Current: The only thing current that I watched last week was May I Ask for One Final Thing, which is still satisfying. The plot twists played out well, and we’re neatly set up for the finale next week. I’ve enjoyed everything about this series.

I had also been watching Gnosia, and I’ll undoubtedly finish it up sometime, but I just didn’t feel any particular urge to watch this latest episode. I’m tired of the complete lack of any sort of overarching plot - the ever-growing pile of mysteries and complications and the increasingly awkward lack of answers. Empty stylishness and an episodic cycle with no meaningful stakes can only carry a series so far by itself (it’d be better if there was at least some comedy or some ecchi or something to break the tedium). As it is, it’s almost as tedious as the Endless Eight arc of Haruhi.

Past:

So first up from the past last week was the rest of Ping Pong the Animation, which I started the previous week. It was… pretty good. I get the concept of sacrificing artistic precision for dynamism, but there were points in that that were too much even for me - points at which the figures looked too much like they were drawn in crayon by a kindergartner. And I found Smile’s character progression a bit unexpectedly shallow - not so much as if he grew from a person with no competitive drive into a person who was willing and able to compete at all costs as he just sort of flipped an internal switch and just went from the former to the latter. That said, I did like it all in all, though I’d rate it at the lower end of Yuasa’s work.

Then I went back to the Gridman universe for SSSS Dynazenon, which was sort of unsettling and frustrating, and in an entirely different way than SSSS.Gridman was. Gridman tended to be mean-spirited and cruel, while Dynazenon tended to be capricious and aloof. I kept wondering (and still wonder) where the urgency was. Kaiju are rampaging through the city, throwing buildings around and destroying entire precincts, so certainly killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, and when Yomogi is asked why he fights, he can’t even manage to come up with an answer. And when they meet the kaiju users, they don’t react to them as if they’re the people responsible for all the death and destruction, but as if they’re just someone they’re sort of inexplicably fated to oppose for some vague reason. In fact, outside of a few scattered scenes, they don’t even really seem to acknowledge, much less be concerned about, all of the death and destruction. Instead, against that mostly unacknowledged backdrop, they play out a fairly standard, though admittedly satisfyingly well written, school/slice of life/awkward romance ensemble dramedy, complete with all the tropes - beach episode (well - swim park, but still), festival complete with fireworks (and Yume beautiful in a yukata), school festival… When I gave in and adopted their lack of urgency and mostly ignored the kaiju, it was a pretty decent story really, with relatively interesting characters who develop well. When it was over though, my first thought was that the movie had damned well better tie together a whole lot of loose ends, because between the two series, there’s a whole boatload of them.

And… the movie, Gridman Universe opened up with the Gridman characters, and immediately went mean-spirited and cruel and crushed Yuta’s heart, and I turned it off. I’m not in the mood for that sort of shit.

So I switched to the second season of Love, Chuunibyou and Other Delusions, and only then realized that both series not only each have a Rikka, but each Rikka is involved with a Yu(u)ta. That can’t be a coincidence.

But anyway - I had been sort of tempted to just leave Chuunibyou alone after the first season, because I was quite satisfied with the way it ended. And in retrospect, I probably should have. The second season was… not good. I didn’t actively dislike it, but I really didn’t like it much either, and the season-ending special was rage-inducing (the pictures weren’t the point - Yuuta made a promise to Rikka, then broke it, and NOTHING excuses that. Asshole.)

I had planned on watching the movie, but after that maddening 13th episode, I lost interest.

So entirely burnt out on tedious sort of vaguely romance-ish entanglements and emotional manipulation, I switched to one that I had actually been sort of saving for just such a situation - when I needed a palette cleanser that was smart, low key and funny - Joshiraku. And when the first episode opened with one character declaring that we should just go read the manga because this is a dialogue-heavy series and it’s a dumb idea to adapt something like that, which led to a warning on-screen that says, “This anime is full of ordinary dialogue so that viewers can fully enjoy how cute the girls are,” I was sure it was a good choice. And it so very much was. The characters are great, the dialogue was witty and amusing and it never lost that meta edge. The only thing that was sort of disappointing about it was that it was one of those series that I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed that much more if I understood Japanese, so I could’ve caught all of the puns and wordplay and dialect shifts. I liked it so much I think it holds a solid third place on my list of favorite CGDCTs, behind only YuruYuri and Gabriel Dropout.

Then, refreshed, I went back to Gridman Universe. It did provide some answers, but not “Ah - I get it now” sort of answers, but more like “Sure - okay - whatever” sort of answers. It was pretty much just the rule of cool expanded to movie length and big screen size, which I guess is sort of appropriate for super robots vs. kaiju. And at least it finally stopped toying with Yuta’s heart, though the pay-off felt more like an addendum than an actual part of the story. It was okay all in all, but could’ve easily been better.

And… I’m not sure what’s next. I’m burnt out on romance, burnt out on action and burnt out on emotional manipulation. I’m sort of craving something that’ll let me just switch off my brain and coast…

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.

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.

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.

That was plain awesome from start to finish, and now we’re really getting into the meat of the story.

This is a great series.

No - I understood all of that, and went into it fully aware of it. It just doesn’t matter, because who they are right now is, for me, so completely and thoroughly unpleasant that I have no more desire to sit in front of a screen and subject myself to them that I would to punch myself in the face.

I know it’s not uncommon on anime forums to treat this as some sort of personal failure, but that’s just the way it goes - I cannot tolerate asshole protagonists. I have no sympathy for them and no interest in them. They just fill me with anger and the desire to see them suffer (or as I’ve often phrased it, they make me want to somehow reach into the screen and kick the shit out of them) and that is, for me, an entirely unpleasant experience that I will not willingly subject myself to.

I can handle a character like that if their awful qualities are sufficiently balanced by good ones, and not at some tentative point in the future, but pretty much from the start. A great example of that, and particularly appropriate, is Kana in Oshi no Ko. She’s only really awful in flashback - by the time we meet her again, she’s already gone through a lot of torment and soul searching and already made significant headway towards being a decent person, and is in fact probably my favorite character in the series.

But if there was a side story about that process - following Kana from the point at which she was awful and self-absorbed and cruel and through the period during which she started to change - I wouldn’t watch it because even knowing who she becomes and liking her as much as I do, I’d have an immediate and visceral and entirely unpleasant emotional response to her then.

And that’s just the way it is. Think of it as something akin to an allergy.

This season:

I dropped My Friend’s Sister - not deliberately - I just realized somewhere along the way that I hadn’t seen the latest episode, and realized that I didn’t care. I might try it again after it’s finished.

May I Ask for One Final Thing is still entertaining me. The characters are especially good - I’d watch it just for the dynamic between Scarlet and Julius, but luckily, it’s much more than that.

And since it looked intriguing, I caught up with Gnosia, which is… odd. It’s very stylish - a bit too self-consciously so for my tastes - but it’s fascinating. The way the story is unfolding is strange though - it’s a mystery at heart, and it seems that every time the main starts to get a handle on what’s going on, an additional element is added, effectively moving the goal posts. If that ends up having some logical context, then it could make the whole series that much more interesting. If not though, it’s going to just make it stupid and contrived. We’ll see.

Past seasons:

Finished watching Bokurano, which was excellent. It’s a tough watch - as I noted last week, not only is the overarching story tragic - each of the individual episodes deals with a different person, and their stories also tend to be tragic, or at least bittersweet at best. But still, it was well worth it all in all.

And along the way - every time it started to overwhelm me and I needed a break, I switched to Sono Bisque Doll, which was also excellent. The mains have tremendous chemistry and the whole thing is just vibrant and uplifting and very enjoyable. And a perfect antidote to the bleakness of Bokurano.

I finished both up at more or less the same time, then went on to Sono Bisque Doll season 2, which was a disappointment. The biggest problem I had with it was that they Flanderized the characters. What had been interesting individuals who happened to have some tropish traits morphed into basically nothing but those traits, repeated endlessly (and generally in chibified form), so it was just a constant stream of chibi Marin being loud and excited and chibi Gojou being tediously self-conscious and panicking at the proximity/sight of any exposed flesh. I watched 3 1/2 episodes, then gave up and skipped ahead to the end of the last episode to see if they at least made some romantic progress.

Then I had a strange experience. After that disappointment, I was in the mood for a sure thing, so I went with a series that has been on my TBW for quite a while, and that has a great reputation - Kaguya-sama. And I hated it. I don’t recall the last time I bounced so hard off of a series. I loathed both of the smug, insufferable, manipulative asshole mains, and I just could not possibly care less what happens to either one of them.

In order for a romance to work, I have to be able to cheer for the people involved - I have to want to see them happy. And with these two, I just don’t. I don’t want to have anything to do with them at all.

So… since I needed something fairly radically different from that, I started just browsing MAL stacks and following suggestions and the like, and watching lots of episode 1s, just trying to find something interesting and comfy and upbeat and low key. And I ended up on Henjin no Salad Bowl (A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics), which was a near-perfect fit. It’s about a magic-using princess and her superhumanly skilled knight/retainer who escape the destruction of their kingdom on an alternate Earth through a portal that takes them to our Earth, where they end up in Gifu, separated, but adapting fairly well, if oddly, to extremely different lives from anything they were accustomed to. It’s bright and upbeat and pleasant and it leans heavily into the “eccentric.” Nearly everyone they meet and everything they end up doing is odd, goofy and/or bizarre, but it all manages to work out one way or another in the long run, mostly because they’re genuinely good people.

Then I happened into a movie - Hotarubi no Mori e (Into the Forest of Fireflies’ Light) - and it was beautiful and highly recommended. It’s easily one of the most touching and heartfelt things I’ve seen in months.

And I’m currently about two thirds of the way through Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, which is pretty good all in all. It’s a Shaft, so it has a certain amount of that “trite comment accompanied by a head tilt so it seems more profound than it actually is” thing that annoys me about Shaft, but it’s nowhere near as overbearing about it as Monogatari or Mekacucity Actors, so it’s okay. And I quite like the characters.