More or less what I expected from this episode, though with some interesting twists here and there. I was even fairly certain Scarlet and Julius were going to end up fighting each other, since they do in the OP. Curious to see how they’re going to work that out though, since it’ll have to be a way that not only keeps them in balance, but if anything ultimately strengthens their bond.

All in all, I found the voice that appeared to come from Rex the most interesting part of the whole thing, but I suspect that we’re not going to learn much if anything more about that in the next and final episode - that if I want to learn more about that, I’ll have to hope for a second season or read the LNs.

!

Tsukiko (Hentai Ouji to Warawanai Neko)

Anna (Makeine)

Erio (Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko)

Ayano (YuruYuri)

…plus dozens more…

Maybe I will have to track it down.

I was fairly certain that things were happening for mostly unrevealed reasons - that the characters didn’t just happen into that world, but were deliberately brought there and deliberately slotted into specific roles in order to fulfill some greater purpose - and I do still want to know what those reasons and that purpose are…

I knew I’d find you here - as if your Masahiro Anbe alarm went off.

Funny that you mentioned it - I just tracked SSSS.Dynazenon down because I’d about decided that it was going to be next after Ping Pong, since I keep thinking about it and I need answers.

It’s a sort of perversely attractive universe. As I mentioned, Gridman, to me, had this constant underlying air of cruelty and mean-spiritedness. And the parts that stood out in contrast - like Rikka’s interactions with both Anti and Akane - weren’t so much positive as just not quite so negative. But somehow it drew me in anyway.

Jirai Kei aesthetic

And that’s exactly on point - just what I should’ve expected.

Yeah - Dynazenon is next.

Current:

May I Ask for One Final Thing is still going strong, and ended on quite a cliffhanger last week. And I really enjoyed the dynamic between Scarlet and Alflame. Broadly, I still have no notable criticisms of the series - everything about it is at least good, and the characters in particular are excellent.

And Gnosia is still piling on the mysteries without resolution, though it was sort of interesting to see the game from the gnosia point of view. I continue to hope that we’ll get some answers before this is all over.

Past:

For one reason or another, I ended up watching a lot of anime last week.

First up was SSSS.Gridman, but I didn’t stick with it for long. I liked it well enough and wanted to watch it, but it’s oddly unpleasant. It somehow seems mean-spirited and cruel, and that just wasn’t what I was in the mood for. So I switched to Dandadan. I read the manga for a while early on, so I knew basically what it was about, but I also expected it to be sort of disappointing, and for the same reason I ended up dropping the manga. And sure enough - it was fun and stylish and intriguing and had great characters and I mostly enjoyed it, but the problem is that if you strip away all of the oddity and style, it’s really just that plain old shounen action perpetual motion machine - introduce the new villain, fight and lose, regroup, regain inspiration from the power of friendship etc., get a power up, fight and win, introduce the new villain… It was fine all in all, but that endless loop inevitably bores me and even in spite of everything, I had pretty much lost interest by the time it ended.

Then I went back to SSSS.Gridman. It never really stopped being mean-spirited and cruel until the last episode, when it finally eased up a bit. I liked it all in all though - it’s an interesting world with interesting characters (and crassly I have to admit that Rikka’s character design is an anime dream come true for me). I plan on watching the second season, but not quite yet.

Then I bounced off of Gakkougurashi I was sort of ambivalent about watching it in the first place - I followed the manga from beginning to end, and even had the good fortune to read the first chapter on the day it was posted, when it didn’t even have spoiler tags, which was an amazing experience, and there’s just no way that an adaptation could match that. But even with my lowered expectations, it was too disappointing. The biggest problem to me was that the anime leaned too heavily into the whole cute girls doing cute things thing. The manga had a reputation for combining CGDCT with drama, but the reality is that it was always drama first and foremost, and CGDCT only sort of peripherally. The adaptation unfortunately focused more on emphasizing the CGDCT than on telling the story the way it was originally told. But oh well.

Next up was one that I noticed back when it was first shown, but had since forgotten about and just happened to stumble across a couple of weeks ago - Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka? I thoroughly enjoyed it and especially liked the way they expanded such a simple concept into such an enormous and convoluted plot, but that enormous and convoluted plot was, as I began to suspect about halfway through, sort of a problem. It’s one of those light novel series adaptations that takes the route of telling its story in detail rather than condensing it, and that meant that it didn’t really manage to finish anything before it ran out of episodes. It even ended on multiple cliffhangers. I’m tempted to read the LN, just because I really did like the story and the worldbuilding, but unfortunately it’s probably more likely that I’ll just forget about it again.

Next was a very pleasant surprise - Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai That’s been on my TBW pretty much from the moment it was released - I wasn’t watching much anime then, but I was online, so I couldn’t help but know who Rikka was (funny that I watched two different series with very notable Rikkas in them last week). I expected it to be good, but I didn’t expect it to be as good as it actually was. There’s just so much more to it than I would’ve thought possible. The story is terrific from start to finish and the characters are top-notch, and I just loved everything about it.

And at the moment, I’ve dived into one that’s been on my TBW since it was released - Ping Pong the Animation. Sports generally does nothing for me, but Yuasa has never let me down, so I figured it was worth it. And it very much has been. And unexpectedly, I’ve found a sports protagonist I identify with in Tsukimoto. Like him, I have no competitive drive (which is probably a lot of why sports anime/manga have never done anything for me). So it’s been a particularly interesting experience.

Waku is such a great MMC. He has all of those standard, cliched adolescent-boy-in-a-panic reactions, but then he just takes that extra, and unfortunately rare, step of steeling his resolve and overcoming his immediate reactions. And it’s so satisfying.

What a cliffhanger.

But we have hot apple pie and vanilla ice cream to look forward to.

Current season:

May I Ask for One Final Thing is still going strong. It feels like the story’s a bit compressed, but since it’s a light novel series adaptation, it’s pretty much either that or the story is told in detail but can’t reach a resolution before the anime run is over, and of the two, I much prefer compressed.

And after a week off for a filler episode that was basically just a grab bag of venerable old anime tropes translated into surreal science fiction, Gnosia is back to adding new layers of mystery to the ever-growing pile without actually resolving anything. The clock is ticking…

Past seasons:

The highlight of the week was definitely Kyoukai no Kanata, which I thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish (the series plus both movies). I liked everything about it, and particularly Mirai and Akihito.

Then I knocked around a bit and ended up stumbling across one of the most awesomely bizarre and goofy things I’ve seen - Henkei Shoujo. It’s a set of five one minute shorts, each of which has the same unnamed girl finding herself in some situation in which she encounters another girl who then transforms into a vehicle. That’s it, and it’s great. The situations are funny and the transformations are epic, satirically fan-servicey and ultimately entirely pointless, all at the same time. It’s just good stupid fun.

Then I started SSSS.Gridman. It’s okay, but it just didn’t quite grab me, and over the holiday, I wasn’t willing to invest enough effort to get into it, and instead just looked for something familiar and comfy with which to wind down, and ended up rewatching Honey Lemon Soda. This was my fourth time through the series now and I still couldn’t say exactly what it is that I like so much about it - I just do. Even with its flaws.

And I think I’m going to go back to SSSS.Gridman. At least for another episode or two.

So at this point, I’m just hoping that this series pulls a Mappa (even though it’s not a Mappa), and after 10 or so episodes of adding ever more complexity and mystery, it somehow manages to tie it all together in the last episode or two.

Almost a filler episode - just a bit of comedy getting the monsters out of the way so things can move on to the more central threats.

That said, it was still good. I expected that Scarlet and Rex were going to get a chance to do their thing, and that’s just what they did. And Alflame is an oddly appealing character. He’s actually very earnest and sincere and thus admirable - it’s just that he’s also a gung-ho moron who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut, but that’s okay, since everyone knows it, including him. And he and Scarlet are actually sort of well-matched, since he shares her pure love for battle. And the fact that he can’t keep his mouth shut and ends up irritating her keeps him at arm’s length, so while they connect in some senses, he’s not really in contention for her heart, which makes him a good secondary male character - someone for whom Scarlet can feel some (grudging) affection without introducing the threat of a love triangle.

The story’s still moving along at a good clip. I presume what we’re getting is a condensed version of the light novels, which is fine. Adapting a light novel series generally requires either condensing the events of a story to fit them into 12 episodes or going into more detail but not managing to tell a complete story, and of the two, I much prefer condensation.

Current :

May I Ask For One Final Thing is still entertaining me, and the story’s still moving along at a nice clip. I like everything about it.

Gnosia last week was weird, and not in the way that it normally is. It was some sort of otaku shoutout filler episode, with these bizarre science fictional characters acting out a whole assortment of standard anime tropes. It was entertaining, but… strange.

Past seasons:

Mostly I spent last week watching all three seasons of Kimi ni Todoke, which was mostly good, occasionally excellent and a bit too often frustrating.

Sawako was an excellent character all the way through, but unfortunately Shota not so much so. The first season was solid if a bit slow and the second season was very engaging. The third season though got bogged down with Shota being awkward and avoiding Sawako, and that even after he was explicitly told in the second season that Sawako was sensitive to being avoided, so that’s the one thing that he should never do to her. At the time, that made a big impact on him and served to spur him to action, but apparently a few months later, at the time of the third season, he had already forgotten it and nobody saw fit to remind him. They finally ended up sort of reconciled, but only after Sawako was reduced to bawling her eyes out (which led finally to a first kiss that was apparently supposed to be romantic but just struck me as unfortunate and sorr of cringey).

I ended up with the impression that they were doomed (I’m sure that’s not the way it played out in the manga, but still). I just think that realistically Shota could never provide what Sawako needs and they’d end up growing apart. Still though, I enjoyed it all in all.

A curious sidelight to that though - I originally looked into it because I really liked Honey Lemon Soda, and I kept seeing people say that it was a copy of Kimi ni Todoke.

And after watching Kimi ni Todoke I’m inclined to say that it actually is, sort of, but with one vital difference - Kai in Honey Lemon Soda is a much better character than Shota, and is a much better match for Uka than Shota is for Sawako. And I tend to think that’s not an accident.

And at the moment, I think I’m about to embark on Dandadan. I read enough of the manga early on to know that I didn’t want to try to keep up with it one episode at a time and would rather binge it, and I think now’s the time.

Oooh… that’s the first I’ve heard of this.

I really like the original movie, and wonder what they’re going to do for a sequel.

Here’s hoping for an Angela cameo at least.

This felt like a sort of surreal otaku shoutout/filler episode - a dolphin named Otome who squees at romance, an animated fighting game complete with poses and shouted attacks, a confession scene in a classroom at sunset and a sort of hybrid chuunibyou/yanqui/hikikomori (I was sort of surprised to not see futuristic cup ramens scattered around his room). All it needed was a beach scene or an onsen.

Still an engaging series - still don’t know if it’s going to be worth it in the long run.

Nice to get some backstory for Sanya/Saint Diana.

Dios managed to become more sympathetic and more creepy at the same time.

Scarlet was awesome as always.

I assume the dragoons are going to ally with Pallistan, mostly at Alflame’s urging.

Good episode all in all - not as dramatic as some of the previous ones - just solid storytelling and plothole-filling.

I was pretty sure that one way or another, Marietta was going to end up sympathizing with and trying to save the witch - that’s just the kind of person she is.

And now we have all the context to not only make that likely, but clearly the right thing to do.

I’m looking forward to it. I expect it’ll be fairly tropish, but will also be done well.

Current season:

May I Ask For One Final Thing? is still going strong, and last week’s episode was one of the best yet. We’re coming into the meat of the story. And meanwhile, Gnosia, in what has become a worryingly predictable move, just added more characters and more game mechanics in lieu of any sort of actual plot progress. I’m still holding out hope that this constant moving of the mystery goalposts has some in-universe meaning, but I suspect more strongly all the time that it’s just crappy writing.

Past seasons:

Finished up Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, which I really enjoyed all in all. It never quite came together into a satisfying whole, but it was a pleasant journey with some very odd but surprisingly well-rendered characters.

Then I watched Kokoro Connect, which was sort of the opposite in a way - an immediately interesting plot hook, but only so-so execution, and specifically because the characters were disappointing. They didn’t feel organic and fully fleshed out, but more like sort of hasty and disjointed contrivances - like the writers just filled each role in the story with a set of somewhat arbitrary characteristics - “insert manipulative nice guy poseur here” or “insert genki girl with a dark secret here,” and then never quite managed to bring them to life.

Then next was a long-time TBW resident - Anohana - which hooked me so hard that I ended up watching it all the way through in one sitting, which is something I haven’t done for quite a while. It was mesmerizing - so rich and so sad and so raw, and the story unfolded so relentlessly, yet somehow gracefully. I’m not sure I’d say I “enjoyed” it, but it was very, very good, and it’ll definitely stick with me.

And I’m not sure what’s next - some sort of change of pace. I gave Soul Eater a shot - I love the art style and have long wanted to finally watch it, but coming off of the storytelling of Anohana, that tedious shounen action story loop just didn’t work at all. I think I want something that’s relatively well plotted, but with a minimum of drama and tragedy, and nothing’s really grabbed me yet.

And once again, instead of resolving anything it just added more stuff and effectively moved the mystery goalposts.

At this point, I’m just curious to see if that constant addition of new mechanics and new characters has some in-universe justification or if it’s just a cheap gimmick the writers used to try to pad the story out without making it too repetitive.

Renge’s a hero.