Caught up with My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me!, which is okay. The gimmick of a necessarily sort of backhanded competition between two different tsunderes is sort of amusing, but that’s about the extent of it. It’s all mild enough that it’s an acceptable time-waster. And still following May I Ask For One Final Thing?, which is still entertaining. Scarlet’s funny (I think the cracking sound her rage stickers make is actually audible in-universe), and Julius is especially good.

For whatever reason, ended up binging four different older series last week:

First up was Ben-to!, which was okay all in all, but a bit disappointing. It’s essentially a shounen action spoof, centered around ritualized battles royale that happen nightly at various supermarkets in pursuit of half-price bentos. It started out engaging enough, but lost steam about halfway through and never really recovered.

Next was Sabagebu! -Survival Game Club!-, which was… okay. It’s an over-the-top gag comedy about an insane survival game club (combat with Airsoft guns). I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into when they broke the fourth wall about five seconds into the first episode, and yeah - it’s that sort of series. It was just a barrage of gags and meta-humor, and made me laugh out loud regularly. But it was oddly numbing after a while - it didn’t really go anywhere. It just kept up the gags and meta-humor. I enjoyed it all in all, but it would’ve been better with something more - some character development of some sort of overarching plot or… something.

Next was Narue no Sekai(The World of Narue), which was a gem. It’s a 2003 romcom/slice of life centered around a human boy/alien girl couple and their friends and family, and it’s pure iyashikei - wholesome, uplifting and kindhearted. I swear I could feel my soul being cleansed just watching it. It’s not high art by any means, but I enjoyed it.

Then finally was Ore ga Suki nano wa Imouto dakedo Imouto ja Nai (My Sister, My Writer), which was pretty bad really. It’s a decent concept - an aspiring light novelist whose tsundere imouto writes a wildly successful light novel about a brocon imouto, then convinces him to pretend that he wrote it because she’s not allowed to have a job, which then leads to him developing a harem, much to her dismay - but was ultimately ruined by the fact that the brother is one of the most maddeningly awful harem protagonists ever. As if it wasn’t bad enough that he remains completely oblivious to his sister’s real feelings, in spite of the fact that she wrote an entire light novel about it and by the end of the series is pretty much pure dere, he’s an hysterical prude - one of those intensely irritating protags who goes into a blind, stammering panic every time any of the girls approaches him at all affectionately, much less sexually. And really, the girls aren’t a whole lot better. They start out interesting enough, but by the end are mostly reduced to cliches.

Not sure what’s next - after all of that, I’m sort of in the mood for a high quality sure thing, and there are a bunch to choose from on my TBW, but none of them are really grabbing me yet…

Skythewood has never let me down.

And Chihiro continues to be the best wingman.

That was a nice surprise. For a bit there, it looked like Kyouko was going to pretend she was okay and back off, which would’ve been one way to resolve things, but would’ve been sort of disappointing. But Fujito won’t let her, so now it’s on. And for better or worse, Fuyu’s back where she wants to be, since she’s sort of a control freak and wants to know in advance what everyone else is up to. But I think Kyouko is going to really throw her for a loop - she started to suspect but hasn’t really realized that she’s serious.

And meanwhile, Akira’s about to panic again.

I rewatch it at least yearly.

Part of what I’ve grown to appreciate about it is that behind all of that colorful mayhem there’s actually a simple, wholesome, satisfying story that might’ve come straight from a golden age Hollywood movie.

At some level, it’s just the story of a determined and honorable man who’s finally gotten the chance he deserves, his best friend and long-time partner who likely doesn’t deserve his trust, but that he’s going to go ahead and trust anyway, and the woman he was seemingly destined to love. It’s really just straightforward hope and betrayal and loyalty and determination and redemption and love.

Well… and lots of other stuff too.

Waku is such a genuinely good guy and so determinedly generous.

He just needs to listen a bit more bravely - she told him that was what she wanted.

Now I’m grinning like an idiot.

This series has a way of doing that.

Still not following anything this season, though May I Ask for One Final Thing? looks promising.

Watched two odd older series last week, each odd in their own way.

First was Girls Band Cry. Or more precisely, the first three episodes of it.

I almost dropped it part way through the first episode, just because the animation is so horrifically awful. And that’s something I’ve never done before. Unlike many, I have no particular issue with CGI, and can at least tolerate pretty much any animation for a good story and/or good characters. But this is something else entirely - it’s like Initial D race scenes levels of awful CGI, except made 25+ years later. I’m honestly not even sure how they managed it - I would’ve thought it would be impossible to make CGI that awful in 2024 - that they’d have had to invest extra time and labor into deliberately making it that bad.

But the thing is that I really liked the characters. So I gave it the “first three episodes” chance. But I just couldn’t get past how awful the animation is (I still can’t forgive them for what they did to that poor cat - it looked like something out of a Nintendo 64 game).

So then I wandered a bit, and ended up on something that’s sort of been on my horizon for a while now - Majo no Tabitabi. And it was… odd.

From the description, it seems like it would be sort of somewhere between Flying Witch and Kiki’s Delivery Service, with maybe a bit of Kino’s Journey mixed in. And that’s pretty much what it is. Part of the time.

But the thing is that it’s very episodic, and the individual episodes range anywhere from all bright and shiny and cute to some of the most horrifically soul-crushing tragedy I’ve ever seen, and back again. It’s beautifully animated and Elaina is adorable and the stories are generally well told, and there’s a bit of a background plot that one can catch glimpses of here and there that looks interesting, but the mood whiplash is sort of exhausting.

Then, because I couldn’t stop thinking about the characters, I went back to Girls Band Cry.

The animation was awful throughout (Rupa in particular is almost unwatchable - her sweater’s the worst, but even her hair and her face look like they were done by a novice following a Blender tutorial). And the performances were surprisingly lackluster - even beyond putting the awful animation on full display, the songs are nothing special and even Nina’s much-vaunted voice really isn’t all that (though admittedly my opinion might be colored by the fact that I just watched Zombieland Saga a couple of weeks ago, and those are some of the best anime music performances ever).

But damn I love the characters. They’re just so rich and so detailed and so realistically complex and emotional and stubborn and awkward and frustrating. And they almost made it worth the rest of it. Almost.

They deserved better.

Fine by me.

I use the [DISC] or [Discussion] tags just because that’s become the standard, but I’ve never really liked them, and for exactly the reason you mention.

[Chapter] makes sense to me.

And here I thought I wasn’t going to be following anything this season.

That was epic.

Huh…I had never though about that.

You’re right - it doesn’t seem to make sense to believe that people would actually say that.

But it’s a not uncommon trope at least for someone in a relationship or considering one to be afraid that that’s what other people are going to think. So there must be something there. And Japanese society is certainly very conscious of relative class and stature, so I have little doubt that it’s something that other people would potentially think, and might even be extremely conscious of.

My first thought is that it’s something that, in reality, is communicated without ever actually being said - that it’s one of those things that’s communicated by the pointed misuse of expected modes of speech and such, and it’s just translated into English as an overt statement (sort of like Japanese “swearing”).

I dunno though… it is sort of strange, now that you mention it…

Yeah - I’m really curious to see where this is going to go. We can be sure that it’s not going to be heartbreak and betrayal, nor is it going to be a throuple or reverse harem, because this manga is far too wholesome and upbeat for anything like that (not to mention this is the youngest sister). But we can also be pretty sure, just based on what the author’s already done along the way, that it’s not going to be simple and predictable either.

Wow… that really was abrupt.

I kind of get it though - if she had started to actually get Shiraishi to open up, then that would’ve called for more detail, and so on So instead it ended at the point that it started to look as if she was going to be able to get Shiraishi to open up.

It’s sort of a shame though - I really liked Shiraishi’s design. Her eyes keep making a subtle shift between angry and sad that’s really effective.

And at least we got to bask in An-san’s radiance one last time.

That opening was what initially sold me on the series. I just followed a link from somewhere - probably a MAL stack - and read the synopsis and thought it looked promising, so I tracked it down and clicked play on episode 1 to find out what it was all about, and was immediately hooked.

Kotaro was one of the many big surprises for me. Those loudly emotional characters generally grate on my nerves (in fact, I dropped How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend in large part because the MMC’s constant shouting irritated me so much), so I was worried at first, but somehow it just works for him. And having Saki punch him early on helped, as did the fact that so much of what he yells is foolishness, and they all know it.

And somehow, in the middle of all the yelling and all the foolishness, he tells each one of them exactly what they need to hear when they need to hear it.

On that note too, one of my favorite parts of unexpected humor is when Sakura stops him on the stairs of the mall/shelter to sincerely thank him for all he’s done for them, and she’s talking about how important he’s been - “And you never gave up! Well… except for that one time, but other than that…”

The last episode of The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity aired Thusday, and it was every bit as wonderful as I’d hoped it’d be. I’d already read it in the manga, so it wasn’t a surprise, but it was still worth seeing. And the series as a whole is now at or near the top of my list for awkward, sincere romances.

Aside from that I watched two surprisingly great older series last week.

The first was Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku. It’s not so much that I didn’t expect it to be good as that I expected it to be disappointing compared to the manga, which is easily among my top five all-time favorites. And after seeing the character designs when the season was announced, I was sure that would be the case, since they didn’t even manage to look right. The facial proportions are all wrong, and it throws everything off. And I expected the rest of the series to be equally inferior.

But I kept seeing positive mentions of the anime, so finally decided to give it a chance. And it was really very good, even though the character designs never stopped being distractingly wrong. The rest though - the rest of what I appreciate about the manga - they nailed. The backgrounds are lush and beautiful, the tightly focused action sequences - things like Komichi tying her hair back - are just as graceful as Hiro’s originals, and the character interactions and growth and especially the emotional content are all spot-on - just as rich and satisfying as in the manga. It was still inferior to the manga all in all (it really couldn’t help but be), but it was damned good anyway.

Then, on something of a whim, I watched both seasons of Zombieland Saga. Then I watched them both again.

I still can’t quite get over just how awesome that series is. It came out during a period when I wasn’t paying much attention to anime, so I vaguely knew it existed, but that was it And I really didn’t expect a lot of it because I don’t hear a lot about it. But it just swept me away.

The characters are uniformly terrific. Every one of them gets their moment in the spotlight and every one of them shines when they do. The humor is great, and so well-placed. Even in the middle of the darkest drama, they’ll just suddenly drop in a perfectly timed laugh out loud moment. The overall plot is brilliant - hell, just the fact that it exists is brilliant, because that’s something in itself that’s only slowly revealed. Kotaro says he’s forming an idol group to save Saga, and it seems at first that he means to “save” it from being a generally disregarded cultural backwater, but no - he means it literally. And as the plot keeps expanding through the series you find out that he’s right - that Saga really is under threat (and not for the first time) and really does need to be saved.

And then there are the performances, which are easily among the most awesome of any music anime ever. Every one of them has a creative hook that makes it stand out, and the later ones in particular are just astonishing (and in fact I’d say that the show opening for Iron Frill - season 2 episode 4 - is the single greatest anime music performance I’ve seen - everything from Tae on the drums to Junko’s amazing voice to Junko destroying the guitar and pointing across the arena at Ai with the splintered neck (and Kotaro’s laugh out loud reaction) to the epic rendition of Mezame Returner, hearkening all the way back to their first guerilla parking lot show.

And their fans. Starting with the two metalhead guys (“Those guys are seriously awesome”), they just expand, as if the world is just divided into people who haven’t seen Franchouchou yet, and fans. So by the time of their stadium show, every notable character from every episode is there. And if I was in their world, I would be too.

I can’t wait for the movie.

Aaahh, yes.

I’ve read far enough ahead in the manga that I was pretty sure when the last episode ended where it did that this episode was going to be this scene, and it was, and it was just as wonderful as I’d hoped.

This was a great series.

I debated whether to post this or not, because I wasn’t sure if you planned to. I didn’t (and don’t) want to interfere if you want to post it, but also don’t want to let it fall through the cracks.

Currently on chapter 8 - just popped back in long enough to say this is a good one

I assume that the witch is living in her original body, and likely up to no good with it.

I expect she’ll show up sometime.

Well, it looks like I can go back to just binging older anime exclusively, because there’s nothing there that caught my attention. I’ll undoibtedly watch Spy X Family some time but it’s a known quantity and I’ve been following the manga since the start, so I’m in no hurry.

Last week, I finished a rewatch of Scrapped Princess and loved it just as much as the first time. It’s just such a great series.

Then I happened on a bit of a surprise - Rokka no Yuusha. It’s a simple and intriguing set-up - when the demons invade the land, the six heroes - the Braves of the Six Flowers - will assemble to fight them. And sure enough, the demons are on rhe move and the heroes assemble - but there are seven of them. So it plays out as an imposter mystery, and is actually quite engaging. The only real problem with it seemed to be that it’s based on the first volume of a six-volume light novel series, so it has a somewhat open ending. But it was okay anyway - the ending was necessarily not entirely satisfying, but it worked. But then, in the last few minutes of the last episode, for who-the-hell-knows-what reason, it goes beyond that somewhat open but still sarisfying ending and tacks on some of the cringiest sequel bait I’ve ever seen anywhere. It was seriously so bad that at first I thought it was some sort of satire It didn’t really affect the series overall, since it was just tacked on to the end but my god it was awful.

And now I’m sort of knocking around, but I think I’m about ready to give Haibane Renmei the attention it deserves.