A little slow, but very charming so far. I initially had a bit of a grudge because the main character looks like a copy-paste of Shirayuki (one of my all-time favorites), but I’m a huge fan of artificing so that attitude didn’t last long, lol. There was so much heart in all the interactions between her and her dad (please, anime, for the love of god, do not kill him off, I’m begging you), and as I understand it this is a romance so I expect that same quality character writing will carry over.

With just the premiere, I give it a 3/5 with plenty of room to grow. Ultimately, the dynamic between our romantic leads will decide how good this show is, and while I’m hopeful about it, one of them didn’t even show up this episode (an understandable choice, to be clear), so I can’t really judge effectively at this point.

It’s on crunchyroll

This was fine. CGDCT isn’t really my genre, but the animation was nice and the fights were (unexpectedly) dynamic and fun to watch. The comparison to Dungeon Meshi is obvious and not flattering, but that’s not really a fair standard to hold things to. The plot is serviceable, though like other have said, I’m very confused why Clay didn’t just ask about her father.

Overall, it’s something I wouldn’t turn off if it were on, but I don’t know that I’ll bother to watch any more. 3/5

I’m tentatively excited about this one so far. I went in cautious, because I’ve mostly seen “otokonoko” used as a fetish term in a very transphobic way, and anime doesn’t have a great track record with gender diversity, but I think this went well overall. I expect we’re in for a pretty deep exploration of Makoto’s gender identity and expression and the transphobia / femmephobia that exist in their life specifically and in the culture at large, and I am here for it. What I am not here for, though, is Aoi’s chaser attitude (hopefully she gets better), which makes her character feel very weak when contrasted against Ryuuji’s secret crush and his obviously complicated feelings about sexuality and how gender plays into that.

Overall, I enjoyed this episode and am choosing (for now) to give it the benefit of the doubt that it won’t turn transphobic itself by the end. 4/5

“Initiated” meaning “created”, sure. But he’s often the one requesting. And just because she can say no doesn’t mean the dynamic isn’t weighted. It often felt to me like she isn’t good at saying no, and will put up with discomfort and embarrassment in order to avoid a confrontation (a common result of ask/guess cultures clashing, which I saw some of in here too)

To be clear, I do see how someone else could read things differently, but for me the impression came across so strongly, especially in that moment, that I couldn’t see anything in good faith anymore.

I felt like it went back and forth, but it was the catgirl scene that really poisoned it for me. She just looked so uncomfortable and like she was about to cry and he seemed to either not notice or not care.

Edgy revenge porn stories like this always weird me out, especially when our MC is like this one and gives strong school shooter vibes (funnily enough, not the most school shooter vibes in the show this time). The reliance on CGI and the janky monster designs don’t inspire confidence, but the 2d animation is often fairly expressive, so I guess it’s got that going for it. The plot is so standard and predictable that nothing ended up having any emotional weight for me. I guess these sorts of shows are popular, so someone is watching them, and for those people this is probably serviceable enough to be a decent popcorn anime.

Overall, though, I don’t see it offering anything you can’t find done better by clicking randomly around the past few years of anime charts. 1/5

This show is exactly the reason why I go into shows blind. Based on character designs alone I was ready for a yu-gi-oh/digimon/beyblade level of seriousness and the drop when it revealed the deathgame was absolutely stunning. And, as the episode unfolded, the show didn’t stop surprising me. I was watching with a friend and early on mentioned we’d almost certainly get a murder at some point mid-season, and when the one kid pulled out a gun and it turned out we didn’t need to wait even an entire episode to get to that point… perfection. Only topped by the final scene where our main character dies.

So many parts of the storytelling here were baffling, making the plot and action hard to follow at times. The plot itself made so many bold choices I honestly couldn’t tell if it was fully incompetent or if it had something more interesting up its sleeve; after some reflection, I’m pretty sure it’s the former.

Overall, a truly fascinating mess of a show, and I will be back next week. I usually like to give ratings, but this one depends entirely on if there ends up being method or just madness, and only time will tell.

The visuals were absolutely stunning (at least compared to the standard budget BL anime typically get) and both of our leads are cuties, so i think the quality animation and cinematography will be put to good use here. A lot of very classic BL themes and situations in here, but put together in a cohesive way that I think works well, at least so far. The big surprise for me was that our main character figured out his feelings in a mere 20 minutes of screen time, an order of magnitude less than his fellow BL MCs, lol. I’m interested to see where the story goes and anticipate it will be a bit of an emotional rollercoaster.

Also, because of That One Scene, I ended up looking up the manga to see if it’s 18+, and it sounds like it definitely has sex scenes of some sort. I’m curious how much / if the anime will go there, since BL adaptations typically just kinda skip over those scenes. Either way it should be an enjoyable ride.

I give the premiere a 4/5

I couldn’t get myself to watch this all the way through. The animation looks nice and the voice actors are doing a great job, but the dynamic between our leads just reads as sexual harassment to me. I noped out after it seemed like a few scenes in a row were him deliberately goading her into flirting with him as different fetish archetypes when she was clearly uncomfortable, all under the guise of her practicing her craft. Maybe it gets better, but the main dude gave me the ick so bad I had to stop watching. On top of that, the show had a very 4koma / gag manga style of pacing that I just don’t think works as well in anime form, but that might just be my taste.

I give what I saw of the premiere a 1/5

I don’t expect much from this kind of show (not really my genre) but this was a lot of fun. Both of our leads have strong characterization and their dynamic is fun. I always like when a teenage romance leans in to the awkwardness that comes with that, specifically the characters not really knowing where their own boundaries are. It’s a bit hornier than I would prefer, but not enough to kill the vibe for me. I can only hope that it doesn’t go the harem route, since I typically find those kinds of stories deeply boring.

Overall, I’d give this premier a 4/5 and I’ll definitely be back next week.

Only watched the first episode, and I wasn’t impressed. Seemed pretty standard as far as isekai go, and while the animation was nice, the pacing had a lot of problems, especially in the action scenes. I could definitely see how other people would enjoy this, especially DC/suicide squad fans, but I didn’t.

Overally, I give the premiere a 3/5.

A lot of irl stuff happened to me this past season (beyond just breaking my hand, which is now basically recovered) and I sort of fell off of the seasonal anime train at some point, oops! Anyway, fresh start with the new season, let’s go!

My friends and I did manage to keep up with the shows we decided to watch together, and they were all outstanding (light spoilers for all of them)

I’ve also started watching Odd Taxi, which I bounced off of when it aired (mostly due to the extended sequences of the comedy duo on the radio) but have heard nothing but good things about since. So far it’s a little slow but I’m putting my faith in the good reviews.

Not really sure about this one so far. The animation was great and Takuma’s characterization was strong (personally I didn’t find his patheticness a turnoff), but the setup just feels very uncomfy to me. I understand that the story is about a classic scifi premise of “can robots love”, but currently it just feels like this man is so lonely that he’s developing an unhealthy attachment to a person-shaped appliance that has run calculations and concluded that reciprocating his feelings will help it complete its tasks better. I understand that the show wants us to see her as a person, and maybe it will give us reasons to do so later, but IMO a textual reading of the first episode doesn’t give me any right now, and the whole situation is giving me horror / black mirror vibes, which kills the light and fluffy vibe they seem to be shooting for (for me).

For just the premiere, I give it a very mixed 3/5. I’ll see how i feel next week and maybe give it another episode.

A friend I’m watching this with pointed out that the lady who got isekai’d with the train is actually a reference to an old 2chan creepypasta post! It’s neat that they’re bringing in modern folktales in addition to older ones.

So, fun story: I go to the hidive homepage and it has a “continue watching” section where I see something I don’t recognize. I check the information they gave me - the episode’s title and description - but those are pretty vague and don’t help. So, I click it, guessing it’ll take me to the show’s page… Nope, it takes me to a page about the episode, with basically the same information as I had before. But there’ll be a link to the main show page there, right? Of course not. So, I go to play the episode, hoping there’s a link in there, and the closest I can find is the back button… that takes me back to the episode page. As far as I can tell, there is literally no path from the continue watching section to a show’s page (I did eventually figure out what show it was after looking for the OP in the episode - it was Dark Gathering)

Also check out this screenie I took of the (4-pixel tall) only place the title is written on Whisper Me a Love Song on the front page (because it’s so small in the splash image)

Oh jeez, that sounds rough. I’m glad you were able to recover, even if it took a while. Luckily mine is just a small fracture in one of my wrist bones, not even displaced or anything, so by now I’m mostly just dealing with building back up my range of motion from being immobilized, though it’s been a rough time because it’s my dominant hand, lol.

I definitely recommend Tonari no Yokai, and ya it’s pretty iyashikei. I think it strikes a similar tone to Natsume’s Book of Friends.

I tend to believe that even if something is bad, it’s fine to be an unashamed fan of the parts that you like, and that you should wear your tastes with pride even if they’re unconventional. Because of that, I don’t think I have any anime I’m actually ashamed of liking.

Well, that’s what I’d like to say, but actually there is one, though it’s a manga rather than an anime. As someone with an extremely low tolerance for ecchi (I’m not attracted to ladies), my one shameful fave is Nana & Kaoru, which is basically softcore porn. I’m honestly not sure how I got through the first few chapters, but once you get into it holy shit the character depth and the way that the ecchi scenes inform and develop the relationship between our leads. It’s so well written, oh my god. But on the surface the whole manga is just boobs, butt, and bondage, and I swear that’s not what I’m there for, lol.

Been MIA for a little while because I broke my hand a little bit and it’s been hard to type. Everything’s looking much better now and I seem to be recovering well, so I’m back!

I showed my friends the sampling platter of anime I’d prepared and they chose their winners pretty quickly, so Tonari no Yokai and Windbreaker are joining Dungeon Meshi in our lineup (definitely the best of the season, IMO)

Meanwhile, I’ve trimmed my own watchlist down to what I think is a manageable size: Astro Note, Bartender, Vampire Dormitory, Whisper Me a Love Song, and Yatagarasu. I’m still trying to stick with Spice and Wolf, but I can feel my motivation failing, so I’ve switched to the dub, which should have a lower motivation requirement (since it doesn’t require reading).

In non-seasonal news, I convinced my family to join me to see Spy x Family: Code White in theaters, and it was a really fun time. I’d heard that the movie was accessible to people who aren’t familiar the show, and my mom can confirm that’s true, lol. Very nice little self-contained story that managed to not feel redundant with the show even though it’s written to be optional, and the animation was amazing as expected. My brother and I had a great time and Mom didn’t resent us for taking her (she’s not into animation and I think only went because she felt bad for me and my broken hand, but still seemed to think positively of it in the end), so that’s a complete win.

Building on this, dropped shows could alternatively be put in their own table hidden in a spoiler tag, so that they’d be there for those looking for them, but the post stays looking a bit more tidy.