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Well, I got at least somewhat caught up on the watch schedule this season. So this post is just a little late, with a couple of episodes to go to finish things off.

Keep Your Hands off of Eizoken — Smudge and I saw the first episode of this a while back and immediately put it on hold to see it with the guys. And yes, everyone here is really enjoying it. Its well done, beautifully produced, and really well written. This series shows off as much love for the process of creating anime as the characters have in every scene. I didn’t really believe AJ when he called this the best series of the year early on in it… but yeah. It’s just that good.

Deca Dence — I would never have pegged this as the best series of the season. Definitely watch the first two episodes, as the second one starts pulling back the curtain. Nicely, ‘pulling back the curtain’ is not the point of the plot; that’s pretty much done after another three episodes or so, letting the series as a whole be fairly plot-driven. We’ve been seeing this with the guys, and its been great all around.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — Smudge and I got a late start on this, so we’re still about midway through the new season of it. I think it has slipped a bit with the expanding scope of Mine’s life defocusing the plot a bit. It is still good though, and I’ve been picking up enjoyment again as it goes.

Re:Zero — I’m always a bit surprised when something comes back after a gap of a few years. Again, took me a little to get back into it, not helped by the tradition of multiple gruesome deaths of the main character. But, it’s getting really interesting, and the rabbit hole is going fairly deep. Wondering how this will turn out.

Sword Art Online — And that’s finally over. The entire Alicization storyline is good… but it stretched out too long with too many “and now one more secondary plot” elements. The good news is that it does come to a good conclusion after all that, but it also implies a sequel that will probably be about as big. I’m willing to wait a while before we see that.

Appare Ranman — Okay, based off of seeing the middle of the first episode, this isn’t what I was expecting. And, what it is… is an anime version of Wacky Races, only so much better. We’ve been watching this with the guys, and I would normally think Dave wouldn’t go for it, but he’s been enjoying it. It goes over the top with a bunch of the side characters, but the primary and secondary characters are all a lot better grounded, which I think helps hold it together.

Flip Flappers — Unfortunately, this got lost in the shuffle, and there was a large gap between watching most of the series and the last couple episodes. It’s… a strange series, and the number of major puzzle pieces they finally drop on you at the very end doesn’t help. I have a general idea of what happened, but at this point I’d have to watch it again to pull out details. That said, its well-produced, and quite interesting.

Black Clover — Currently (I’m a couple seasons behind still), this is doing a bunch of shorter stories with the main part of the second big arc in the background… and the series is hanging on by virtue of its secondary characters. Both Smudge and I would like to see more Mereoleona.

Yeah, this is a really late post. Blame COVID-19, as I’m still waiting for My Hero Academia to finish up. As ever, this is in a rough order of how much I liked it.

My Hero Academia — I’m watching the dub, which got delayed on the Funimation end. At any rate, another fairly solid season. Gentle Criminal has been interesting, and I like how he’s been rounded out. But… the fight did have a lot of ‘if you’d just talk‘, which tends to make me grind my teeth.

Pokemon Sun & Moon Ultra Legends — Finally got to see the end, and am now waiting for the English version to pick up with Gen 8. Generally, I was very happy with how all of the ending played out (especially the unmasking of the Masked Marvel), but the ‘moving on’ bit seemed like it all happened a bit fast.

Haikyu — About when I think it’s gone forever, we get another season. It’s been long enough to have forgotten bits (and we flailed around a bit figuring out what was the current series), but it’s still up to the same quality, and still doing a good job of showing with growth comes challenges.

No Game, No Life Zero — Finally managed to squeeze time for this into the schedule. Except for the framing, it’s a fairly independent story (which explains how the world got to the screwed up place it’s in), so I’d think it’d be pretty good to go into cold. I think I like the series more (it’s been way too long), but this is still good, and well worth a watch.

Black Clover — Still catching back up on this. Split between well-done, and too much fight-anime tropes. The padding isn’t… too bad, but the recaps are definitely excessive. I’ve also been having a few problems with the bad guys… but those problems have at least been alluded to. Which is one of the stronger points, the overarching plot so far feels much more cohesive than is often the habit with these.

Meanwhile, we’ve been rewatching a couple things with the guys:

Golden Kamui — We’re about halfway through this, and both Baron and Dave have been enjoying it a lot.

A Place Further Than the Universe — And then we watched this as an antidote. I’ve been very happy that they enjoyed this as well. It an amazingly put together combination of plot and characterization. Probably one of the best put together series of the last few years.

Still on a minimal viewing schedule, and running late on this post. I did attend the CrunchyRoll Expo, and enjoyed it, though the programming felt a bit more ‘corporate’ this year. Didn’t get any video, but did get the soundtrack to Rising of the Shield Hero, and attended an interesting panel with the composer.

Violet Evergarden — Shortly after mentioning this in my last anime post, we hit an episode where it really turned the corner for me, and the second half was unreserved excellence for me.

Demon Slayers — Smudge got me on to this recently, and I’m just past the first season’s worth. This is an excellently done series, and I can see why it’s one of the big things, and why Smudge has passed it on to me. Still, I find myself still somewhat resistant to it. I recommend it, but I feel like it isn’t entirely for me. At the moment, there’s also the problem of the other two major characters are being introduced, and right now they’re really annoying.

Fairy Tail — Okay, this is over. Which is good, as the ending was starting to outstay its welcome. It had been going on for a while, with drama, and climax, and cycling through a large number different villains. After all that, the actual ending was fairly fast, and well done. This may be the first long-form fight anime I’ve seen all the way through.

Saga of Tanya the Evil — Finally got to see the movie. The series ending promised a North African campaign, with Tanya cast as Rommel. I wasn’t looking forward to that as an idea, but I was still annoyed that that promise was broken, and aborted to a prologue. However, the actual plot is very good. There’s some effort towards the new watcher, but see the series first; too much of this isn’t going to make sense without at least seeing the basic setup. I still recommend the series and this, and hope to see more as the writing has been good throughout.

Pokemon Sun & Moon Ultra Legends — We’ve seen hints of the start of the tournament arc (yes, I know its over already in Japan, the delay to over here is hideous), but we’re in a largely episodic holding pattern. Still fun, introducing Meltan was a bit mixed, but certainly worth the watch.

Black Clover — Way behind on this, but slowly catching up. It’s interesting that Asta having his arms broken turns into backstory opportunities for other characters. That was a neat way of handling things, and there’s been some important things said for the large arc that the series has going. Often we’re at the point where that’s been mostly forgotten about here.

A Certain Scientific Accelerator — I’m not an anti-hero fan, but there was a hope that Accelerator’s attitude would keep a lot of the weak points of the series this is a spin-off of at bay. That hope died in the second episode when we got a group of villains who insisted on delivering their meaningless monologues. Thankfully, they’ve been largely shunted to secondary status, and in the main this has been better than the recent Index series. If you’ve liked the others, certainly watch this, otherwise… nah.

As is the standard at the moment, my anime watching is lagging behind a bit, but this post is probably lagging behind more. My general weekly watching for the last few months:

Sword Art Online: Alicization — So… second season, second half of the story, right? Of course right. Except it’s not. It does actually go through and have the climatic showdown you know has to happen. And the entire sequence for that was very good. Really, I tend to get tired of the ‘series of fights with climbing levels of bossiness’ trope, but this season did it well, and I enjoyed it the entire way (with the exception of recap episode). But then we get a cliffhanger for a new problem, and the series… stops. So, I might recommend not going for this until it returns, but overall Alicization is the best SAO has been since first season.

Land of Lustrous — I just got to watching this a month ago or so. The bad news: it stops partway through the full story, and needs another season. However, the good news is that it stops at a good, and fairly satisfying point, and is a very good series overall.

Fairy Tail — Continuing to be good with moments of great. The fact that they’re on course for an ‘end’ that’s already out in the manga I think helps a lot, as the writing is staying reasonably tight. The fighting is sprawling out all over the place, but it’s not feeling drawn out with too many ‘and now our 5 minutes with this character’.

Pokemon Sun & Moon Ultra Adventures — Sometimes you’d think that the entire franchise would just be tired after this long. And… sometimes it does feel like it (really, Team Rocket doesn’t need to be in every episode, though this series is being better about that), and sometimes it doesn’t. The main thing I think I can say is that I want to see more of the Masked Royal, the episodes dealing with Kakui’s double life have been hilarious.

A Certain Magical Index III — Not a bad wrap up, and this season was definitely the story they were rushing through everything else to get at. If anyone else has seen it, you want to try explaining it? We’ve got a lot plots and magical MacGuffins running around, and I don’t think the creator really has a handle on it all, so it just dissolves into nearly-random events.

Baron and Dave occasionally watch with us, and here’s what they just caught up on:

Ancient Magus Bride — You know, the second time around, I like first season even more than I did the first time. I think not watching the excellent OAVs beforehand helped, since those are very good, and the series suffered a little in comparison. Also, second season did a bit better for seeing it faster than one episode a week. Anyway, we watched everything (OAVs last), and they were happy with it, and I really want to see a third season now.

Also, Smudge and I caught the two ‘reboot’ movies for Pokemon recently:

Pokemon: I Choose You — This was disappointing. Part of it was, I was expecting a buddy movie of Ash and Pikachu concentrating on the original first couple of episodes. I think that would have been better than a completely alternate version of… probably about the entire Kanto adventures. The two new characters were there to externalize Ash a bit, but that also left him feeling a bit flat.

Pokemon: The Power of Us — On the other hand, this is one of the best Pokemon movies there’s been. The plot has a difficult job, as there’s five primary characters, and the movie follows them all about equally. However, the various threads cross frequently, and naturally, and overall its a very strong plot. Better yet, there’s no Team Rocket (really, they don’t need to be there every time). There are complaints that Ash isn’t the primary focus, which is true, but he is still what ties major parts of the movie together. And I’m fine with seeing people other than Ash on center stage.

I’m a bit behind the times again, partly because of watching a dubbed series, which runs behind by a couple weeks, and then being almost done with an older series. Overall, it was a fairly quiet season, though I’m still busy trying to keep up with it all.

My Hero Academia — Well, it’s hardly any surprise by now that this continues to be good. The current storylines have been good, and haven’t been overstaying their welcome.

My Hero Academia: Two Heroes — And for the second time this year, I end up seeing anime in the theater. It was well worth it, though the production quality was lower than I expected. I really think it needed to trim out more of the secondary characters and focus the plot better. Despite their efforts, I think a person coming in cold would have trouble following parts of the movie.

Free!: Dive to the Future — And… the boy-candy series still manages to be well-written. There are two problems this time however. One, they keep adding to the cast without letting anyone else drift out, so it’s getting harder to follow everything. They did manage to tie everything back into other plotlines in the second half, which helped a lot, but they’re going to have to trim back. Two, they ended on a cliffhanger. Wait for the conclusion next year.

Pokemon Sun & Moon Ultra Adventures — Well we’re continuing to get more ultra-beasts, and now the main cast gets to be a sentai team to deal with them. Thankfully, half the time things do not devolve into sentai antics, and maintain the feel of the pokemon world; but the writers are still having a lot of fun with it.

Now for older things I’ve been catching up on:

Golden Kamui — It sounded somewhat interesting when Smudge originally talked about it, and she talked me into trying it, and it rapidly rose to the top ranks of what I’m watching. Now I’m approaching the end just in time to catch the second season.

March Comes in Like a Lion — Just finished this up a couple weeks back. It’s hard to pin this one down too much, as it’s a slice-of-life series, if an excellently done one. But the characters are all good, and the series manages to find a real good place to wrap things up overall and come to an end.

Dofus: Kerub’s Bazaar — It’s not as good as the original Dofus series, but it’s still a series, and all the tales of Kerub’s adventures allow them to do a very different series from before. Definitely recommended.

Black Clover — This is still the bottom of the ‘watch list’, so I’m a ways behind on it. The writing varies a bit, the Asta is still annoying… but it growing up just enough to be interesting. However, while the writing could use some tightening up, it is not padded. So that makes a shonen fight anime I’m willing to watch.

Angolmois: Record of Mongol Invasion — I’ve only tried the first episode of this, but it also looks pretty good. I hope to get back and watch the rest of it, once I can free up some time for it.