Started the week off gently bouncing off of Love Through a Prism. I was very impressed, but just wasn’t quite in the mood for period romance set in a London art school. I’ll come back to it when my mood is right.

Instead I ended up catching up with In the Clear Moonlit Dusk, which is a strangely stressful shoujo romance between a princely girl who’s never had a boy interested in her before and an ikemen who doesn’t just look like a self-absorbed player but actually is a self-absorbed player. It’s sort of working out to a standard-communication-failure-getting-in-the-way romance - it’s just that instead of turning into a stammering idiot every time they get close to expressing their feelings, he turns into a glib sleazebag. It feels like it’s going to work out in the long run - that just as with any other romance of the type, they’re going to overcome their difficulties and succeed. It’s just sort of unpleasant (though it does make me appreciate awkward, stammering MMCs more, because now I know it could be worse).

The latest episode of Playing Death Games was mostly setting up for the Candle Woods game, which has already been mentioned in an earlier (later in the timeline) episode, and somberly noted “That was a bad one.” And it’s already heading that way. But I had the feeling that there were nuances in the episode that I was missing, so next up I rewatched the earlier episodes, then watched the latest one again, and picked up on some more stuff. And yeah - the next episode is going to be brutal.

The latest episode of MF Ghost was dull. I really wonder what they’re thinking - at the rate it’s going, they’re only barely going to be able to start the next race before the season runs out, and we’re going to have to go another few years before we’ll even get to see the finish of this race. Then they’ll maybe just barely manage to start the next race by the end of that season. At this rate, the cast and crew are all going to die of old age before anything really noteworthy happens.

The latest episode of Roll Over and Die, on the other hand, was great. The genre mix was on full display, as it shifted seamlessly from Ink being all cute and wholesome (though somewhat disturbingly perceptive, especially considering the fact that she’s blind) to Flum and Milkit making out (off-camera) to Ottilie brutally torturing one of Dein’s henchmen to Sara coming over to meet Ink and have a pleasant dinner with everyone. It seems that the genre-hopping shouldn’t work, but somehow it does.

The latest episode of Champignon Witch was pretty good. It feels like it’s finally moving a bit, but overall it still feels sort of oddly vague. There’s the deadly serious overarching goal that was introduced early on, but aside from that, it seems that everyone is just sort of stumbling along with no clear direction or goal (other than Claude, but he’s such an asshole that he’s more of a hindrance than a help).

Then, at loose ends over the weekend, I poked around for something older to binge, and ended up on Tamako Market, which was excellent. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It’s one that I’ve long been sort of familiar with, but I had the impression it was just going to be sort of generic SOL/CGDCT. It really stands out from the crowd though, with great characters, great writing and terrific little bits of almost mundane surrealism. The basic set-up reminds me fairly strongly of Soremachi (to the degree that I’m pretty sure that’s not a coincidence), but Soremachi was much better as a manga (because Shaft is incapable of subtlety), and Tamako Market does a much better job of capturing that feel in an anime.

And while I’m on the subject (though this was actually a bit later in the week), I also watched the sequel movie Tamako Love Story, which was pretty good all in all, with a few dashes of excellent.

The latest episode of Frieren was mostly discouraging for me. It looks for all the world like the introduction to a shounen action story loop, complete with a brief look at the final boss. And the little bit we got to see of the main characters was awful - as if they were just sort of wedged in place because the outline had instructions here and there that said things like “Insert appearance by Fern here.” I wonder how many episodes they’re going to spend on this. And if they finally finish it up, then immediately show a sneak preview of the next boss, I’m probably done with Frieren. Turning something that started out as sublime and beautiful as Frieren into just another shounen action perpetual motion machine should be a crime.

I had a hard time even putting together enough interest to bother watching the latest episode of Trigun Stargaze and made it through about five minutes and realized I just didn’t care and wasn’t interested in watching the rest of it, and turned it off.

Gnosia had a chance to redeem itself with this real ending, but I didn’t expect it would, and it doesn’t look like it will. It’s a shame the series wasn’t written by somebody who had a genuine understanding of multiverse theory, causation or time paradoxes.

Scum of the Brave appears to be laying a foundation for something later on, but there isn’t enough detail yet to make any judgments. It’s still holding my attention at least.

In the Clear Moonlit Dusk is moving in a good direction - Kohaku is starting to get a handle on his worse impulses and specifically because he sincerely cares for Yoi and doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable, so at least it doesn’t feel like it’s going to turn into a hentai any minute now. And it looks like he’s about to get some competition, which will hopefully be a shock to him, and make him that much more determined to treat Yoi as she deserves.

You and I Are Polar Opposites was great as usual - Suzuki’s mom was especially good. And something’s brewing between Taira and Azuma. Shame we didn’t get any Nisshi this week though.

And Journal With Witch (I love that the week ends on the highlight) was brilliant, even by its own lofty standards. The constantly switching timeline and characters really served to drive home the fact that the awful things Asa believes are so unfair are things that pretty much everyone goes through in one way or another.

And at the moment, I’m a little over halfway through a series I’ve bounced off of repeatedly over the years - Gokukoku no Brynhildr. I knew I was going to watch it sooner or later - I just was never in quite the right mood until now. And it’s about what I expected from Lyn Okamoto - a bit drama, a bit harem, a bit intrigue, a bit evil scientists, a bit romance, a bit ecchi and a bit brutal tragedy.