Well… I do agree with your second paragraph pretty much entirely. They did a great job of cranking up the drama surrounding her performance, and especially by making the introduction so simple and seemingly drab. That sets the stage for a very dramatic transition to… something, and I think it’s definitely going to be worth seeing. I’d enjoy it more without all of the ad hoc narrators telling me things that I could figure out on my own, but it’s shounen, so that’s the way it goes. It’ll still likely be worth seeing the rest of her performance.

But at this point, that’s the only thing keeping me going.

I appreciate what you’re saying, and you may well be right and I’m just too cynical. But I just don’t believe there’s any legitimate in-universe explanation for Issho’s transformation or the direction the story’s going. IMO, it has nothing to do with the art of storytelling, and everything to do with Jump’s business model. In order to turn the series into a cash cow they could milk as long as possible, it was necessary to dump Akane’s initial, concrete goal of getting far enough in rakugo to confront Issho and win some justice for her father and replace it with some more nebulous goal, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.

But I do still at least want to see the rest of her performance.

Aaaand… Issho’s retcon is not only continuing, but accelerating, and has gone from disappointing to revolting.

He’s already so grossly sweet that if he’d been up on stage instead of in the audience, I would’ve expected him to pat Kouragi on the head.

I’m sort of looking forward to seeing what Akane’s going to do with the rest of her performance (I would definitely be looking forward to it if I thought I was actually going to see it, but mostly what we’re going to see is other people providing droning commentary on what we’re not seeing because we’re stuck looking at them instead), but beyond that, I find I just don’t care. One way or another, they’re going to end up handwaving the entire thing about Akane striving to achieve rakugo success so that she can confront Issho and get justice for her father, so that it can instead settle down into an endless series of challenge arcs, with Akane actually becoming a top ranked rakugoka at about the same time that Luffy actually becomes the Pirate King.

Ah well…

I don’t watch dubs so can’t know for certain, but I can’t imagine newer ones are worse than the horrific cringe that made me decide to not watch dubs in the first place.

That was a very good episode.

I really like the way this is all coming together. It looked like nothing more than episodic silliness at first, but even early on, it seemed like underneath her drily sarcastic exterior, the goddess had something of a soft spot for Ore. And as it’s gone on, that’s grown (alongside her growing and carefully tended collection of presents) and as of the last couple of episodes, it’s gotten some surprisingly moving context.

And then this episode also spent some additional time and focus on the hero (and the maou), which was funny, wholesome and touching, all at the same time.

I’ve been consistently entertained by this, but I didn’t expect to be moved and impressed by it as well. Well done.

A Place Further Than The Universe is actually pretty much at the top of my current “I know it’s good so I’m in no hurry to actually watch it” TBW.

So the timing couldn’t be better, I guess.

I can already see some similarities in the character designs.

And in case I wasn’t clear, I would recommend Kimikoe, just so long as you keep your expectations in check. There’s nothing really wrong with it and some great moments, and the setting is very good. It just feels a bit… underdone.

Watched a sort of interesting movie - Kimi no Koe wo Todoketai aka I Want to Deliver Your Voice.

It was a valiant attempt at a heartwarming slice-of-life, and had a pretty good central idea and nice art and character designs, but that was about it. The story was told too fitfully - sometimes too quickly and sometimes too slowly and with too many gaps, so it didn’t flow as well as it should have. The animation, in spite of the nice design, was consistently subpar. The voice acting seemed to fail in random directions - sometimes too frantic, sometimes too dull, sometimes too loud, sometimes too quiet and so on. Overall, more than anything else, it felt like it was made by an unusually talented amateur anime club that got in way over its head - like it knew what it was trying to do, and occasionally achieved it, but mostly came up just a bit short, not through any lack of effort or anything like that, but just because the skill and experience wasn’t there to add that last bit of polish that would’ve made it genuinely good.

And I suspect that that’s pretty much what it actually was. It was made by Madhouse rather than an amateur anime club, but just from the feel of it, I’d be willing to bet that they took a few of their newer employees and maybe a few older employees who had never quite made it and said, “Here - here’s a bit of a budget - you go do this and let us know when it’s done.” Like the management didn’t really care one way or another and they were just sort of going through the motions to put out a slice-of-life drama, so the handful of employees were pretty much on their own with their pittance of a budget, and did the best they could with it, which was sort of admirable, but only sort of.

I liked it all in all, but it could easily have been much better.

Current stuff:

It struck me the other day that this has been an oddly mediocre season. It has a remarkable number of anime that are somewhat above average, but it also has essentially none that are much better than that. There hasn’t been a standout either way really - either amazingly good or amazingly bad. It’s just a whole lot of “Yeah - that’s pretty decent I guess.”

An Observation Diary of My Fiancee is still holding as my personal favorite of the season. As soon as you say “reincarnated as the villainess,” you’re notably getting into current cliche territory, but the story is told from a unique angle and has taken some unusual twists and turns, it neatly balances humor and drama and, most notably, Bertia is simply adorable, which is not only pleasant, but plot-relevant.

The Ramparts of Ice keeps getting better, essentially entirely because the characters keep growing and gaining detail as we get to know them better. What started out as a set of pretty straightforward stereotypes is becoming four very distinct personalities. Neat trick that - more anime should try it.

Agents of the Four Seasons appears to be setting up for a showdown, but is still scant on details, so that’s necessarily, and unfortunately, fill-in-the-blank conjecture. Overall, the series almost managed to be a good mix of traditional ideas of Japanese gods and goddesses with crass modern opportunism and faceless government intrigue, but it’s played its hand too close to its chest for too long. I have some pretty solid guesses about where it’s headed, but that’s all based on the most oblique of hints - even at this late date, they’ve revealed essentially nothing of any substance. And unfortunately, that makes it near certain that the end is going to feel rushed, because they’re going to have to reveal too much too quickly in order to fill in all the blanks.

In poking around a bit the other day, I stumbled on a very simple fact about Akane Banashi that, had I known it from the start, would’ve saved me having to wrestle with the then-unfulfilled fear that it wasn’t going to actually settle anything, and was instead heading toward bland shounen action perpetual motion - it’s a Shounen Jump series. So of course that’s what it’s heading toward - there’s literally no alternative.

I’m likely not going to drop Akane Banashi, but only because I’ve come this far so I might as well see it out. I don’t expect any surprises.

I have effectively dropped a bunch of series, but none of them because I’m no longer interested in watching them. Instead, it’s just started to feel too much like work keeping up with series that combine unusual settings and a fair amount of mystery and intrigue - having to re-acclimate myself to the setting and story every week, only to get a bit of it, then have to wait until next week for more. So instead I’m going to binge them all later. That includes Snowball Earth, Nippon Sangoku, Killed Again Mr. Detective, Needy Girl Overdose and Scum of the Brave.

And My [horribly localized] Reincarnation is still a surprising gem. Not only is it consistently funny and impressively animated - it keeps revealing additional details about the characters that are interesting in their own right. And funny.

Really curious to see where this is headed next.

All the way through, there’s been something sinister about this entire “Agency” system.

And this whole "insurgent " thing has reeked of false flag from the start.

We know that both Hinagiku and Sakura suffered at the hands of the village of spring, but it seems to run much deeper than that. And there’s the ominous last words from Hinagiku’s mother, which I’d almost forgotten until Sakura reintroduced the idea of the agents standing and fighting together. It sounded then, and again now, as if the background reality is that the agents are little more than slaves, with this entire bloated Agency essentially parasitizing on them.

And, apparently, worse.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that what happened to Hinagiku is that she was kidnapped and held by the Agency, and that they experimented on her, trying to diplicate or control her power, so it would be entirely theirs.

We’ll see.

Most recently, Sentenced To Be A Hero.

The synopsis didn’t appeal to me at all - it sounded like just another one of those tedious shounen action perpetual motion machines that, if you look past the superficial differences between one enemy and another, are just repeating the same basic arc over and over and over again.

I finally gave in and tried it because it ended up with a much better reputation than it seemed it should deserve. But although it was stylistically very impressive, I still couldn’t initially see it, since it not only did seem to be broadly predictable and repetitive, but the characters were basically just walking stereotypes.

Except not quite. There were little hints from the start that that wasn’t quite what it was, and as it went on it kept introducing more and more things that defied the stereotypes and the formulas until it had somehow morphed into something entirely its own, with an actual story that appears to actually be heading toward a conclusion rather than just a contrived framework on which to hang an endless series of battle arcs, and characters who are surprisingly complex and conflicted rather than just unchallenging cliches.

So I ended up going from half-heartedly giving it a shot to binging the rest of the first season, and now looking forward to the second.

Ah… yeah. That tracks, and ties in better with the idea that the familiars are… well… familiars.

Then it’s pretty much just a desperate attempt by Pii-chan to give Heronia what she wants.

That’s actually what I assumed was going on initially - that Pii-chan had essentially come to Heronia’s rescue. But then the rest of it was so strange and didn’t seem to be doing anything to benefit Heronia specifically, so my mind started running through other possible interpretations.

Ahh… yeah. Yeah. The more I think about it…

Cecil, before he met Bertia, was bored and emotionless. And even after she piqued his interest (and won his heart) he still tended to be relatively emotionless.

And Heronia’s isekaied player has shown herself pretty much from the start to have no real appreciation or respect for the story, and she’s always been just sort of going through the motions expecting to essentially automatically win (as opposed to Bertia’s, who loves the story so much that she was willing to essentially sacrifice herself to give Cecil the canon good ending). So it would make sense that Heronia’s isekaied player has a dismissive negative characterization in her own mind of the relatively emotionless Cecil as “the android.”

And Pii-chan’s trying to fulfill Heronia’s “wishes,” even if they don’t really understand them…

Sorry - I know I’m just saying stuff that you can’t affirm or deny without spoiling things. I just think best when I write…😉

Wow.

Heronia said he was “just the android prince.” Is that part of the game? If so, why was it only apparently really the case after he found himself back in a version of his past? Is the Cecil we’ve seen all along somehow “real” to match the Bertia who’s actually a “real” person? And the Cecil in his vision was the Cecil from the game to match the Bertia from the game?

I suspect that the familiars are central to all of this somehow. Possibly this is all being played out according to their will or in their world?

This was already pretty much my favorite series of the season, and it sure looks like it just exceeded itself.

This series just keeps getting better. The foundation of it is all built on misunderstandings, which are often handled poorly in anime, but these make sense, and they interconnect and overlap in a way that makes for a great story. And the characters keep revealing new layers that also all make sense - they don’t feel like contrivances, but simply like the sort of details you discover only after you’ve gotten to know a person fairly well.

Looking forward to more.

I assume that when she released the flyers that said there was a doppelganger at the school, she only knew for certain that there was one - herself - and she was just hoping to flush out other ones. And that’s why she was sort of both surprised and relieved when Nao revealed herself.

I would guess that she’s in a very desperate situation. All indications (particularly Nao’s non-death) imply that the replica is effectively created by the original, since they not only can be summoned or banished at will, but can be summoned intact and unharmed after being “killed.” So the replica is entirely a function of the original, and that in turn implies that the replica cannot exist without the original.

If you’re interested, the manga goes into much more detail about the history between the sisters.

This series wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as it is if it didn’t have such a great supporting cast.

Crunchyroll is never going to solve the problem because Crunchyroll is the problem.

Spent part of last week trying to slog my way through Kimi no Iru Machi. I had watched the first episode years ago and thought it looked promising, but had since forgotten the title, though the memory of seeing the episode came back to me from time to time. I finally stumbled on it last week and thought that was serendipity. But it wasn’t.

More than anything else, I just couldn’t work out how it was that a love polygon had built up around a guy who was such an asshole. He’s one of those maddening prideful and self-absorbed male romance leads - thankfully more common in anime’s past than its present - who, when he’s assailed by the predictable doubts, insecurities and embarrassments of young romance, gets angry and takes it out on the girl. I made it through about four episodes and just couldn’t take him any longer.

After poking around a bit, I learned that the anime is a notoriously awful adaptation and the manga is supposedly MUCH better, but I’m not sure I care enough to bother. I’m going to no longer try in vain to remember the title of that anime I just vaguely remember about the guy who moves to Tokyo to pursue the girl who he was sure was the one until she suddenly and inexplicably dumped him, and that’s good enough.

As for current stuff:

I’m dropping Nippon Sangoku, sort of. I like it a lot and still plan on watching it, but it’s just so packed with intrigue and secrets and is such an unusual universe that I’m not enjoying it episodically as much as I know I would binging it, so I’m going to do that when the season’s over.

Akane Banashi is looking like it’s going in an unfortunate direction. I don’t want to drop it, mostly because I really like Akane herself and the rakugo setting is interesting, but part of the initial appeal was the whole idea of Akane dedicating herself to rakugo at least in large part so that she could get good enough and influential enough to at least figuratively kick the ass of that bitter old prick who expelled her father. But it’s looking now like they’ve just waved the magic wand of incoherent storytelling to transform the bitter old prick into a sweet old guy who just has an undeserved bad reputation, and I can only guess that that’s so that the story wouldn’t effectively reach an end with Akane’s revenge, and will instead settle into a shounen sports style cycle of mini-arcs of new challenges and new challengers with never an end in sight. And that won’t hold my interest.

The Ramparts of Ice keeps loading on more and more complication, as this sort of loose group of friends morphs into some sort of love… circle? It sort of reminds me of Kokoro Connect in that it seems that everyone is in love with someone who’s in love with someone else who’s in love with someone else who’s… Except it’s thankfully better overall, mostly because the characters are intriguing and complex rather than just fill-in-the-blank stereotypes. I’m really enjoying it.

The Klutz and the Skirt is still a treat. It’s just consistently cute and funny and it looks great, so it’s just a pleasure to watch.

My Ribdiculous Reincarnation is a pleasure too. It actually pains me to type out that godawful localized title, but the series, aside from that, is a barrel of fun.

Agents of the Four Seasons still has too much unrevealed for this late in the season. At this point, I’m hoping that it’s going to keep going at the same pace and get a second season, or better yet a second cour, because the alternatives are that it’s going to accelerate to an info-dump end or it’s going to just peter out, and I’m enjoying it and don’t want that to happen.

The highlight of the week for me, as it has been for most of the season really, was An Observation Log of My Fiancee Who Calls Herself a Villainess. It starts with tropes, but most of the tropes are either lampshaded or defied, the characters, and Bertia especially, are very engaging, it looks great, and it makes me laugh and keeps me interested to see where it’s going.

Madoka.

Even after all these years and rewatches, it can still draw me in. And Magia still sends chills up my spine.

Sincerity - the characters are essentially honest about their feelings. They might be confused or insecure or reserved or even terrified, but they’re not dishonest.

Consideration - in the end, no matter how frightened or doubtful or awkward they might feel, the other person matters most. Though it’s not an anime (yet), that’s the thing I like most about Only I Know and the MMC Waku. He goes through all of those standard panicky reactions - the doubt and insecurity and questioning and fear - and then he steels his resolve, and does whatever he thinks will be best for the FMC Oura, because her well-being matters most to him

Growth - the characters can’t be perfectly attuned and matched right from the start or there’s no story. They have to grow into their roles, and if they don’t, then there’s still no story (though it takes much longer). One of my favorite moments in Honey Lemon Soda is when Serina - the MMC Kai’s ex who’s introduced as a potential rival - remarks that the biggest difference between her and the FMC Uka is that being with Kai made her weaker, but it makes Uka stronger.

Genuine problems with genuine solutions - similar to the need for character growth, there must be problems along the way that they have to, and do, overcome. All I ask is that they be genuine problems that those people might genuinely face - not asinine contrivances that just happen because that’s the way some dumbass wrote it - and that they be realistically settled through sincere efforts - not just deus ex machina’ed out of existence after the drama has been judged to have gone on long enough.

It strikes me that I’ve sort of drifted away from “themes”…

In the purest sense of the word “cathartic,” absolutely 86. There’s nothing - literally nothing, in any media - that’s ever touched me the way the last episode of that series does.

Honorable mentions:

In a similar sense, Akudama Drive. It’s especially rewarding because with the vividly over-the-top beginning, it doesn’t feel like that’s the way it’s headed, but it is.

In a milder sense, Honey Lemon Soda. There’s just something about that series - to me, it’s far better and more satisfying than any of its better-known rivals.

In a similar vein to that, Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop, which as a bonus is visually stunning too.

In a somewhat different sense, the original OVA of Little Witch Academia. It just sweeps me up from the very first frame and doesn’t let go until the last.

And in the more traditional sense, say what you might about the series as a whole, but Sword Art Online S01E03 - The Red-nosed Reindeer - is beautifully touching, as is the entire Mother’s Rosario arc.

The fujoshis did though.