No well-laid plan goes unpunished. I started out behind schedule, and now I’m even more behind! I’d like to release these every Sunday instead of whenever-the-hell-I-finish-them. Hopefully as I drop shows I’ll be able to keep to that schedule, or even any schedule at all.

For the sake of timely publication, the following episodes will be reviewed in future posts:

  • Frieren – Ep. 1-4, 5 (yeah yeah I know)
  • Bullbuster – Ep. 2
  • The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You – Ep. 1

Each review is prefaced with an emoji that roughly summarizes my feelings, keyed as such:

  • ⭐ – Excited for more
  • ✔️ – Good enough to keep watching
  • ❌ – Dropped
  • 💤 – Deferred for group watch purposes

⭐ 16bit Sensation: ANOTHER LAYER – Ep. 2

What a fantastic sophomore episode. There’s so much I could praise, but I don’t think it’d be especially interesting to read. Suffice it to say, the character interactions are fun, the computers are chunky, and the pixels are countable. Actually, wouldn’t the CRT’s shadow mask blur the dithered pixels together? Did they have non-CRT monitors back in ‘92? Apparently so!

My one apprehension from 16bit Sensation’s premier was that it felt like it could’ve been a waste of time. There’s no time travel in the source material as far as I can tell, so its inclusion felt auxiliary at best and unnecessary at worst. Granted, the source material also didn’t have Konoha. Without spoiling anything, I’m extremely pleased to say that my worries were entirely unfounded. From this point on, 16bit Sensation has my undying trust.

Godspeed, Konoha. Godspeed.

❌ Protocol: Rain – Ep. 1

Eagle-eyed viewers watching the trailer for Protocol: Rain would’ve noted the conspicuous absence of footage of the in-universe Esport “Xaxxerion”. Immediately upon watching the first episode, it became extremely clear why exactly this Organization XIII reject was absent: the game looks like shit. Normally fictitious video games don’t need to look good or even believable, but since Protocol: Rain is ostensibly about saving a net café by playing Xaxxerion competitively, one would think that the game would get a bit more attention than the bare minimum. The 2D visuals do fare better than the 3D, although this is the faintest of praises with which I can damn the show: at times the animation is… fine, but the art itself oscillates between mediocre and underwhelming. The story does not save this travesty either; I was mentally checked out before the midpoint, so when a character exclaimed “Boy, do I give up!” I followed suit.

Protocol: Rain is bad, but the worst thing about it is that it inflicted me with the cursed knowledge that “esports” is rendered into Japanese as 「eスポーツ」. I will not be keeping up with Protocol: Rain.

✔️ S-Rank Daughter – Ep. 3

It’s probably not a great sign that this show is substantially more watchable when Ange isn’t on-screen. Like, in the pantheon of anime protagonists, she’s not even that bad. But my GOD is her personality obnoxiously one-note. She’s at her most enjoyable when she’s in the presence of stronger personalities, or when she’s trying to accomplish something. This episode was actually fairly decent, and it’s entirely down to Ange not having much time to endlessly pine after her dad.

That being said, this production team is not equipped for action animation. Things were a little less janky this episode than the previous two… but that’s a low bar to clear. Ange’s fight with the tiny demon lord had some extremely disorienting jump cuts. This is undoubtedly not the last demon lord we’ll be seeing either; suffice it to say I’m not exactly looking forward to future battles.

It’s a real shame that S-Rank Daughter squanders so much of its potential adhering to an extremely tiresome gag. Maybe now that Ange has made it home she can develop a personality, but I’m not holding my breath.

✔️ Berserk of Gluttony – Ep. 2

Last week, Berserk of Gluttony survived almost entirely because it wasn’t the worst thing I’d watched. Though Ragna Crimson is not here to save it this week, Protocol: Rain came to its rescue! That still may not be enough to salvage things. Berserk of Gluttony is, in a word, mundane. The last-minute weapon transformation gimmick is just barely enough to keep it from being a complete ripoff of last Fall’s Reincarnated as a Sword, but it’s not enough to make things interesting. At the very least, Fate is inoffensive as a protagonist, and the show has enough good sense to know that child sex trafficking is bad. It’s unfortunate that I can no longer take that for granted!

I do really want to see the Altera FGO knockoff, so I’ll likely stick around for another episode at least. Berserk of Gluttony’s hanging by a thread, though.

❌ Butareba – Ep. 1

If you had asked me, before I had any knowledge whatsoever of Butareba, if I wanted to watch the seethingly horny isekai fantasy of a social reprobate, I would have resoundingly said no. If you asked me that same question now, burdened with the curse of knowledge, I would resoundingly say fuck no.

Reader, whoever invented video fast forwarding was a lifesaver this week. Butareba is one of those rare shows that is bad in both concept and execution. The art and animation are fine (although the damned pig can’t quite figure out how large he’s supposed to be), and the voice actors do good work with the slop placed in front of them. But that’s about the extent of what I can praise. The premier drag its feet actually setting up the premise, which the viewer has presumably already read a summary of, and then proceeds to be remarkably uncomfortable for the remainder of its runtime. Moreover, it’s all incredibly boring. Outside of being turned into a pig, there’s just… nothing going on? Mild banter between the worst kind of horny man and a worryingly deferent young girl who’s conveniently also telepathic? Nothing happens the whole fucking episode. Why even bother?

I will not be watching more Butareba. I have enough horny thoughts in my own head; I do not need someone else’s.

💤 Dead Mount Death Play P2

This one’s tenuously slated for inclusion in anime night. If that changes in the future, I’ll give any missed episodes their own reviews retrospectively.

💤 Dr. STONE: NEW WORLD P2

Much like SPY×FAMILY Season 2, Dr. STONE: NEW WORLD P2 is going into the anime night rotation. How will onion hair defeat chef hat? Find out… eventually!

✔️ The Vexations of a Shut-In Vampire Princess – Ep. 2

It’s kind of incredible how much an improvement this episode made over its premier. Having established its tone and premise, Vampire Princess was able to jump in head-first into antics this week. And they were good antics, too! Except for the one lieutenant who kept giving off pedo vibes, that was a bit I’d rather not see expounded on. The opening’s also a banger, and I’m not sure I’ve ever said that about a fripSide song before.

The premier episode gave off the impression that Vampire Princess would be pretty plot-light. I was pleasantly surprised with how narratively driven the second episode was. That’s not to say it’s the next Golden Kamuy or anything, but there was enough plot that the episode, and thus the gags, kept movingly briskly along. But they managed to find enough time for some forced sentimentality in the bathing scene too! It’s very clearly setup for future plot, but it felt a little out of place all the same.

I hope they find a new way to kill Lieutenant Helders every week. It’s a good running gag, and boy do I love running gags.

⭐ Stardust Telepath – Ep. 1

Inside me there are two wolves: one howls about how the forehead-contact telepathy feels so close to kissing that they should’ve just fucking gone for it; the other barks that if they did kiss then Umika would spend the entire episode internally stammering about what the kiss meant, and boy howdy would that get old fast. I need fewer wolves inside me.

Stardust Telepath was very cute. I find it a little hard to talk about these kinds of shows, owing to their, shall we say, lackadaisical whimsy. Despite my enjoyment of the genre, I usually go into Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime with the lowest of expectations. Generally these are not shows with interesting plots or intricate action or even original gags; you are here to watch the cute girls doing the cute things. This is not to say the genre is incapable of ascending to greatness (Nichijou, Bocchi the Rock, et al.) just that the truly great shows are the exception that proves the rule. That being said, I remain ever hopeful. I’ve long maintained that eye stylization is a good heuristic for anime quality, and Yuu’s eye gradient is uniquely drawn to look like a planet as seen from low orbit. That’s a promising sign! As is the yuri tag on Anilist, especially considering the aforementioned flirtatious forehead contact. All I’m saying is that if MagiRevo was able to get away with an on-screen kiss, so can Stardust Telepath. The wolves are howling!

Depending on how exactly the schedule shakes out, this may or may not end up in the anime night rotation. I’ll be watching it one way or another.

✔️ KamiErabi GOD.app – Ep. 2

If you could somehow transmute pure uncanniness into a TV anime, you’d get Ex-Arm. But if you instead mixed in a little Yoko Taro-brand unhinged-ness and then transmuted it into a TV anime, you’d get KamiErabi. It’s hard to believe this show is real, and made by humans no less. Sometimes the animation quality is pretty good, and other times it looks terrible. There’s exactly one scene where there’s dust particles floating through the air, but it’s done so poorly and inconsistently that it kinda looks like there’s a fire just off-screen. Why does the green fire guy have clown shoes that make comedic squelching noises with every step. Who did this and why. Purportedly, Yoko Taro didn’t have that much involvement is this production. Whose fault is this. I need to know. I need to know who to thank and who to blame.

I need to see how far down the rabbit hole goes. I need to see this through. Will I commit myself to all 24 episodes? Probably not! But I need to see more.

✔️ Ron Kamonohashi’s Forbidden Deductions – Ep. 2

Second verse, very similar to the first. Pretty much everything I said about Ron Kamonohashi’s premier applies here as well (the homoerotic undertones have mostly vanished, though). That being said, I feel like I’m not enjoying it as much as most of the other shows I’m watching. It’s mostly down to its premise, I think; If I’m going to watch an extremely episodic comedy show with a solid through-line and decent pacing, I’d rather watch shows like Tearmoon Empire and Vampire Princess.

Hard to go wrong with the ol’ three-episode sniff test. All the same, there’s good odds that I don’t stick with Ron Kamonohashi. There’s too much to watch, and too little time to watch it in.

❌ Our Dating Story – Ep. 1

There’re a few anime genres I don’t normally interface with I know what I like, and I have a pretty good sense for what I’m not gonna like. That being said, I think it’s also healthy to occasionally look beyond one’s own bubble, just to keep things fresh. And so, I found myself watching Our Dating Story. Romcoms aren’t exactly my thing, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised on exactly two occasions (Horimiya and Skip and Loafer, although the latter I enjoyed despite its romance elements) so I figured this one might be worth a shot in the dark.

There’s a version of Our Dating Story that works for me. Unfortunately, it’s not the version sitting on my hard drive streaming now Crunchyroll. High school romcoms tend to suffer from “bad male love interest” disease, and unfortunately it’s usually terminal. Skip and Loafer worked for me thanks entirely to its female cast. Horimiya worked for me both because of its large ensemble cast and also because the semi-titular Miyamura was actually sorta likeable. Our Dating Story has no such luck: Runa is fine and judging from the intro her gal pals seem like fun, but they were largely absent from the premier; also Ryuto just fucking sucks. He’s about as tabula rasa as they come. I spent the entire episode with him and the only thing I know about him is that he is A Dork and also Has A Crush On Girl. At least Nagatoro’s Senpai was a decent artist. I need something to work with, but alas I am given nothing.

And honestly, that kinda sucks. Runa could have been a really great main character. There aren’t a lot of anime that’re willing to deal with sexuality beyond facile “naked girl pretty” antics. The last show that actually tackled teen sex issues meaningfully, as far as I can recall, was the wonderful O Maidens in Your Savage Season. It’s agonizing that Ryuto has so much nothing going on while Runa’s positively brimming with potential. If only she were the point-of-view character.

There’s a version of Our Dating Story that works for me, and it’s probably on Dynasty Scans. But this? This ain’t it.

✔️ Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange – Ep. 2

Who thought it was a good idea to spend the first 6 minutes showing footage from the previous episode? I really hope that’s not gonna be a trend… Reused footage aside, this was a pretty good episode. Once things got going, it surprised me how quickly the episode flew by. Despite being a practice run, the rescue was pretty tense. Considering the episode was effectively 18 minutes long, the cliffhanger ending hurt more than it should’ve. If anything’s gonna kill this show for me, it’s gonna be the weird pacing. Or maybe the flat characters.

✔️ Firefighter Daigo: Rescuer in Orange – Ep. 3

It was a trend. IT WAS A TREND.

Watching the end of episode 2 again, I started to reconsider just how much I wanted to watch Daigo. The actual content of the show is fine, if a little dry at times. But man, I’m not sure I feel like fast-forwarding through stuff I’ve seen before every week. It hurts even more this week than last week, since it felt like most of this episode was graduation stuff and not rescue stuff. I’m here to watch tense rescue operations, goddammit.

I’m not especially pressed for choice this season, so Firefighter Daigo may be closer to the chopping block than I expected after its premier. What a waste.

✔️ MF Ghost – Ep. 2

The character drama of the first episode worked well enough to convince me to come back for the driving, but I can’t say that the driving convinced me to come back for more character drama. Without other cars to race against, the bulk of the episode featured a CGI car taking the same turn over and over again while two side characters talk about how impressive it is that a number is going down. Look, I’m a RuneScape player. I love watching numbers go up. But numbers going down? Bad vibes, man, bad vibes. Also the episode ended without resolving the race, and I am extremely bitter about it.

I’ll stick around for one more, but I don’t see this one lasting much longer for me. At least I got 30 seconds of DIO.

✔️ Migi and Dali – Ep. 2

If I had one complaint about the first episode, it’s that it wasn’t exactly clear how Migi and Dali was going to evolve. Both the trailer and the background music implied something vaguely sinister, which worked quite well to give episode 1 an off-kilter and disorienting vibe, but a show needs more than disorientation to last a full cour. Thankfully, this episode adds two new elements: (1) a murder mystery, and (2) the titular twins being doofuses. One could argue that Migi and Dali were plenty doofy in the previous episode, but that doofiness was used in service of their hypercompetence in stealth and subterfuge. In episode 2, they mistake a bicycle for a machine that’ll shear their hair off and turn it into wigs. It’s hard to call gags like that “humanizing”, but the show would’ve gradually run out of steam if Migi and Dali were as overpowered as an isekai power fantasy protagonist. How exactly the show will handle the investigation into their mother’s apparent murder is still an open question, but one I’m comfortable leaving for next week.

More than likely, I will decide after next episode whether this will be something I watch on my own or whether this will be put in the (much delayed) anime night rotation.

✔️ I Shall Survive Using Potions! – Ep. 1

On paper, this one sounded kinda dull. In practice… this one was kinda dull, except for the parts where Kaoru was a menace. It narrowly survived this week because of that. I’m down for shows that’re intentionally weird and off-kilter, but Kaoru’s post-mortem interactions with her family felt unintentionally odd and stilted. I didn’t really expect, “Oh, you’re getting reincarnated? Ah you’ll be fine, get ’em good champ.” I’m not sure what to make of that. Everything else was fairly standard, although the negotiation with the goddess took too long. Very, very odd.

If Kaoru keeps stealing furniture from nobles, I’ll keep watching. Otherwise this one’s a pretty easy drop.

✔️ Shangri-La Frontier – Ep. 2

The big problem with anime about playing a video game (at least when the video game doesn’t look like shit) is that it mostly just makes me want to play a video game instead of watching. Shangri-La Frontier episode 2 mostly managed to keep my attention throughout, but when the mining section started I got a strong urge to visit Old School RuneScape’s Motherlode Mine. Dear reader, you may not fully understand the implication of that sentence, so let me make it clear: I am a deeply damaged individual.

Sunraku isn’t an especially grating protagonist, but I wouldn’t call him especially charming either. My years of watching shows with cardboard cutout self-insert potato-kun protagonists have left me jaded towards teenage male characters in anime writ large. Rather than being an obvious self insert, I feel like the connection I’m supposed to have with Sunraku is closer to that of a Let’s Play viewer. That being said, that’s not really the kind of media I consume much of anymore.

I’m hoping the female characters in the opening (and the girl who’s been trying to track him down in-game) make their appearances soon. This post is slated to be published around when the new Lords of the Fallen game comes out, and I’m getting the inkling that I’d rather be playing video games than watching them.

⭐ SHY – Ep. 2

This episode pretty succintly managed to assuage the fears I had following SHY’s premier. Superhero media is extremely well-trodden, so it’s still fighting something of an uphill battle, but overall I found this episode to be quite pleasant. Momijiyama’s feelings of ineptness are far more potent when she has to deal directly with the person she almost didn’t save. Likewise, Koishikawa’s survivor’s guilt gives her more depth and works pretty well as a foil for Shy’s anxieties. I feel like a lesser show would’ve had the two actually battle things out, but since SHY is good it didn’t feel the need to. Shy connected with Koishikawa and allowed her to confront her own guilt, which challenged the Villainous Child’s assertion that he was freeing her heart from its cage. Good stuff! Give me more please.

SHY will almost certainly make its way into the anime night rotation. I might keep up with it on my own just because I like it so much.

✔️ Tearmoon Empire – Ep. 1

Never before have guillotines looked so chibi! Tearmoon Empire feels like what last season’s The Most Heretical Last Boss Queen: From Villainess to Savior (would you guess it was based on a light novel?) should’ve been. LasTame had a somewhat similar premise that ultimately fell flat due to having absolutely no stakes whatsoever. Imprisonment and public execution though? Those are some stakes. I’m impressed at how well Tearmoon Empire was able to balance that direness with its persistent goofiness. The aforementioned cartoonish guillotines are fairly emblematic of the balance it managed to keep throughout its premier. Whether that will hold is anyone’s guess, but I’m more than willing to give it another shot.

I’ll likely be keeping up with this one on my own. This Fall season’s turning out pretty good, and for as good as Tearmoon Empire is, I can’t exactly see it taking one of the coveted slots. All the same, I’ll be watching.

✔️ Undead Unluck – Ep. 2

It’d be a lot easier to recommend Undead Unluck if Andy was less of a sex pest. Even if it’s motivated by his desire to off himself, it’s pretty grating. That being said, everything not sex related was really good! The character designs are excellent, the action is smooth, (most of) the writing is lively. Pretty much everything you could want in an action anime, honestly.

Not much to talk about at this point. It’s pretty clear that our heroes will be joining Union within an episode or two. I expect the ride there to be pretty fun.

✔️ Under Ninja – Ep. 2

I’m still convinced there’s some spark of genius here, but it may just be madness occasionally dipping into lucidity. Under Ninja continues being strange and off-kilter. I don’t know what the show is about, except that it keeps pinballing back and forth between a fight on the roof of a school and also some Russian guy who the main character dealt with several months ago. As such, Under Ninja’s propelled along mostly by its sheer weirdness. No other work of media that could possible have invented a squat, balding, exotropic, overweight ex-ninja war vet who hangs around playgrounds in a dirty tank top and offers his breast milk to passersby. That’s certainly noteworthy! But I’m not sure that makes it good.

Hopefully one more episode is enough for me to determine the nature of the beast. Lord help me if it’s not.

⭐ I’m in Love with the Villainess – Ep. 2

It makes narrative sense for Rae to be magically overpowered, since she’s the protagonist of a video game. Still raises my hackles a bit. Not enough to make me dislike the show, but enough to make me gripe about it.

Surprisingly I don’t have all that much to say about Villainess episode 2. I’m not familiar with the source material, but from what I’ve gathered things don’t start getting good good until a few chapters (and thus episodes) in. What’s present is still entertaining enough in its own right. Rae becoming Claire’s maid is an interesting plot point I didn’t see coming, and despite Claire’s protests it does seem to have inched their relationship forward. My god are Rae’s eyes creepy at times though. Very curious creative decision to have her eyes stuck wide open!

Like SHY, Villainess will undoubtedly make its way into the anime night rotation; Like SHY, I will likely keep watching Villainess on my own just for the fuck of it.