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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.

Smudge ended up getting us both involved in Final Fantasy XIV right as the current anime season started, and that’s been taking up much of our free time, so we only saw a few series this time:

A Place Further Than the Universe — The initial description for this series was completely incoherent, but this turned out to the the hit of the season. Four high-school age girls end up as part of an expedition to Antarctica. As usual with Japanese series of this type, it shows some real research and care with the subject, and the characterization is great, with everyone having good reasons for getting involved. The four primary characters grow, and are very good for each other. Highly recommended.

Last Man — Finally just saw the end of the series a few days ago. It comes to a very well done ending, but I hope we get a ‘part 2’ or something. So far as I know, we’re still not at where the graphic novels pick up.

Yamato 2199 — I wasn’t entirely sure on the dub at first, but it’s gotten good. The series itself, is of course, excellent. We really need more remakes like this.

The Ancient Magus’ Bride — This is continuing with a few different story arcs, and overall, I’m liking it better than the first season. It’s been well-produced all along, but the writing seems to have settled into its groove now.

Pokemon Sun and Moon — The current Pokemon series has continued to be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the streaming service of them reset to the beginning after the two Kanto episodes. So it’s going to be a while before I get to see more.

Garo: Vanishing Line — The second half of the series was largely ‘on the road’ and built up to a good climax sequence. Overall, a good story that hangs together all the way through. The mood and style are very good along with the characters, and the plot is solid if not exceptional.

Black Clover — The other continuing series from the previous season, we’re well behind on it now, having only taken the time for a few episodes. While it is in many ways a bog-standard fight-anime (and surprisingly low-budget at times), I’m enjoying it at the moment. The current plot lines have been much more interesting than the beginning (expanding the cast didn’t hurt), and as long as it can avoid dragging things out, I’ll continue to watch it.

Darling in the Franxx — I’ve only seen the first two episodes. Smudge had some problems with the… controls for the mechs, though coming from the people who did Kill la Kill…. We’ll probably give this more of a try, but feelings are decidedly mixed.

Also, Smudge started me on one continuing series:

March Comes in Like a Lion — Pure character drama centered around Shogi. I’ve only gotten through the initial (13-episode) season, and partway through the second (together being the first series), and am liking it quite a bit. The creator definitely gets people and animals, and the art style is nicely done in the series.

I went into this season thinking there wouldn’t much I’d watch. But after rejecting one or two shows, and then nearly rejecting two more, the list really filled out, and the viewing schedule’s been very full for the last three months.

Little Witch Academia — So, Netflix finally got this over here. My coworker AJ and I are a bit concerned that by that point they released it, all the hype was over. But, as I expected from the short and OAV, the series was very good, and they came up with a good full-season story arc. It… gets a bit odd towards the end, and the last third rates a “Trigger warning” for going off into their tropes unexpectedly.

Last Man — A French production that’s just coming over here on VRV, it’s apparently the prequel to a graphic novel series (with the same name) that I’m going to have to look up. The characters are all great, and the writing is extremely tight and snappy. A real joy to watch, and very highly recommended.

My Hero Academia — Mostly actual ‘superheroing’ this season, with a big, well-handled fight that also is leading to further plots, and shows the aftereffects of the previous season. The fact that all the major arcs are having an impact on the series as a whole really helps keep this one together. I still can’t help but be concerned that it’ll dissolve into the usual Marvel soap-opera mess of unresolved plotlines in the long run, but so far, so good.

Restaurant to Another World — The foodie show of the season. It maintains a manga translation format of two stories per episode, but was very sweetly done. A (Japanese) Western Cuisine restaurant is mysteriously connected to a fantasy world every “Day of Satur”, and the stories are all about the patrons who come through the door—and the delicious food they eat. There’s an interesting mix of stories, like the one about the lizardman tribe picking their champion to visit the restaurant done as something of a documentary.

Knight’s and Magic — Apparently this is based off a series of stories on the web (i.e., fanficish). And I assume that’s why we have the Engrish title (which they really should have cleaned up). Gundam-loving otaku dies and is reborn in a fantasy world where magical giant robots are used to fight demon beasts (with spillover into regular wars). Horrible, horrible premise that should be a mess of a series. But it works, and it’s actually a very good series. There’s some problems (especially later) with things coming too easily and working right the first time, but that’s not entirely true, and overall the writing is pretty good.

Voltron: Legendary Defender — With only seven episodes, one has to wonder just what happened with season three. Still, the writing is very good, and Prince Lotar is being a very competent villain (as opposed to the goofball of the original).

The Ancient Magus’ Bride — This has been a very charming OAV series, in which the third one just came out. It’s a prequel to the main story, and apparently that’s about to start in a regular anime series, which I’ll be more than happy to watch after this.

18if — This was a strange one. Apparently, most episodes were farmed out to different studios, and the art styles can be very different. Which works, since almost everything is happening in various dream worlds. From the start, its obvious that there should be an overarching plot as while the main character is helping various ‘witches’ who are girls effectively stuck in comas, he isn’t ever awake either, and there’s no explanation as to why he’s stuck in the dream world. However, this doesn’t get any real acknowledgement at all until the final four episodes, when it’s suddenly time to tie everything off. Other than that problem, it’s a good series worth watching, and I really appreciate that the end involves more discussion than fighting.

Elegant Yokai Apartment Life — Standard Japanese contemporary fantasy: young man stumbles into the world of spirits and the occult. In this case, after the dorm for the high school he was about to attend burns down, Yushi ends up at an apartment were most of the tenants are in the spirit world. It manages to be be very charming (and the building itself is beautiful), with a large cast, and the main character grows nicely, and goes through different struggles, both internal and external. It seems to be continuing straight into a second season, which I’m happy to see.

Katsugeki/Touken Ranbu — Heard about the recent genre of anthropomorphizing just about anything (like warships) as young girls? I understand I’m not missing anything by skipping it. This, however, is anthropomorphizing famous Japanese swords as pretty-boys. I was pretty much giving up on this series at first, as it was just a bunch of fighting against enemies who didn’t have any real motivations given (though they’re nicely creepy). But, as the series goes on it turns into a ‘man [sword] vs self’ story, which gets pretty good. It turns out this is the second anime done off the Touken Ranbu browser/card game, so we’ll give the first one a try too soon, though it’s obviously very different.

Pokemon Sun & Moon — As I was expecting last time, the expanded use of secondary characters is paying off. Also, they seem to be trying to round out their depiction of Pokemon a bit, like with Litten being a stray and on-again-off-again character over several episodes before joining Ash.

Classroom of the Elite — I also call this ‘Classroom of the Elite Bust’ as all the females are a bit overendowed, though there’s not a lot of direct fanservice. Plot-wise, it’s pretty good, and very intelligent, though it has something of a Lord of the Flies vibe, which is something of a turn-off for me, despite good writing.

Chronos Ruler — Smudge and I nearly dropped this several times, but it kept turning around the writing at the last second and keeping us going. (Like one over-done over-dramatic fight that had us rolling our eyes in disgust… and then we lost it when it’s shown the ‘villain’ is really a nice boy trying so very hard to be evil, and he allies with one of the heroes because ‘that’s the most tragic backstory I’ve ever heard!’) The concept with monsters that eat time, and are attracted by regret is good, but the writing keeps veering back and forth between good and bad.

Children of Ether — This was a one-shot that promises more. Worth seeing, as the characters were well done, though the plot and setting are a bit cliche without enough chance to get their own feel.

A Centaur’s Life — We nearly gave up on this one several times for excessive fanservice. It seems to be an off-branch of the recent ‘monster show’ fad, and is at least a lot less fanservicey than those have been. The excuses given for all the various types of people doesn’t really fly, but some of worldbuilding on top of that gets interesting. When they aren’t going for the cheap fanservice, there’s some really sweet stories, which get more common as it goes on, which is what kept me and Smudge on board. But it’s over, I doubt it’ll come back, and I’m fine with that.

And there’s been some watching of other things, and older series, though not a lot, thanks to the crowded schedule.

Your Name — Got to see this a few weeks ago, and it is excellent! There’s a very good reason why this is one of the highest-grossing movies of all time in Japan, and it really needs to make more of a splash here. Our copy was borrowed, which is a pity, because I’d like to re-watch a few bits, because I know you don’t catch it all the first time.

Sweetness and Lightning — This was in Smudge’s queue of ‘things to try out’ a season or two back, and we happened to see a clip that was extremely adorable. And the series as a whole lived up to that. I think this is part of an effort I vaguely remember hearing about of a Japanese cultural office funding series to promote ‘cultural’ activities (in this case cooking); certainly there’s a fair amount of practical advice on more intermediate/advanced cooking tasks in here. But they’re part of the story instead of taking the place of it, and it’s amazingly sweet.

Kokoro Connect — The series came up in connection with Your Name at one point, so we tried it out. Smudge had originally skipped it as it looked like standard high school drama. No, not quite standard. A club of the school misfits keeps getting screwed with by bored ‘Q-like’ being (starting with body swapping). I think it doesn’t entirely live up to the premise, but I did find it interesting that despite what gets said, it seems like the real point is for the club members to get over some problems.

Pokemon Advanced — The latest boxed set collection. Ash being on his own for a couple episodes was interesting, but it went back to the usual party pretty fast. May is a nice changeover in viewpoint that was echoed with Serena, Max is annoying, and Brock… is actually being allowed to be in domestic mode instead of girl-crazy mode most of the time. This is also the generation where they start spreading out the starters among the crew instead of giving them all to Ash, which I think is a good idea.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya — Got the boxed set on sale, and found even more annoyance than I expected. Not only is the original series shuffled into chronological order, but both seasons are shuffled into each other for chronology. So I’m stalled partway through, hoping Dave and Baron will catch up before continuing on to new episodes.

The latest anime season wrapped up a little bit ago, but I’ve been slow in getting to the new one, as ‘simul-dubs’ are actually a couple weeks behind.

Konosuba — This series is all the wrongs. And it’s hilarious. I think it helps that I’m watching it with Smudge, and she’s got Phalloide to add comments, but each episode has generally had screamingly funny moments. We weren’t really expecting a second season of this, but the first half especially was really on the mark.

Tales of Zestiria the X — And we get a second season of this. The story has really picked up, and I’ve been enjoying it this season, whereas parts of first season felt more like a chore to get through. I was expecting this to go on for quite a bit longer, but the last few episodes suddenly fell into a final boss climax.

Smudge hasn’t really gotten to trying out anything new from this season, so that’s been largely it. Though recently she introduced me to a few things from previous seasons:

Rage of Bahamut: Genesis — Smudge wasn’t entirely sure I’d like this, but there’s a new/sequel series coming up, so she tried it on me. And I liked it quite a lot. I think I would have gotten thoroughly annoyed with the main character in pretty quick order, but the main plot kicked in in the second half of the first episode, and it drove everything in the rest of the series. Definite recommendation.

Selector: Wixoss — Just recently finished the first storyline, which went two seasons. Take… Madoka Magica and add a CCG as the maguffin. I kind of have to wonder if the creator has ever really played a CCG, as it seems a bit odd. On the other hand, the series stays as far away from the game as a game as it possibly can; it just exists to support the existence of the maguffin. Instead it concentrates on a few characters and the slow reveal of just how messed up the situation is.

Blood Battlefront Blockade — Three Word Title Lotto! The title makes some sense if you stare at it a while, but not really. While does all build to a climatic finale, the first half of the series is more about introducing the cast a bit, and showing just how strange this place is.

And there’s been more Pokemon, but we’ve largely caught up with the collected DVD sets, and the rest is still of fairly scattered availability.

Pokemon XYZ — Well, I’ve seen through the end of the story on this now, and they did a really good job with the wrap up and ending. I’ve also seen the “Legend of XYZ” episode, which was also a really well-done one-off. The final episode still has yet to hit Pokemon TV (grrr), so I’ve seen a horrible fan sub, and it was also good.

Pokemon: Adventures on the Orange Islands — The ‘we need to fill in until there’s more source material to work with’ season. In line with the first part, when it’s on, its good. I definitely appreciate the idea of Ash getting a non-league award to show his progress.

Pokemon: Johto Journeys & Johto League Champions — That last title was way too ironic, considering the bulk of that season is consumed with the trip to one gym. The stories are good, and I definitely appreciate the fact that the three ‘starter’ Pokemon that Ash gets all have their own quirks and problems to work out.

So, another season of anime is wrapping up, and the next one is already starting. I ended up watching a lot of stuff over the last three months.

Planetarian – This surprised me by being just five episodes. But its a very good five episodes, and I highly recommend it. Bring tissues.

The Heroic Legend of Arslan – I’m watching this in the dub, so I’m a bit behind, but the current story has been quite good, especially as we get to see Silver Mask being quite human.

Food Wars – This series is still working for me. Parts of it get overblown, and some of the characters really go overboard into testosterone-laden fight anime land. But, towards the end of the season, Sukihara has discovered a whole new challenge of Man vs Self; what exactly is his cooking about?

Tales of Zestiria the X – I’m also a bit behind here, as I’m watching the dub. This one I run hot and cold on. It’s well done, but… just takes itself way too seriously. And… the switching to completely different story lines every five episodes or so may get wearing. (We’re just about to switch in the next episode; not sure if it’s back to the first one, or if we get a third one next.)

That’s all the new stuff I’ve seen; here’s the older series that I just got to:

Noragami – Japanese contemporary fantasy really is it’s own genre. The ‘main character almost gets killed and is now partway in the spirit world’ start makes me think of the excellent start of Yu Yu Hakusho, but that turned into a boring fight anime after the first arc, while this maintains a focus on the main character, and the tension between her normal life and her friends in the spirit realm. Well, kinda. Her normal life doesn’t get a lot of attention. Actually, if this series makes me think of anything else, it’s Natsume’s Book of Friends.

Snow White of the Red Hair – This was especially nice; it’s been way too long since I’ve seen a shojo manga title get turned into a good series. This is essentially a fantasy romance, and it proceeded just a bit slow for me, but it’s also about an interesting group of characters who are well done, and it doesn’t turn into a love dodecahedron. …I just wish there was a bit less damseling (is that a word now?) of the female lead.

Re: Zero—Starting Life in Another World – We just started this a few days ago, and are about halfway through. Quite good. Yet another otaku gets pulled into a fantasy world… and his main power is having a saved game to start over from after he dies… usually fairly messily and painfully. One of the nice bits it that it pays attention to the effect this has on him.

Magi: Adventure of Sinbad – Smudge and I definitely liked the original Magi series, and have been hoping for more of it. Well, this prequel didn’t give us the continuation of all the dangling plot threads we wanted, but it was a good story about the start of one of the major secondary characters. I’d still like more Magi, but I’ll settle for more Sinbad.

Voltron: Legendary Defender – Another modern reboot, this time through Netflix. I had problems with it at first, as the characters were too whiny and incompetent. A lot of the beginning stuff was really unbelievable to me. (Really, one of the lions is hidden on Earth, sending out energy to be tracked down, and no one else noticed?) Once past that, it got a lot better and really fixed a lot of problems the original series had. New Allura? A+! “Form Blazing Sword” not the solution to every problem? A+! (In fact, the idea that each lion can contribute its own special weapon is a great.)

Little Witch Academia: Enchanted Parade – A second short film of Little Witch Academia? Sign me up! I’d say it’s not quite as good as the first, but it stands on its own well, and tells a different story. I’m looking forward to the announced TV series.

Fairy Tail – I’ve now seen through the first part of the Tartaros arc, but have paused because Funimation has a big gap in the dub on their streaming service near the end of the next plotline.

Girl Meets Bear – The name is a complete misnomer: they don’t meet, they’ve known each other since they were little. It was a very fun series, but the first episode sets up for a character arc that never happens. And as a result, Machi is never allowed to grow as a character, and it holds the series down, despite some good comedy.

Pokemon – So, with playing lots of Pokemon Go, Smudge has been watching this, and I’ve caught pieces of it (I’m now going back and slowly filling in gaps). You know, its really annoying, since it’s almost impossible to get a hold of a complete series without going to an illegal site. Anyway, given the age group it’s aimed at, it’s good more often than it’s bad (Smudge is right, Ash is a lot more likable in the recent stuff). The first episode is effectively a buddy film between Ash and Pikachu, which worked for me. And there’s some interestingly done scenes, like the transition from the Game Boy game to the Poke-match at the beginning of the first episode. Smudge also showed me Pokemon Origins, which is an interesting retelling of the original game, and the Hoopa and the Clash of the Ages movie, which had a very solid plot. That last is definitely recommended.

And a couple of ‘tried, but didn’t stick with it’ series:

Amanchu! – By the creator of Aria: The Animation, which I enjoyed. You can tell: the girls tend to wear the same design of dress. But, after one episode, it hadn’t done anything for Smudge and I. I have the feeling it could easily have gotten better over the next few episodes, but we didn’t give it the chance.

Thunderbolt Fantasy – It’s a really interesting production, using puppets and some special effects. But Smudge was having trouble following the action, and the fastball down all the typical Eastern-fantasy tropes wasn’t cutting it for me. (I kind of feel like this wasn’t live action purely because Mifune’s no longer with us to do the samurai character.)