With occasional breaks for new episodes of stuff, I spent most of the week watching season 2 of The Apothecary Diaries. It was predictably very good. First off, even in a series notable for great music, the first cour OP stood out as especially good.

Other Highlights:

I love watching Gyokuyou tease Jinshi. She’s a terrific character all around, but that’s when it really shows through. Jinshi tries so hard to balance acting as befits his position and hiding his personal interest in Maomao, and she sees right through him and keeps him constantly flustered, but always with a generous spirit and a twinkle in her eyes.

It’s amusingly appropriate that Maomao is unfazed by Jinshi and even by the Emperor, but is intimidated by Hongniang and Suiren. She knows that Jinshi in particular is mostly bluster and is a softie at heart, but Hongniang and Suiren, nice though they might be most of the time, rule their respective households with iron fists and are not to be crossed.

It’s nice to see Xiaolan growing as a character. She could’ve just been a passing background character, but they invested time and effort into her, and Maomao came to really appreciate her just as a human being, and she blossomed rewardingly. And the ice scene was horrifying and sad and sweet and wonderful - a beautiful emotional journey (and something that you know all three of them will remember fondly for the rest of their lives).

I want to see more of Lishu in the future. She desperately needs to be rescued - she’s sweet and earnest and kind and doesn’t even begin to deserve the way she’s treated.

I love that Maomao doesn’t understand cats, even though she’s so much like one herself. Maybe that’s why though.

I’m very impressed that I didn’t figure out Loulan’s secret - they did a good job with that reveal.

I like Lihaku more all the time - he’s one of the few people, and the only male character, who just treats Maomao like a normal person. The scene at the stronghold was particularly good, because that was a desperate and strange situation and he had to violate his orders to go along with her, but he just listened to her, recognized that there were gaps in her story, decided to trust her anyway, and went on his way. No muss - no fuss - he just did what he did because she’s his friend.

Jinshi’s scar is going to build character, and I assume that’s exactly why it was given to him.

As for current stuff:

Shibouyugi - not what I expected - Candle Woods apparently isn’t going to be brutal because it was designed that way, but because one of the players has gone rogue.

MF Ghost - They still haven’t even started the race. This is the one part where they’re very definitely not following the Initial D formula, and to the detriment of this series. Initial D covered an entire stage in Takumi’s career in each season - multiple races, lots of background, lots of side stories. MF Ghost can’t even manage a single race in a season. It’s just too slow and too drawn out, and much though I love cars and road racing, it’s not holding my attention.

Roll Over and Die - another oddly effective mix of genres and moods, from Milkit’s face and Flum’s adorable jealousy to Ed and Jonny and… enough said about that. Unfortunately, this episode really drove home the point that this can’t help but be basically just a promotion for the LN series, since there are far too many loose threads to even begin wrapping anything up by the end of the season. I’ve still enjoyed it though.

Champignon Witch - The vagueness isn’t going away. I presume that what we’re seeing in the anime is a condensed version of the full story, and they’re skipping a lot of background, because it sort of feels like trying to watch a movie by watching a single scene, then skipping ahead randomly and watching another scene. The scenes themselves are generally good, but the whole thing just isn’t coming together into a cohesive story.

Frieren - Details aside, this could’ve been the second episode of any shounen action arc ever.

Trigun Stargaze - Dropped.

Gnosia - Dropped.

Scum of the Brave - we still don’t know what’s going on, but it was telling that Yashiro obviously has some ideas about exactly why he ended up seemingly saddled from out of nowhere with King Arthur’s daughter, his old mentor’s daughter and an oddly highly skilled and ruthless third girl. That ties in neatly with his ability too - at all times really, he’s much more aware of what’s going on than he lets on.

In the Clear Moonlit Dusk - Probably my favorite episode so far - Kohaku is coming to terms with the fact that he’s completely new to interacting with a woman he actually cares about and Yoi is coming to terms with the fact that a man could actually care about her, so they’re shifting from a glib sleazeball trying to put the moves on a naive girl who happened to catch his eye to two absolute beginners trying to sort out this love stuff together. And that made their aquarium date pleasantly sweet and wholesome.

You and I Are Polar Opposites was absolutely adorable. The birthday cake scene in particular put an even bigger dopey grin on my face than the series normally does.

Journal With Witch - I’ve been sort of spoiled by this series - though it was still well ahead of pretty much every other anime ever, this episode seemed a bit light on profound revelations about the human condition. Mostly it was filling in some gaps and presumably laying groundwork for things to come. And unfortunately, the things that most stood out for profundity were mostly centered around the growing divide between Emiri and Asa. I really dread seeing how that’s going to play out. On another note though, at this point I’d say it’s 100% guaranteed that there’s going to be at least a second season.

And I picked up a new series - a Chinese ONA called Fangkai Nage Nuwu aka Release That Witch, which is interesting in its own right, and potentially even more meta-interesting. It’s an isekai with a modern man who spontaneously takes over an adult prince of a sort of medieval kingdom with real witches, and decides to release a seemingly genuinely nice person who also happens to be a witch and who was scheduled to be executed, on the condition that he gets to hire her to work for him. Then (according to the synopsis) he, with her help and the help of more witches that he hires along the way, ends up touching off a sort of magic-based industrial revolution in this previously insignificant kingdom, which brings them power and wealth, and the attention of aggressive neighboring kingdoms. So it’s shaping up to potentially be something of a Chinese paean to capitalism, which I find deliciously amusing.

And at the moment, I’m about halfway through a rewatch I’ve been threatening to do for years now - an enormous, sprawling, steampunk/gothic epic from two decades ago - Trinity Blood. It’s sort of cheesy, but it’s undeniably stylish (and has a terrific OP - Dress (Bloody Trinity Mix) by BUCK-TICK) and is a mostly engaging story set in an intriguing and detailed universe. Sadly, the author died before he could finish the story, so instead of getting the hopefully satisfying ending it deserved, it just sort of goes along until it suddenly stops. Still though, I remember enjoying it all in all, so we’ll see if that holds true this time too.