What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Seto Kaiba]

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics remains an... unconventional choice.  For a comedy, it's somewhat odd that it takes the time to address the realistic struggles of homelessness in Japan.

Spoiler

Though, of course, it can't seem to resist the opportunity for fanservice... so the homeless lady knight Livia looking for her lost princess is stuck working in a cosplay hostess club after volunteering for a job where she could "make money quickly" while accepting food handouts in a park.

There's another odd reality-ensues moment almost immediately thereafter where the club gets raided by the police and, as an illegal immigrant, Livia elects to flee rather than be questioned and possibly arrested.

By sheer dumb luck, when she goes to a private detective agency that takes jobs for as little as 30,000 yen she conveniently bumps into the princess she's been looking for and ends up being hired as his assistant after some prompting from the princess she serves.

(Reality immediately ensues when it turns out that, as a knight, Livia is absolute rubbish at detective work, office work, etc.)

Sara's actually a rather entertaining character in her own right.  Instead of being the helpless isekai victim, she's actually quite resourceful and independent.  

(And I'm terribly amused that the author decided to put realistic limitations on something as broken as invisibility magic... because it bends light, it's double-blind.  If you make your head invisible, you can't see!)  It shows a lot of consideration in the writing to ensure that the fantasy aspect wouldn't break the story any.

Not gonna lie, I am legitimately enjoying this one... in no small part because Sousuke and Sara's rapport is just good.  The writing definitely brings across that these two weirdos are genuinely having fun and enjoying each other's company, and it's easy to get swept up in that as a viewer too. 

 

A Condition Called Love is one I'm still torn on... mostly because the main guy is still giving of serious stalker vibes.

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Honestly, the way he behaves, Hananoi is one of those examples of how a book like 50 Shades of Gray would come off like an episode of Law & Order: SVU if it weren't for the fact that the male lead is handsome and wealthy.

Hananoi gives off a lot of creeper vibes and says a lot of cringe-y things, but seems to get a pass on it because the girls all find him so darn good looking.

Mad respect for Hotaru then taking Hananoi aside to establish some boundaries and goals.  This girl's going places.

Intensely creeped out that Hananoi jumps straight to being buried together.

This interaction just repeats over and over... but Hotaru is at least savvy enough to realize that there's something very badly wrong with how Hananoi expresses himself.

This honestly gets worse when Hotaru visits Hananoi's home, and he has a corkboard family photo collage that is composed entirely of cropped pictures.

All in all, I hope this series will develop in a less creepy direction... it could be a cute romance if Hananoi stopped giving off such intense stalker vibes.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Todays Mushoku Tensei was so heartwarming.  Rudy just loves Sylphie.

[Seto Kaiba]

Astro Note continues to be a weird throwback of a series.

Spoiler

Mira's on Earth looking for some kind of key hidden on the grounds of Astro Manor.  A key that will make her the heir apparent to the throne of her home planet Wid.

The episode basically rolls things back a back and retells the previous story from Mira's perspective, focusing on her attempts to find the key she's been sent to find, her frustration with her orders, and her growing affection for Earth's culture.  

The art style continues to be this delightful throwback to the 70's and 80's stylings of Leiji Matsumoto, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, and Haruhiko Mikimoto.  If anything, it feels like everything's been made extra-colorful in this episode to emphasize that fact.

There's some business involving an alien spy called a Hub that shows up disguised first as a bird and then as a roomba, and a great deal of confusion because the show's protagonist half-hears several conversations and assumes Mira is a widow (not a person from planet Wid) and that the invading Hub is a romantic partner (a hubby).

Mira eventually realizes that the former owner of Astro Manor was probably from Wid as well, and tries to build her new search along those lines.

As goofy as it is, Astro Note continues to be a delight to watch for both the visuals and the story.  The reactions these characters have are over the top in a wonderfully old school way.

[Seto Kaiba]

Crunchyroll's 2024 Spring lineup is providing a veritable bumper crop of unusual shows... I've added The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio, Yatagarasu: the Raven Does Not Choose Its Master, Mysterious Disappearances, Unnamed Memory, KonoSuba 3, and a few other titles to my watchlist. I'm up to 27 this season. 

 

First up on my lunchtime watchlist is Vampire Dormitory Ep2.  I missed, last episode, that this is a commemorative work for the 70th anniversary of Nakayoshi magazine.

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... so, yeah, the protagonist gets to remember that all that hot nonsense from the previous episode actually happened. 🤣

Pulling a sweet polly oliver on a gynophobic vampire who thinks you're a boy is an awfully risky strategy to get free room and board but whatever.  Ruka's morning meal veers straight into "does this remind you of anything?" territory, complete with an indecent number of sparkles.

(If anything, it's slightly impressive just how well Mito is handling this.  The indoor bat that's actually the butler is treated like an unusually uninteresting sight until it turns into a second vampire.)

Mito now gets to continue the sweet polly oliver routine while being forced to attend an all-boys private academy with her new vampire master.  You have to admire Ruka's commitment to the vampire aesthetic, finding a private school where the uniform's a black suit and red dress shirt.  She also gets to keep the act up at work, having taken a job at the same cafe where she met Ruka.

We're finally getting some elements of the love story here, with several people seemingly being jealous of Ruka's relationship with Mito.  Not sure what direction they're building in individually but it seems like they're piling in with considerable haste.

(I have to admit, the idea of vampires having some kind of magic item to measure blood quality is a bit bizarre... especially a tacky heart-shaped choker.  If you think about it even a little, it's like... one of those pop-up turkey timers but for people.)

After spending half the episode on Ruka being as cool a shoujo manga male lead as humanly (vampire-ly?) possible, we learn his terrible secret.🤣

Super cool vampiric pretty boy Ruka is, to quote his butler, a "huge otaku vampire who's only into 2D girls".  He has a HUGE hidden bookshelf in his dorm room that's packed to bursting with magical girl merchandise.  Honestly, I absolutely lost it at the faces Mito is making as she judges the everloving hell out of him for it.  Worse when he starts quoting their catchphrase in falsetto and doing the poses. 🤣

(Poor Mito can't even tell her new classmates and coworkers that Ruka's fine after an accident in the storeroom because he spent the rest of the day at home doing cheers with a pair of glowsticks while watching his favorite magical girl show.)

There's a little bit of drama with the rough guy, Ren, who seems to be aware that Ruka's a vampire... and after saving Mito, Ruka immediately undermines himself by revealing that his reference material for romance is magical girl anime.

After a rough first episode, Vampire Dormitory's made some massive improvements and this new episode is quite a bit of fun.  In no small part because Ruka is just such a dork.  He and the protagonist Mito have surprisingly good chemistry that I wish had been more visible in the first episode.

 

 

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

The Many Sides of Voice Actor Radio is a rather unusual little drama/comedy about two high school students who, on being cast on a radio series, each discover that the other is ALSO a high schooler who's been moonlighting as a professional voice actor.

Spoiler

This is another one I picked up just because the premise was out-there enough that it seemed like a change of pace.

There's an interesting bit of reality ensuing in that both of the main characters, as small-time celebrities, take pains to change their appearance so that they can go about their daily lives without being harassed.  (Both also keep their profession a secret for similar reasons.)  Yumiko's public persona is a neat-and-tidy girl when she really favors gyaru style, and Chika's public persona is a girly-girl who in reality is the quiet and plain girl.

They end up finding out each other's secrets when the local radio station has a show drop out of its schedule and the producer pitches the idea of having two high school voice actresses they'd been auditioning do a show together.  They both meet in the pitch meeting after having just had a fight in school.

... I'm a bit worried about the writer.  Like, I know this is an anime, but god damn the writer for the radio show looks like she's got one foot in the grave.  She's introduced in sweats, wearing a compress, and with dark circles under her eyes so big she's in danger of being mistaken for a panda.  

It poses some interesting character drama as the two voice actresses with wildly different tastes try to get to know each other and get along.

I'm definitely gonna keep following this one... it's a ways outside of the usual, and it seems like it'll offer some good character development.

 

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World seems to be shaping up to be one of the few new isekai titles to offer a reasonably original take on the premise.  Instead of the reincarnatee being stupidly overpowered, he seems on course to rise to power by being a superhumanly good judge of character and bringing out the true potential in others by leveraging their hidden or unrealized talents.

Spoiler

With the first episode behind us, we're getting some actual exposition.

It looks like the driving force behind the plot is the gradual decline of the Summerforth Empire, in which the protagonist lives.  It was founded over 200 years before the start of the story when one of the seven kingdoms on the continent of Summerforth annexed the other six by force.  The Empire's authority is eroding rapidly because the current Emperor is an eight year old child whose retainers have usurped increasing amounts of power for themselves to wield in factional conflicts.  This is why the local lords like the protagonist's father have begun bolstering their forces and acting on their own, as factional warfare and outright rebellion are on the rise.

Some extra encouragement is added in the form of a local succession crisis, with the governor of the province being an old man in poor health who can't make up his mind which of his sons should inherit his position.  So the prospect of a civil war in the province is looming large over everything.

After last episode, Ars's father Raven (is this an Overlord reference?) seems to firmly believe in his son's supernaturally good judgement and asks him to seek out someone with talent in magic.

Ars goes to castle town looking for someone who is a talented magic user, and after some shenanigans they get robbed by a pickpocket who turns out to have an absurdly high latent talent for magic who turns out to be a girl who was sold into (and escaped from) slavery after being caught stealing from a noble household's larder.

This is definitely one to follow this season.  It keeps going to interesting and unconventional places.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Spice and Wolf was great again today. Holo is just too smart.

[Seto Kaiba]

I've had an unusual amount of time to watch today, since it's "annual mandatory training" season and those things are always so easy you'd have to be blind drunk and suffering a severe concussion to actually get those questions wrong. 🤣

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability feels like a show worth skipping.  It's one of those isekai adjacent titles where the world's a fantasy one that runs on RPG logic and the protagonist is basically just pure power fantasy.

Spoiler

TBH, I think I checked out on this one somewhere around the seventh or eighth "completely impossible" thing the protagonist did.

It's unapologetic about being power fantasy, but at the same time that's literally all it brings to the table... the protagonist is so stupidly powerful that nothing can threaten or even mildly inconvenience him.  There are no stakes to his story.  

This one's a hard pass if you actually want an engaging story.

 

Chillin' in Another World with Level 2 Super Cheat Powers is exactly what it says on the tin.  It's a more literal application of isekai tropes with the only real twist being that the main guy was already living in a fantasy RPG world and got isekai'd to a subtly-different one.

Spoiler

It's not very good.

The protagonist whose name I have already forgotten is a random clerk who gets summoned to another world as The Hero and gets scoffed at because his stat line is trash and he has no cheat skill.  They kick him out of town and as soon as he levels up ONCE he has a stat line of all INFINITY and godlike power.  The only real gimmick is that he doesn't seem to actually realize he's gone from desk jockey to physical god in the space of exactly three slimes.

So since the King clearly tried to have him killed by sending him to a forest contaminated by evil magical toxic waste and monsters with monster-attracting magic on all the items he was given, he resolves to use his new broken-as-hell powers to live as he pleases under an assumed identity while the jackass they think is the hero goes off to get his arse beat by the dark lord.

They're definitely leaning hard on "waifu" appeal when he accidentally bullies a top-level wolf demon into submission without realizing how dangerous she is and she ends up swearing loyalty to him.

They really seem to be making a meal out of the gag that the protagonist doesn't understand that he's exponentially more powerful than the "hero"... it's basically their one plot device.

All I can describe this one as is "eminently skippable so far".

[Seto Kaiba]

Unnamed Memory is definitely a bit of an odd one for a fantasy series...

Spoiler

The story starts with a local kingdom's crown prince, Oscar, having snuck away from his official duties with his manservant Lazar to find and consult the Witch of the Azure Moon about a curse.  After climbing the witch's trap-laden tower and reaching the witch, Oscar relates that he and his father were cursed by the Witch of Silence to have the royal bloodline die out by being unable to father a heir.  The Witch of the Azure Moon, Tinasha, offers some exposition on the nature of curses and then reveals that what he is actually under is not a curse... but a blessing of protection on an unborn child so powerful that it'd kill any normal woman.  Tinasha volunteers to try and find the prince a suitable wife who could withstand the magic, and after some protesting about the possibility of the few women (if any) being underage, elderly, or married he opts to cut to the obvious solution and asks her to marry him and bear his children instead.

(Honestly, the protagonist having derring-do'd his way through the challenges of the witch's tower for the promise of a wish granted only to decide his wish is basically "lemme smash" is unintentionally hilarious.)

After some protesting on her part, which includes the guarded admission that his great-grandfather made the same request (without a curse prompting it), Tinasha ends up agreeing to live with him (platonically) in the capital for a period of one year to try and break the curse/blessing while he tries to convince her to make her stay something a bit more permanent.

Not really sure what to make of this one yet.  Oscar and Tinasha seem to have pretty good chemistry right off the bat, though it's almost hard to say what the genre here is meant to be.  It starts out feeling like fantasy/adventure but seems to course correct into a romance/drama partway into the first episode.  

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I'll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World is an OK show.   I will watch 1 more and then decide.

[Seto Kaiba]

Gave Mysterious Disappearances a whirl last night, and first impressions were frankly terrible.

It's usually not a great sign if a show's OP has multiple shots of clearly-intended-for-fanservice nudity in it.  Mysterious Disappearances seems to be hoping its audience will be too entranced by the "tracts of land" on display to notice the writing is hot garbage.

Spoiler

To be frank, the whole first episode feels like an excuse plot.

Two bookstore employees are stocking shelves and packaging store-exclusive bonuses with books when the manager comes up to them with a clearly old and battered book he found had been left in their store.  Instead of writing it off as a lost item and depositing it with the shopping center's office, the manager insists it must be an item that was "reverse shoplifted" (i.e. deliberately left there) in an argument even the characters seem to find painfully stupid and presents it to the lady clerk as a birthday present.  When she takes it home, she starts reading it shortly after midnight and discovers it's full of poems written in classical Japanese.  She reads one, and then goes shopping.  While in the store, she inexplicably shrinks to child size and somehow fails to properly notice that something is not on about all this.

Rather than panic, or have any kind of believable reaction... she goes home and starts writing.  And then wanders around town and is making random notes for a story she's writing.  As a child.  In the middle of the night.  While bleeding heavily for no adequately explored reason.

Then her coworker finds her and explains the book is actually a spellbook whose extremely specific spells are activated by reading the poems in the right conditions.  She'd activated a reverse-aging spell by being over 28, a virgin, and reading the poem by moonlight on the night of the full moon.  He talks her through reversing the spell, and she pops back to her proper age, then takes off because she doesn't want to give back the book that was literally killing her by making her leak slasher movie quantities of blood from her eyes and mouth like five seconds ago, repeatedly changing into a kid and adult to evade capture before she gives up, returns to her adult form, and lets her coworker who is seemingly well-versed in the occult take the book.

Don't get me wrong, I adore bad horror movies... but Mysterious Disappearances' first episode is bad on a level that's less "so bad it's funny" and more "flies clean off the end of the critical spectrum into the cloying void of dispassionate loathing" bad.  It almost feels like what you'd get if you asked Bing's version of ChatGPT to write a j-horror short story.  The characters seem to be on a mission to react in the least believable way at all times.

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Date A Live V was great again today. 

 

[Stampeed Valkyrie]

OMG Date a Live V has given us 2 episodes of solid plot progess!!!

The 4 horsemen of the apocalypse are upon us..  repent!    lmao.

 

2nd Ep of Konosuba did not dissapoint either.

 

 

[Seto Kaiba]

Watched Mysterious Disappearances Ep2 today.

Honestly, I can't even muster up the enthusiasm to review it properly.  It's as bad as the first episode, and yeah it still feels like a vaguely horror-themed contrivance used to excuse shots of the protagonist's massive rack.