What a cliffhanger!

I’m only watching two series this season - May I Ask For One Final Thing? (which is still entertaining) and My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In for Me (which hasn’t quite reached the level at which I’ll drop it). They both have good if not great OPs, and the ED for May I Ask is completely different from the OP, but equally good.

Of past seasons…

I’m in the middle of doing something I haven’t done for years - watching an anime that’s so good but so tragic that I can’t watch more than an episode or two before needing to take a break with something else

The anime is Bokurano, and it’s very good and very difficult. It’s not just broadly tragic - it’s a fairly episodic story and every episode is bittersweet at best in and of itself. So I can’t make it more than an episode or two before I need a counter. Which has been kind of interesting actually.

The first anime I turned to as a counter ended up taking over, and I watched it all the way through in two sittings. Asobi Asobase is without a doubt the funniest anime I’ve ever seen. I mean - right this moment, all I have to do is think of the words “butt laser” and I start laughing again.

Then I spent a while watching an assortment of episode 1s in between episodes of Bokurano before getting hooked into Ao-chan Can’t Study, which is a good example of one of my favorite niche genres - wholesome ecchi. It’s essentially a romcom between two awkward people, with the gimmick that the FMC - Ao-chan - is awkward because she’s the only child of a famous erotica author who has no filter at all, so she has a very vivid imagination that leaves her alternately defensive and embarrassed, much to the dismay of the well-meaning MMC.

Then I knocked around for a bit more (in between episodes of Bokurano) before settling into Sono Bisque Doll, which has been on my TBW for a while now, and is low key and amusing and surprisingly cute.

And I’m about ready for another episode of Bokurano.

Mmm… yeah. That was very good. Probably the most complete and focused of Oshimi’s works. Predictably, it wasn’t an easy read at all, but it was worth it.

Eh… that was okay all in all, but very contrived. I knew they had to somehow make the jump to Iroha doing voice acting, but that was a sort of cheesy way of doing it.

Presumably that’s it for the flashbacks though, so we can get back to the current timeline and dueling tsunderes.

Another great episode, and we’re getting into the larger plot now. I’m guessing there’s going to be some connection between Terenezza and the Palmians and/or the demon realm.

And I was reminded again and keep forgetting to mention - both the OP and the ED are excellent.

Enshittification isn’t just a problem for social media.

Hajime’s an oddly appealing MMC.

Initially, he’s often even more oblivious than the normal frustratingly dense protagonists, but he pays close attention and figures things out, then doesn’t hesitate, so he ends up sort of backing into doing the right thing more dependably than most.

Probably Hanayamata all in all, though most CGDCTs would qualify, and that’s one of my favorite genres, so I have a long list of them.

Oooh… I remember this.

I read the first few chapters when it was being released, but then decided I didn’t want to try to follow it and would rather wait until it was done, then binge it. Then I forgot that it even existed until just now.

Off I go…

Scrapped Princess is the best example I know of. It’s a near perfectly told story, moving as it goes along from a small and simple story of three people traveling together to literal world-spanning drama, and ending with all of the threads neatly tied up.

Others that come to mind:

Cowboy Bebop

ODDTAXI

Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song

Akudama Drive

Heike Monogatari

Kokkoku

Well…

Actually, thinking about it, just taken on their own, they were some of the best filler episodes I recall seeing. And to their credit, they did fit into the timeline too - they neatly filled in the gap between the cops getting fired and settling into their new roles.

But it still felt to me like the overall pacing unfortunately lagged there.

I’m going to undoubtedly watch the series again - maybe my opinion will improve. And either way, the series as a whole was quite good.

I think it’s pretty safe to assume that she’s currently inhabiting her twin sister’s body, and her twin sister is currently inhabiting hers.

And that yes - they will meet.

Current season:

My Friend’s Little Sister Has It In For Me is okay all in all, but the MMC is starting to grate on me, the rest of the characters are drably cliched and the story hasn’t engaged me.

May I Ask for One Final Thing?, on the other hand is excellent, and at this rate I’m not going to be surprised if it ends up the hit of the season. Scarlet is a tremendous character, and Julius is every bit her match, the fight scenes are both glorious and hilarious (Scarlet spinning a corrupt noble around by his heel with a chamber orchestra playing in the background was a highlight, as was Scarlet punching out a dragon then making it her pet), and the plot looks poised to take off. I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

The only other thing of note I watched last week - because it happened to remind me that it existed at a moment when I had nothing else grabbing my attention and the time seemed right, I dipped back 20 or so years into my TBW and watched Paranoia Agent. And it was worth it. It was very early-2000s, with lots of symbolism and an only tenuous connection to reality, and it lagged a bit with a couple of filler episodes at about the 2/3 mark, but was otherwise engaging and stylish, and it ended strong.

Right, but that’s not quite the “why” I’m asking.

I could make those characters look 1,000 times better in about two seconds just by very slightly altering the cheek/jaw lines, so that they had faces more in keeping with classic bishoujo style and more appropriate for an action series, and I’m wondering why apparently nobody in an entire production company managed to figure that out.

It’s as if puni plush is the default setting on their Art-a-Tron 2000, and they lost the manual and nobody knows how to change it.

Why do they have puni plush faces on classic bishoujo bodies?

Yow - I did not expect that much boldness from Kaede.

Neither did Kouhei…

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.