What Current Anime Are You Watching Version v4.0

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

My Dress up darling was just awesome again yesterday.  I love the other students reactions to Gojo-kun.

[davidwhangchoi]

The first episodes from three Macross TV series are now FREE to watch!

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Shield hero was great today. Way to go Fohl.  Atla is no slouch either.

[Seto Kaiba]

Catching up on a bunch of titles this week... finally got to My Dress-Up Darling S2.  

I'm vexed beyond words that it took so long to get a season two for My Dress-Up Darling.  That one was so popular it's flat astonishing it didn't get green-lit immediately.  My group (re)watched the entire first season before starting the second, and had a great time with it.

Betrothed to My Sister's Ex had another good one this week, it seems our protagonist is finally coming around to realizing that being treated the way her family treated her is nothing remotely approaching "normal" never mind "healthy".  

Spoiler

Oddly, they seem to be set to veer into horror territory with the apparent claim that Marie's deceased older sister Anastasia has somehow come home.  Next episode's teaser looks like we're just straight up doing Psycho with the Shaderan family meticulously grooming and dressing the deceased daughter's corpse.

Secrets of the Silent Witch also had another good episode, with Monica dealing with the practical etiquette classes and predictably freaking out over such niceties as tea parties and formal dances.

[Seto Kaiba]

Ruri Rocks continues to be excellent edutainment.  IMO, it's great that it's not just gushing about mineralogy.  The series frequently delves into the geology behind the formation of the minerals du jour and the scientific method(s) used to identify them and track samples back to a larger vein or deposit.  Most importantly, it shows the pitfalls of taking shortcuts, using sloppy or improper methodology, and making assumptions and shows that even the experts can be wrong if they draw conclusions without all the facts.  It's not just Ruri being on the receiving end of a lecture, she's actively involved and learning and making worthwhile contributions in her own right by thinking outside the box.

(It's kind of making me miss Mythbusters, in a way... particularly in the sense that there's nothing wrong with being wrong as long as you're applying the scientific method and applying what you learn to refine your hypothesis.)

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Wow, My Dress Up Darling was great yesterday.  This show is my favorite this season.

[Seto Kaiba]

My weekly watch group is going back through Tenchi Muyo!'s OVA timeline, since most of our group hasn't seen OVA 4, OVA 5, or Isekai no Seikishi Monogatari.  We just finished OVA 2 last night, and having translated a bunch of Kajishima's doujins and infobooks about the setting it's extra-freaking weird watching it knowing how all the charactes are related and how many tie-ins there are to Dual!, Photon: the Idiot Adventures, and Spaceship Agga Ruter.  

The Summer '25 simulcast season really is just a steaming turd.  So far, I've dropped:

• The Water Magician
• I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince so I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability
• New Saga (Dishonorable mention for being the most generic f***ing thing I've ever seen.)
• Welcome to the Outcast Restaurant
• Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra
• Scooped Up by an S-Rank Adventurer
• Lord of Mysteries
• Onmyo Kaiten Re:Birth Verse (Dishonorable mention for being a shameless f***ing ripoff of Re:Zero)
• Private Tutor to the Duke's Daughter (The worst case of "sameface" this side of Gundam SEED and it feels like the creator belongs on a government watchlist over their prurient interest in tweens.)
• The Shy Hero and the Assassin Princesses
• Solo Camping for Two (I cannot imagine a worse attempt at a romance plot outside of a Hallmark movie.)
• Detectives These Days Are Crazy!  (Because "comedy" is more than just making funny faces at the viewer several times an episode.)
• Hotel Inhumans
• Turkey! Time to Strike

That's a new frigging record, by an enormous margin.  Crunchyroll's simulcast season page is starting to feel like the front page of the Nintendo eShop.  All shovelware all the time.  The bar was already low thanks to the overabundance of isekai, but it seems like these studios are holding a ****ing limbo contest.

I refuse to even start The Rising of the Shield Hero season 4 because I know it's set past the point where the light novel completely jumped the shark.  Dandadan has gone from being fairly interesting to fairly dull as the cast continues to grow with more and more "quirky" characters being added.  

I'm kind of just showing up for Secrets of the Silent Witch, Ruri Rocks, and Betrothed to My Sister's Ex at this point.

[Duke Togo]

DAN DA DAN S2: this show is hit or miss with me. I want to like it more than I do. 

Clevatess S1:  not caught up with this quite yet, but I am digging it so far.

Gachiakatu S1: don't love the character designs, but Bones and Katsuyuki Konishi got me to check it out. Interesting so far.

Kaiju No.8 S2: another show I want to like more than I do. I kinda want it to be more ridiculous than it is. 

 

Edited August 17 by Duke Togo

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I am watching the 2nd season of Aharen-san is indecipherable, I am enjoying it.  Again My Dress Up darling was great yesterday.

[Seto Kaiba]

Had some good episodes of Secrets of the Silent Witch and Betrothed to My Sister's Ex this week.

Dan Da Dan was initially a pretty interesting, but has bogged down so very badly in this "Evil Eye" business that I'm just bored with it.  You can only make a character so stupid until their voice becomes The Most Annoying Sound.  Jin started on the wrong side of that line and he has been tracking steadily in the wrong direction.  Having a redeemable villain is a fairly standard staple of shounen anime and has been forever... but there are some types of villain who AREN'T and trying to pretend that they are is just wasting everyone's time.

Spoiler

Jin was already a moron and a waste of screentime before he got possessed by the literally omnicidal Evil Eye spirit.  Now, his insistence that the malevolent supernatural entity trapped in his body that explicitly and vehemently wants to MURDER ALL OF HUMANITY is really a good person is just stupid and this whole sidequest around finding a way to fight it when they could have just exorcised it and been done with it feels like the most blatant kind of filler.

 

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

I needed a good laugh.  I was glad City the animation was om today.

[Seto Kaiba]

After getting some feedback from some friends following the current season, I decided to give Solo Camping for Two another chance.

I was told that it evolves into a proper edutainment-type story about proper and safe techniques for camping and that is actually true.  There's some actually good and useful info in the later episodes about how to safely split firewood, safely set up a camp stove, how to identify safe campsites, etc.  With a little work, it could actually be an enjoyable series.

Its main problem is that it's an absolutely terrible ambassador for the hobby it's ostensibly promoting.  It doesn't present camping as fun or interesting or challenging in and of itself...

Spoiler

Solo Camping for Two's story doesn't even present any aspect of camping or outdoorsmanship besides setting up one's tent and campfire, sitting on a folding chair between the two, and drinking cheap beer while cooking canned food over the fire.

No related outdoor activities are even mentioned.  No scenic hiking, no kayaking/rafting, no fishing, no outdoor photography, no birdwatching, no astronomy, nothing but just sitting in front of one's tent chugging cheap beer and eating canned food.  The only time we ever see the protagonist do something else is walking to the nearest convenience store to buy more cheap beer and canned food.  The girl who blackmailed him into camping with her with the threat of false rape accusations seems to exist in the story for no reason other than to cook for him and so that he doesn't have to break the fourth wall and address the audience directly when the story starts talking about how to use tools and techniques.  Most of each episode is just watching the two of them eat whatever she's cooked, but the series doesn't give any real information on how to prepare the things she's cooking either.

 

Edited Thursday at 07:25 PM by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Summer Pockets episode 22 was so sad.  I was bawling the entire time.

[Seto Kaiba]

Betrothed to My Sister's Ex had a really promising start, but it has devolved into a really frustrating and tedious mess.

We're on like the fifth round of "Oops, the main couple are making too much progress we'd better bring up the dead sister again" in just ten episodes.

Spoiler

First it was that she had died in a tragic accident when her coach slipped off the road in the rain and crashed.

Then it was that she died when her coach was attacked by bandits.

Then it was her kid brother's mistaken claim that she was alive and had come home, with the implication that her parents had gone full Norman Bates with their daughter's dead body.

Then it was that the bandits were a lie and she really died by drowning in a river while trying to escape a sexual assault by the coach driver.

Now it's Marie's belief that her sister is still alive and working as a button maker's apprentice in the royal capital because she saw a blonde person from behind at like 600yd from her coach's window.

They have dragged this out SO MUCH that it's stopped being dramatic several rounds ago and is just exhausting to watch... and the excuses the characters use to not just cut directly to the heart of the matter have gotten so incredibly flimsy that it's headache inducing.

Spoiler

And after all that agonizing and delaying and excuse-making and one final make-up session... the sister really is still alive.

 

Edited Saturday at 08:31 PM by Seto Kaiba

[Hikaru Ichijo SL]

Marin in My dress up darling is really smitten.  I wish we knew what Gojo thought about Marin.