What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Focslain]

38 minutes ago, Big s said:

I didn’t hate the remake, but it did make me rewatch and really enjoy the original much more. The old one had very minimalistic things going on, but it really was great fun and much more enjoyable overall 

Agreed, Orange's take on the series does seem a little darker then the OG anime. When you mentioned bailing on Stampede I figured you didn't finish it so just wanted to give a heads up on Stargaze. 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Frieren was so funny today. Too bad there is only ten episodes.

[kajnrig]

6 hours ago, Focslain said:

Agreed, Orange's take on the series does seem a little darker then the OG anime. When you mentioned bailing on Stampede I figured you didn't finish it so just wanted to give a heads up on Stargaze. 

I want to say that manga fans felt Stampede was 1) closer to it in tone despite 2) being it's own loose adaptation. Are either of these the case? I didn't watch it past a few episodes - nothing against it, I just lost track and never got back to it. I thought it was fine for a property I was never super into, but it did indeed bring me back to the OG anime, which I think definitely stands the test of time given my nephew was watching alongside and having a good time, too.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

So back to the collection for me..  having finished Tora Dora,  I figured I would try for the 2nd of the triple crown of Tsundere Loli characters voiced by Rie Kugimiya.. which is Zero no Tsukaima/The familiar of Zero.   

4 seasons,  and I will admit I still have a soft spot for this series,  even with the fact that Louise is a terrible choice for the MC.   Tiffania any day of the week was a better choice.    With that said,  I think the series starts pretty strong,  but somewhere along S2 and S3 runs out of gas.   The whole Albion war arc is pretty rough to watch,  particularly the school hostage story arc.      Season 4 does a fairly good job at capping the whole series. 

 

   

[Seto Kaiba]

Around the 2/3 mark on the current season, not a lot of the shows I've tried have had much to show for themselves.  

I'm particularly frustrated by The Casebook of Arne because, despite its pretensions to being a detective story, it's so badly composed that calling it a detective story feels like a slight against actual detective stories.  (Esp. since the answer to each mystery is usually whatever the most obvious supernatural monster is given the circumstances.  It basically obeys none of Knox's Ten Commandments for mystery writing so every deduction and every conclusion feels like an arse pull AND baby's first mystery at alternating times.

A lot of the suspected isekai and adjacent slop turned out to just be actual isekai and adjacent slop.  Jack-of-all-Trades, Party of None is your usual overpowered protagonist affair.  A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation is almost the embodiment of tedium.  Isekai Office Worker started out interesting but after a few episodes it's basically just the same joke on his lover's overprotectiveness over and over.  The Villainess is Adored by the Prince of the Neighboring Kingdom is an otome series with none of the usual parody of subversion, so it's not funny or interesting it's just the adventures of a blatant Mary Sue.

I've had a bit more fun with romcoms like Tamon's B-Side, which remains both a romcom and a frank examination of how phenomenally toxic and fake the idol industry is.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I am just loving Frieren this season.

[electric indigo]

About time to watch Sky Crawlers again.

 

[Dangard Ace]

Frieren is always good.

Watched Heroic Age cause I wanted some sort of space opera....I really don't like the character designs and the characters never felt like they were in any danger of anything.

Hell Mode:   wasn't exactly hell mode.  MC is just breezing through everything.

Started Yamato 3199 since new episodes dropped.

Darwin - really need to get around to watching this.  Saw a clip of monkey boy just owning a bunch of assassins.   Seemed cool.

Dead Account.....ehhhh. The main character annoys me.   Think I'm gonna drop it.

 

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling is a pretty good show. I am enjoying it enough to read the light novel.

[Seto Kaiba]

Sadly, several of this season's shows that I was really hoping would be good turned out to be pretty mediocre... but there've been a few standouts to compensate for it.

 

Just finished The Champignon Witch, which starts out as a fairly cutesy and insubstantial little fantasy series about a witch who lives in the woods whose powers cause her to leave a trail of mushrooms wherever she goes.  That superficially cutesy start hid a LOT of depth and by the end the series was a rather bittersweet tragic romance.

 

Ironically, the third season of the Initial D sequel/spinoff MF Ghost is proving to be a lot slower than I'd hoped.  There's a lot of emphasis on the relationship between Kanata and Ren (and Aiba's jealousy of it) and they're really dragging the races out into five and six episode affairs now.  It makes the third season feel a bit padded, especially since Ren and Kanata's relationship is a pretty threadbare affair and adding his ex-girlfriend into the mix doesn't really do anything to further it.

 

Jujutsu Kaisen season three has a very particular vibe to it.  Specifically, that Jujutsu Kaisen mangaka Gege Akutami decided what he needed to liven up his series that was feeling too derivative of Bleach was to copy Jojo's Bizarre Adventure instead.  So every new character introduced in the "Culling Game" arc that this season centers on eschews the more generic-feeling, obviously combat-focused supernatural powers like "cut", "punch REALLY hard", or "summon shikigami" in favor the kind of bizarre, highly situational powers you'd expect to find in Diamond is Unbreakable.  The problem is Gege Akutami is no Hirohiko Araki, so these bizarre powers aren't really all that interesting... they're just an excuse to pad volumes or episodes to the max with "how my power works" exposition.  So far all we've really seen is "man with helicopter hair", "woman with jet engine hair", "unfunny amateur comedian who can make his punchlines literal", and "man who summons stuff from receipts".  It's a painfully weak story that relies on what's now called "aura farming" to build hype without substance.

 

A Gentle Noble's Vacation Recommendation is... so unremarkable it has left no real impression at all.  

 

You and I are Polar Opposites is a generic, but serviceable romcom that also doesn't really make much of an impression.

 

The Casebook of Arne is, to the bitter end an example of how NOT to do a detective story.  None of the cases are ever really solved with deduction and none of them really follow any kind of logic, per se.  The cast mainly just blunders around until the supernatural monster of the week outs itself and gets one-shotted by the vampire king detective guy.

 

Hana-kimi is this weird time capsule of a series.  This manga ended serialization more than twenty years ago and the story really shows its age.  It's not BAD, but it feels weird to watch it because of how dated it feels despite having totally modern production.

 

Kunon the Sorcerer Can See is... dreadful.  That's the only word I have for it.  There's no sense of direction to the proceedings, and it's stuck in a loop of doing the most blatant kind of character shilling where everyone is constantly falling over each other to tell the protagonist what an amazing genius wunderkind he is.

 

The Invisible Man and His Soon-To-Be Wife remained cute but insubstantial until almost the very end.  Only right at the end does it actually start to explore the characters themselves in any depth, particularly how a human subspecies of invisible men function within normal society.  The most recent episode has an actually-pretty-interesting extended digression on the subject of one of Akira's childhood friends from the town of invisible men who moved to Italy to try and become a fashion model, how he struggled because to people who were concerned only with appearance any/every invisible man is the same, and how he made himself visible and defined himself as a person through art.

 

The Daily Life of a Part-Time Torturer is a series that continues to make me ask "Why does this exist?".  It's not bad.  Indeed, if I had to describe it in a word it would be "bland".  It's an utterly generic workplace slice-of-life series where the workplace just happens to be a private firm specializing in torture.  It's treated as casually as you would treat any kind of blue-collar manual labor job.  

 

Wash It All Away is sentiment without substance.  It's one of those stories that doesn't really go anywhere or do anything, it's just sort of there to put its protagonist adjacent to the incidental daily goings-on of other people so she can dispense the occasional bit of pseudo-profound philosophizing and move on.

 

The Holy Grail of Eris has me a bit torn.  It was interesting at the start, the idea of a shrinking violet getting possessed (willingly) by a vengeful ghost looking to identify the people who framed her and arranged her execution, but its story kind of meanders a lot and I gather the light novel it's based on is painfully short so it frequently feels like the story rushes to get from Point A to Point B.  (It's also the kind of mystery story that would be over VERY quickly if the police weren't completely incompetent.)

 

Isekai Office Worker: the Other World's Books Depend on the Bean Counter is definitely not what I expected going into it.  Instead of the slice of life that was advertised, it's a Boys Love romance series and it's actually not bad.  It's actually a little light on the actual romance, truth be told.  It mostly involves itself with the protagonist bringing his profoundly unhealthy Japanese work ethic to a western fantasy world and having everyone around him take shots at how toxic Japan's corporate culture is while he tirelessly works to correct the country's finances and root out corruption.

 

A Misanthrope Teaches a Class for Demi-Humans is an eminently skippable copycat series.

 

The Villainess is Adored by the Prince of the Neighboring Kingdom is a pretty formulaic otome series played laser straight.

 

Tamon's B-Side remained a frank examination of the toxicity of the idol industry wrapped in a romcom to the very end.  I enjoyed it, though I suspect many might not.

 

Still working on Roll Over and Die and Tune in to the Midnight Heart.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Frieren was such a good episode today. I am so sad it is ending soon.

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

So Winter Season is mostly wrapped up.  

a few from this season.. 

Sousou no Frieren 2nd Season - starting things off..  the best thing of this season IMO.   Some anime original stuff here as some filler,  but the buildup to the City of Gold was done very well.    I am kinda surprised 2nd season did not capstone with that arc, having said that..  that story would require more then 1 or 2 episodes..     I am expecting more,  especially with the way the prologue hints to it.  9/10

Sentenced to Be a Hero -  Kinda mixed on this one,  it started out very strongly but I think it really started losing its overall direction halfway through it.   I am in for 2nd season which was already announced.  6/10

An Adventurer's Daily Grind at Age 29 -  This could have gone sideways real fast,  but ended up actually being pretty wholesome.   Mrs. Liked this one alot,  it had its good points and some pretty good humor.   7/10

Wash It All Away -  Another one that got the approval from the Mrs.   2 in 1 season.. that is rare.    Honestly its not bad,  better then most of the other slop out as of late.   I'd recommend it if your looking for slice of life type anime. 7/10

The Demon King's Daughter is Too Kind!! -  meh.   lost interest after 5 episodes and it sounds like it didn't get any better.

You Can't Be In a Rom-Com with Your Childhood Friends! -  verdict is still out on this.. kinda lost interest after episode 4 or 5,  I may come back around to it again.. this one did NOT get the seal of approval from the Mrs. 

 

A few still wrapping.. will add them later. 

Debating Oshi no Ko S3,   S2 left a bad taste in my mouth and I have not heard much about S3.  

 

 

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Reincarnated as a Dragon Hatchling ended I personally enjoyed it.

[Focslain]

On 3/28/2026 at 5:33 PM, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

I am kinda surprised 2nd season did not capstone with that arc, having said that..  that story would require more then 1 or 2 episodes..   

So word is this is why they cut the season short. So that way they could use a full season to do the Golden Arc. 

On 3/28/2026 at 5:33 PM, Stampeed Valkyrie said:

Debating Oshi no Ko S3,   S2 left a bad taste in my mouth and I have not heard much about S3.

Oshi no Ko S3 returns to it's darker roots. I have a feeling that S2 was to develop the side cast as most seem to be returning for a movie project involving the MCs.  

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Chtiose is in a Ramune Bottle ended. I thought it was good. The 2nd part is this year.

[Seto Kaiba]

Starting the first of this season's new series... Always a Catch!

It seems we're once again generously oversupplied with otome anime.  The now-standard opening of "The prince broke off his engagement to the protagonist and now she has to find a new fiance" thing is getting kind of weird.  You have to wonder if any of the authors who use this almost form letter opening ever stop to consider that having the prince of a kingdom arbitrarily dump a girl who is usually the daughter and heir of a Duke powerful enough to arrange for his daughter to marry into the royal family ought to have WAY more consequences than just "the girl is upset".  Like, this ought to be a massive political faux pas that risks turning a very powerful ally of the king into an enemy if he has any kind of pride at all.

Always a Catch! has all the usual staples, though the twist this time around is the protagonist is actually the cousin and best friend of the duke's daughter who gets dumped by the prince.  She's an unladylike muscleheaded tomboy who's staying with her cousin to hunt for a fiance of her own because her parents finally had a boy after years of trying and she therefore isn't the family heir anymore.  (That her family's coat of arms, and her hairpin, appear to be brass knuckles kind of says all that needs to be said about her.)

Spoiler

(Well, that and the prince seems to have completely misunderstood the situation and attempted to break up with the wrong person entirely because his eyesight is just that bad.)

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Starting another new one from this season, The Food Diary of Miss Maid.

The plot summary is pretty threadbare.  A slice of life series about an ethnically Japanese British maid who took a trip to Japan for a personal vacation (but apparently didn't pack any clothes besides her maid outfit) and finds she is now stuck living there for at least a year because her master's mansion in England collapsed during an ill-advised renovation project.  As the title suggests, it seems to go no further than being food porn for traditional Japanese food.  The first episode features taiyaki, takoyaki, odango, convenience store onigiri, and baumkuchen..  Ironically, this kind of leaves the episode feeling bland and directionless... since it doesn't seem to have really have anything to do except have the maid narrate the obvious in a cutesy voice.

(You'd almost suspect this was made to promote tourism given its cultural evangelism... but Japan is getting pretty anti-tourist right now.)

[Dangard Ace]

Snowball Earth is out.  Finally a mecha anime.  TIme to watch.

[Seto Kaiba]

An Observation Log of My Fiancee Who Calls Herself a Villainess is yet another entry in the otome genre that's desperately flailing about for something to do with itself.  Seems like the isekai genre is rapidly polarizing into otome titles and increasingly obtuse "I got reincarnated as X with Y superpower but now I'll Z my best life" titles.

The one twist that this one is putting on the formula is that the protagonist/perspective character is the hyper-competent prince rather than the girl who was isekai'd into her favorite otome-game as the villainess.  She's committed to the bit, but is too decent of a person, and he's just grateful to have something that doesn't play by the rules so he's actually entertained by her shenanigans.  It's not bad, but pretty unremarkable feeling.