto Kaiba]

The Banished Court Magician Aims to Become the Strongest

Another one of those weirdly specific premises that seems to have no end of stories built around it.  "The adventurer party arrogantly banishes its white mage/support from the party on the (incorrect) assumption that they're not contributing anything from the back row, so they have to go off to start a New Life that reveals how awesome and overpowered they've literally always been while their old party learns the hard way that they were being carried."  There were two shows with this exact premise last season alone, and this is like the 6th or 7th one this year.  This is one of the most common isekai-adjacent fantasy story premises along with "starting my new life as a pharmacist in a small town".

Court Mage Alec Ygret is kicked out of his party and has his rank and title as a court mage stripped from him because the arrogant princeling leading his adventuring party thinks he's not pulling his weight because he's only ever advising caution and casting support magic from the back line.  Predictably, he's a complete doormat of a person who can't even bother defending himself and is held in such poor esteem by his own colleagues that nobody else bothers to defend him either.  Of course nobody's willing to hear him out when he's finally found a little bit of spine, so he's conveniently picked up by a never-before-mentioned old friend who wants him and him specifically to join her A-rank adventuring party "Lasting Period".

This series is so by-the-numbers and so devoid of original thought or anything to make its protagonist interesting or relatable that I honestly caught myself tuning it out or putting it on pause and wandering off to do other things multiple times during the first episode.  This series is so tediously dull, so desperately boring, and so profoundly unimaginative that I'd recommend literally anything as an alternative to watching it.  Watch something else.  Read a book.  Play a video game.  Learn a new language.  Study the tax code.  Pay next month's bills early.  Hug a cactus.  Learn things man was not meant to know and go mad from the revelation.  Just don't waste your time on this sad mess of a show.

 

My Friend's Little Sister Has It In For Me!

Ordinary High School Student™️ Akiteru has a problem.  He's a man determined to bring efficiency to the world of romance (AKA clueless), and his best friend Ozuma's little sister Iroha likes to hang around his place and be an annoying pest because she obviously likes him and he could not be less interested in her.  His hobby, which he wants to turn into a career, is game development.  His game development circle "5th Floor Alliance" has put out an indie game that got over 1 million downloads and he's looking to go pro with a job working for his uncle's entertainment company.  His uncle is willing to hire 5th Floor Alliance as devs without making them sit the company exam, but there's a catch... he wants his nephew Akiteru to be his daughter's fake boyfriend until they both graduate because she's transferring to his co-ed school and he wants to keep her away from boys.  So starts an obnoxious love triangle.

It's... not bad?  Not great.  This is another one of those premises that gets overused a bunch, with the guy's future being held hostage in order to force him into a relationship that eventually ends up as a love triangle because the girl he's forced to be with starts to like him and the one who couldn't confess fast enough suddenly spills the beans.  Watchable, but nothing to write home about so far.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Mechanical Marie started and I liked it.

[Seto Kaiba]

Let This Grieving Soul Retire! (Second Season)

Picks up shortly after the events of last season's finale, though most of the episode is given over to an extended flashback to how Tino's first encounter with the members of Strange Grief and a stolen brooch spiraled into Strange Grief gaining fame as heroes.

The animation and writing are both on par with the previous season's.  Not great, but "pretty good" would be fair.  The main weakness of the writing is just the story's central premise requires the writing to jump through a LOT of hoops and use a lot of contrived coincidences to avoid making a strong argument for Krai either deserving his reputation as the genius strategist hero or being a Flashman-style dirty coward who's been mistaken for a great hero because of his proximity to the other members of Strange Grief.

Spoiler

I'm given to understand that the original light novel eventually ran out of ways to keep the gimmick going and eventually had to retire him as the story's protagonist once it was obvious his low opinion of himself is just imposter syndrome.

 

Hands Off: Sawaranaide Kotesashi-kun

... okay, yeah might have to write Crunchyroll about doing a better job with content advisories.  This series is flagged under "sports", "comedy", and "romance".  No indication on their simulcast page of what this series is really about.  Even the series page in their app doesn't give any indication besides a tiny "18+" icon the size of a single grain of rice next to saying it's subtitled and the above-listed genres.  The only indication that this is... something else... is buried in "More Details" extended description.  

It's ecchi bordering on softcore p*rn.  Why is this even on Crunchyroll?  That's HiDive's bag, not theirs.  They've put it in the same content category as Berserk, which is an odd choice.

Ordinary High School Student™️ Koyo Kotesashi has taken a job as a live-in caretaker at the rather rundown Maple Lies dormatory in order to pay his way through school in order to pursue his dream of studying sport/exercise medicine.  On his arrival, he learns that the tenants under his care are all elite nationally-ranked athletes from his new high school (Seiwa University HS).  When one injures herself falling down the stairs, he examines her and discovers some mobility issues stemming from untreated sports injuries.  He tries to help her by applying the seitai therapy he learned from his family.  (A pseudoscientific "alternative medicine" practice based on Chinese traditional medicine AKA "unscientific nonsense" that is somewhere between chiropractic "medicine" and actual physical therapy mobility exercises.)  The end result is the physical therapy version of Shokugeki no Soma's foodgasms.

Eminently skippable.