Anime

Started off the week with the rest of the first season of Queen's Blade, which was surprisingly good. That's not to say it was really good by any broad measure - just that it was pleasantly better than it seemed like it had any reason to be. For the staggering amount of fanservice it had, it actually managed to have pretty good characters and some interesting intrigue.

I intended to go on to the second season, since the first season introduces the characters who are going to take part in this battle royale and follows their journeys to the capital city where it's going to take place, then leaves then there. But I was sort of burnt out on fanservice, so I thought I'd take a break with a movie or a single episode OVA or something. And since I'd heard good things about it and it seemed like a certain palate cleanser, I picked the first OVA of Little Witch Academia.

So I watched that. Then I watched it again. Then I watched it again. Then I watched the second OVA, then I watched the first one a couple more times, then I started the series, with occasional breaks to watch the first OVA again.

By my count, I've watched that first OVA eight times now, and I would say that it is quite simply the best single episode of anime I've ever seen. It's 24 minutes of pure, distilled awesome. There isn't a single wasted frame in the entire thing, and there are so many wonderful moments I couldn't count them all. And it's not just big splashy things - there are little bits of brilliance scattered all the way through it.

The second OVA, on the other hand, was disappointingly mediocre. It's not bad by any means - it's just sort of... ordinary. The series has been pretty good though, with the only real problem, to me, being that all of Akko's character development is essentially just temporary. The idea is supposed to be that as she grows and learns, she comes to understand and adopt new things. And she does come to understand them, but only really for exactly as long as it takes for the magic to happen, then she goes back to being pretty much the same Akko she was in episode 1. Still though, it's good enough, and I especially like the pacing. And Diana's shaping up to be an especially interesting character.

Other than that, all I've watched is the latest episodes of the three series I' following - Guild Receptionist (sort of floundering), Zenshu (taking a very dark turn but at least the story's resolving) and Honey Lemon Soda (still tropish but satisfyng.