Anime

So, I have a clear favorite of what I have watched this season. The standout show for me was Oshi no Ko Season 2. There is one more episode to go, but it has been an absolutely stellar adaptation of an already good manga. The source manga is still ongoing, but it is heading into its final arc. I cannot wait to see the rest of the story in anime form if the quality was as good as this past season. Anyway, enough gushing, here are the shows I watched:

• Oshi no Ko - see above
• Dungeon People - My biggest surprise of the season. It was way better than I thought it was going to be based on what I saw before the season.
• Dahlia in Bloom - I feel like this story in interesting, but moves a bit too slow to make a good anime adaptation. I haven't watched the finale yet though. I would probably recommend reading this one if it catches your interest.
• Love is Indivisible By Twins - A fun guilty pleasure. Lots of teenage drama born from an incredibly elaborate arrangement of people crushing on each other. I really enjoyed this one and look forward to the finale.
• My Deer Friend Nokotan - Lots of ups and downs. Like many sketch shows, some segments are going to connect and some aren't. Overall, I still enjoyed it.
• Sometimes Alya Hides Her Feelings in Russian - I feel like this one is trying to do more than it needs to do. All I wanted was a cute romcom, instead we got a ton of political scheming and mind games. With season 2 announced, I hope we get more romcom going forward.
• Pseudo Harem - I have a couple episodes to catch up on, but this has been fun. It is a great manga, and the adaptation of the super short chapters to anime form has been done fairly well. Overall, it has been very cute.
• Quality Assurance in Another World - I am a couple episodes behind on this one, but I intend on finishing this season. I really like the art in this one and the world is interesting enough that I want to keep going.
• My Wife Has No Emotion - I only watched a couple episodes before dropping. I really like the manga, and I think I will stick with it. The anime adaptation just didn't really do it for me.
• Plus-Sized Elf - I watched a couple episodes of this before dropping. They cranked the fan-service dial way past what the manga has. It just wasn't really for me.
• Tower of God - This season has been a big change compared to the first, and not for the better. The second cour is still to come, so I will see where it goes from here.

I watched a whole show (shikanoko) this season. So yea banger season, almost never happens lol.

Favourite of the season: Oshi no Ko without competition, the animation quality and story were both amazing! There were some scenes that go so hard that I'm sure they're still going to be talked about for years.

Biggest disappointment: Tower of God S2. I really looked forward to this, but the story didn't pick up until the final two episodes of the first cour :/ The animation quality was also pretty mid. I'm still looking forward to the second half though..

Kinda meh: Elusive Samurai. At first, I got pulled in by the fantastic animation and interesting premise, but the follow-up didn't really live up to the initial hype. It's still entertaining to watch though, even if I think the way the protag is portrayed and treated by the cast is kinda...sus, sometimes

Season Wrap-up

Did anything surprise you?

Makeine

I wasn't planning on picking this series up because Too Many Losing Heroines is the antithesis of Zero Losing Heroines. But then I saw the endorsement given by Shinkai Makoto and decided to give it a shot.

And it became my dark horse of the season. It's real good, and it certainly resembles Shinkai's works. In fact, I won't be surprised if some of the staff working on it used to work for Shinkai.

The humor, the art style, the characters and the story were all superb. It is now one of my potential top favorites.

disappoint you?

My Deer Friend Nokotan

I thought it would be absurdly funny. I ended up absurdly bored. Dropped early-mid way through.

Rest of the shows

Completed / will be completing

Terminator 0 - Very good. It raised my expectation of adaptations of mainstream / non-anime shows. Looking forward to the Lord of the Rings anime now.

The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies - Would likely have dropped if not for its episodes being only 12 minutes long, ending before I get bored of it. More anime should learn from this IMO. It does have its entertaining moments, but that's it. Upon completion, my rating for the Magical Girls theme on AniList would drop from 100%.

Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian - It should have kept comedy as its focus instead of drama. I was really close to dropping it, but ended up completing it because there's only 1-2 episodes left (and even then, I fast-forwarded through some scenes). I would likely not pick up the second season.

Dropped early / mid

No Longer Allowed in Another World - I don't vibe with this MC.

My Wife Has No Emotion - MC is wimpier than I remembered.

Quality Assurance in Another World - I don't vibe with this MC.

Rick and Morty: The Anime - I don't have the patience for the pay-off / reveal, and the earlier parts are not entertaining enough.

Dropped later / towards the end

Pseudo Harem - Got bored.

Senpai is an Otokonoko - Got bored.

From earlier seasons

A Place Further Than the Universe - It's ok. Not too entertaining, but just enough for me to not be bored. 7 / 10

Final Thoughts

A rather laid-back season for me, which is good. It gave me time to finally watch some all-time popular shows, such as:

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Mob Psycho 100

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Darling in the Franxx

Saga of Tanya the Evil

Vinland Saga

Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai

My Dress-Up Darling

Lycoris Recoil

I watched a fair amount of shows this season. Despite not really having big names, it was a pretty solid season.

I loved:

• Makeine: the synopsis made it sound like it'd be a generic romcom with a slight twist, but so far it's not generic at all and I'm not even sure it's a romcom. The characters are great to watch, the animation is awesome and the setting feels lived in and unique, despite it being a school setting. The OP is great.
• NieR:Automata ver1.1a part 2: this blew me away. A massive improvement over the 1st part and a great adaptation, while adding interesting small twists to the original story to keep it interesting for people who played the games too. I adore the ED as well.

I liked:

• SHOSHIMIN: starts out like it's going to be a very mundane version of Hyouka, until it's not. Very interesting and curious to see how it continues in the 2nd season.
• Vtuber Legend: it got the vtuber vibes right and felt like it was made by people who liked vtubers themselves.
• 2.5D Seduction: whereas My Dressup Darling focuses more on the process of creating cosplay, this one focuses more on what cosplay means to people or on the community. It does it pretty well imo. Toning down the ecchi from the manga was a good idea imo, though I do like the manga more.
• Alya: decently fun. Masachika and Yuki are fun characters, but the Russian thing has not become more than a gimmick.
• Mayonaka Punch: a good ol' PA Works anime.
• Senpai is an Otokonoko: did very well in dealing with sensitive subjects. Devolves a little bit into the simpler chibi artstyle too much, making it feel cheaper.

I moderately liked:

• Wistoria: good action and OST, but story, world and characters leave a lot to be desired. Also had a tendency to overexplain things and slow things down to a crawl at the wrong moments.
• QA In Another World: interesting take on the whole stuck in a game thing with it being the testers being stuck while testing. As a software tester though, I take slight issue to this anime calling them debuggers.
• Elusive Samurai: cool premise, with fun main characters. Sometimes gets overshadowed/undermined by strange and weirdly timed humor and way too wacky villains to take the gravity of things seriously.

Disliked:

• Dahlia in Bloom: just not very good. And again, what the fuck is going on with those shadows. Dropped it.
• My Deer Friend Nokotan: got old really fast. Dropped it.
• Suicide Squad Isekai: just not very good either. Nearly forgot about it already. Anime Harley Quinn kept me watching though.
• Plus-Sized Elf: just read the manga. They exaggerated everything and added scenes just to get more T&A, while not providing good visuals. Dropped.

Still need to catch up:

• Spice and Wolf
• Monogatari series

I think that was everything

I watched a few shows:

• Elusive Samurai - This has been my favorite so far. The animation and general art direction has been incredible, and the characters have been fun.
• Shikanokonokonokokoshitantan - It was fine. I dunno, past the first episode or two I didn't feel like the jokes always landed.
• Spice and Wolf - It was good, but not quite as excellent as I'd heard. Lawrence can be kind of an idiot sometimes, and wow is Holo an asshole.
• Konosuba S3 - If you liked the first two seasons of Konosuba, this is more of that at about the same level of quality. The jokes land really well when they're not about sexual harassment. Want to guess what lots of the jokes are about though?

Only Two shows managed to keep me interested.

Oshi no ko season 2 - At times I was on the edge of my seat.

Dungeon People - Very nice CGDCT show with an accent on comedy.

Also I was catching up with Apothecary Diaries but still got finale to watch.

P.S Bye Bye Earth got OST released this week. The only redeeming quality of that show.
Bye Bye, Earth - Vol. 1 - The Duel - (IMO best song)
Bye Bye, Earth - Vol. 2

The ones that were better than I expected:

• QA in Another World: I love the fact that they lean into this being a game (as opposed to a gamelike isekai), and that the characters exploit that fact. Other iterations of the "trapped in a game" trope in anime haven't done that. (Shangri-La Frontier does, but the stakes are a lot lower there.)

• No Longer Allowed in Another World: Just a nice change from stereotypical isekais and stereotypical isekai heroes.

• Atri: I had really low expectations of this one going in, but it turned out . . . okay. Not brilliant, but okay.

• Slime: The last cours was sufficiently bad that this one was an improvement, even if it's certainly not the best in the series.

The ones that were worse than I expected:

• Dahliya: It's just . . . where's the conflict? What little does show up gets resolved within an episode or two. There's pretty much nothing to drive the story here.

• Tasuuketsu: Started off very strong, but the rest of the season didn't live up to the first episode. Then again, I don't know what could have. Not awful, but merely okay.

• Bye Bye, Earth: Interesting world, but they did a horrible job of showing it to us. A lot of things needed a couple of sentences of explanation that they just didn't get, and the little labels that kept popping up were worse than useless.

Best of the season: NieR Automata (although I had sufficiently high expectations of it going in that it didn't exceed them).

Hardest to watch: Dead Dead Demons Dededede Destruction. I think I'm seven episodes behind right now, and having a hard time mustering the desire to continue on. Anything that has bigotry as a major theme is a difficult watch for me right now, given what's been unfolding in the real world lately.

Most incomprehensible art direction choice: Delico's Nursery. The backgrounds look like tracings of photographs, or maybe carefully coloured-in photocopies of photographs, and the effect in combination with the characters is just . . . strange. Maybe it's a carryover from the manga, which I've never read?

Best dragon award: I Parry Everything, but mostly by default, because I don't remember any other dragons of significance (even bad CGI ones, which would be ineligible).

I have high expectations for Oshi no Ko, and yet it blew me away even if I'm still in the middle of it.

Kimi ni Todoke is largely the same as S1 and S2, only better-paced and with 2020s HD quality.

I only watch two seasonals at a time, so Senpai is an Otokonoko and Spice and Wolf are on hold, but I plan to finish them someday.

My biggest disappointment of this season is Tower of God as I had high expectation for the series. Code Geass: Rozé of the Recapture would have been a lot better if they decided to do 24 or more episodes.

Why Does Nobody Remember Me In This Word has interesting story and plot and wish it had better animation. My Deer Friend is brain-dead comedy as expected but the comedy didn't punch as hard in later episodes.

Wistoria is a good watch but storywise nothing too amazing. Same goes for Cheers For You. Didn't know cheering is view as sport. Slime was fun watch, enjoyed festival moments.

Oshi no Ko is still good and we are getting more character development in this season. What surprise me is Nier season 2. Season 1 had production issues and somewhat ruined the experience. Season 2 feels a lot better both in production and storywise.

Yuki's otaku moments made watching Alya more enjoyable. Too Many Losing Heroine surpasses my expectations in every way. I knew nothing about the anime beforehand and just went for it because it is a new rocom by A1.

Elusive Samurai, Pseudo Harem, Fairy Tail, Mayonaka Punch Put these on HOLD after watching 4 or 5 episodes.

Not too much up my alley this season, so I watched Shikanoko and Plus Sized Elf.

I have one episode left of Shikanoko. It was unique, and fun for what it is. The songs were great. I enjoyed the antagonism of the whole thing. Would I watch another season? Not sure, but I don't regret watching this one.

Two episodes of Plus Sized Elf left, but I've read the manga. Read it and watched it mainly to see what they'd do with it. At first, it seemed like they were going to actually put more health and fitness stuff in it, but it really fell back to drawn out scenes of slapstick nudity. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but I feel they could have done more with it. Also, many potato puns weren't translated, so most will miss out on half the jokes. The translation I read had them all, and they were one of my favorite parts.

I will say, I really enjoyed the cast though. They all made the characters as likeable as they were in my head reading the manga. If you're checking it out more for the curiosity than the nudity, it really isn't terrible.

Somewhat off topic, but this season being light for me had me repeatedly going back to Delicious in Dungeon even though I was not really enjoying it. The characters were likeable again, but it felt pointless to me watching people eat fake food, though some monsters were really creative. I kept hearing wait until they get back to the red dragon, so I persisted.

Holy heck, did this show flip a switch to awesomeness! The back half of the season was great and I was left wanting more. The plot twists and the surprising backgrounds of the characters and new characters really made things come alive and give a much deeper sense of urgency and delivered much more than the episodic snack of the week format was doing for me.

If I had anything else even remotely exciting, I would not have stuck it out that long.

Looking forward to see what they do with Uzumaki and Ranma. Also see they have a Gintama special movie thing of the Kintama arc coming out, so that should be fun as well.

Late and Random Superlatives:

Best Returning & Exceeds already high expectations : Oshi no Ko
No surprise here, the show picked up right were it left off and kept running strong. I still have a few episodes to catch up on, but I'm sure it is excellent.

Most surprising: No Longer Allowed in Another World
Started a bit rough, but once it got the characters and formula established it worked and was easily one of the seasons most enjoyable shows.

Best Trash: Failure Frame
I'm sucker for isekai, level systems, and OP protagonists. This had all that and was generally enjoyable but I would not accuse it of being good...

The Wilford Brimley "diabeetus" award: Pseudo Harem
I love the show, but the couple is just so cute and sweet it hurts to watch. Still have a few episodes to finish.

Bonkers but it works: I Parry Everything
Somehow the central gimmick never quite got old, and the insanity actually sort of made sense.

Most likely to forget I watched it: The Strongest Magician in the Demon Lord's army was a Human
The show was fine, but nothing about it really stood out to me.

So bad its kinda good: A Nobody's Way Up to an Exploration Hero
The show was bad, but somehow that worked for me.

Largest Dumpster Fire: Bye, Bye, Earth
An absolute disaster. The setting looked really interesting, but was so poorly developed and threw in so many unexplained situations it just turned into an unwatchable mess.

Most missed now its gone: Dungeon People
This was not the most creative, exciting, or flash anime, but it was solidly enjoyable and I really came to look forward to it each week.

Guilty Pleasure: The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies

Love the show but forgot it was airing Spice and Wolf

Most Disappointing: Nokotan
I really, really, really wanted to love this. I expected irrelevant and random, often surreal humor. What I got was one joke, told over and over again and drug out to the point that it quickly stopped bring funny.

Most Underrated: My Wife Has No Emotion
This might be my favorite new show of the season. It gets weird at times and there is an element of uncomfortableness about the human/robot relationship, but the show explores that, and does a decent job of it... I especially appreciated how, despite the title, Mina was able to demonstrate so much emotion without the ability to show it on her face at all.

Surprisingly great season. Actually had a good amount of time to watch new and catchup too. A bit heavy on romance, but so many variations that it didn’t feel too repetitive for me. 

Completed/almost-completed new releases: 

• Oshi No Ko S2 - I think there’s another episode or so left in the season. Great season, lots of character development and overall plot movement too, although didn’t land quite as hard as S1 for me. 9/10
• Makeine - Surprise hit of the season for me. Really loved it. One episode left that is a new anime-only story written by the original writer iirc. I do wish it had simply avoided a few tropes completely, but that’s about my only complaints for this gem. 9/10
• Pseudo Harem - Another surprise. Loved this adorable couple, and almost didn’t give it a shot because the title didn’t sound like something I’d be interested in. Beautiful complete series in only 12 episodes. Honestly one of my top romance animes all time. 8/10
• I Parry Everything - Another out of nowhere really fun show. I really enjoyed this, in a silly what-is-happening way. Reminded me a lot of Helck, in a good way. 7/10
• Dungeon People - Filled the gaping hole left by Frieren and Dungeon Meshi. Very good, although the art style made me think this would be more chill than it ended up being. Some surprising violence and adult content. 7/10
• Days With My Stepsister - Shocked this turned out so good. It’s one of the most nuanced and careful presentations of young adults trying to make the best choices they can. I wish it didn’t have the titillating premise, because I’d love more romance anime that took its characters this seriously. 7/10
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings … - I think I’m tapping out after this season. I found the political intrigue not engaging and several of the characters grating or extremely unbelievable. It’s fine, just not for me. 6/10

Tried/dropped new releases: 

• My Deer Friend … - Too hit or miss. 
• Plus Sized Elf - Not for me. 

Previous seasons shows completed: 

• Dungeon Meshi S2 - Current frontrunner for AOTY, edging out Frieren cour 2. Absolutely loved it. 10/10
• Scavenger’s Reign - Not-anime but excellent. Gripping and engaging bizarre world. 9/10
• Cyberpunk Edgerunners - Phenomenal production, but not my favorite world. Still great though, maybe 8-9/10? 
• Hell’s Paradise - Grew on me over time. Really enjoyed the last episodes and looking forward to S2 eventually. 8/10
• I Was Reincarnated As The 7th Prince … - Silly fun and light. Enjoyed a lot. 7/10
• Carol and the End of the World - Not-anime, but very interesting. 7/10

Future wrap-up from this season: 

• Terminator 0 - Haven’t been in the right mood. 
• Wistoria - 5 episodes. Good animation, great action, and fun story. Probably finish. 
• No Longer Allowed … - I’ll give it another shot, but might drop soon. 
• Spice & Wolf - Only watched a couple episodes. Interested in more when I have time. 
• Nier Automata - I’m currently playing the game, so after that I’ll probably watch the anime. 
• Slime-San S? - Eventually. 
• Konosuba S3 - Eventually. 
• MHA S? - Eventually.

Weekly ranking roundup:

1. Anime Corner - Full Results - Weekly Winner: Days with My Stepsister
2. Reddit Karma - Weekly Winner: Oshi no Ko

Credit to /u/Abysswatcherbel for making the chart for reddit karma and /u/Nooble5 for the Anime Trending chart.

Oshi no Ko comes back to the top of the chart this week as the best-girl wars heat up to a new fever pitch. There were also 3 finales in the top 5 this past week. Something to notice is that Nokotan ended the season outside the top 10 after such a strong start (and a strong OP).

No Longer Allowed In Another World is better than I expected.

Went in expecting generic isekai, it's a lot more like Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious; nice and pessimistic MC calls out everyone's BS.

Edit: Oh! Forgot about this one.

Ossan Newbie Adventurer

Fantastic fights in a fantasy setting, without all the garbage filler of so many fighting anime.