Is it nap time yet?

Obligatory disclaimer as always. Shows certainly do get better or worse than what their first episode(s) indicated, and most shows are going to be mediocre, forgettable, and no doubt disappointing to all the frothing froth people have whipped themselves into weeks ago based on second or thirdhand ideas about what might happen sometime somewhere in some source or other adaptation independent of the actual anime adaptation itself. I also absolutely adore everybody telling me how uncultured I am for not liking the latest, greatest totally deep self-aware show about teenagers talking about genres or insecure girls staring at people having feelings about friendship.

Anything I’m going to cover for another week will have a zen garden by the link to my original post on it, or if I don’t have an original post, to orcs singing or something. That doesn’t mean I’ll stick with it, or won’t eventually pick up something without one, just that I’m planning to cover at least one more episode. This is not what I would call a particularly strong season, especially when it comes to characters or my personal wheelhouse, more of the light hearted super hero beat beat things up through application of high school physics and competence instead of the power of friendship and having feelings thing. Ergo, there’s little I’m particularly enthusiastic about, and my enthusiasm is a rare enough commodity to begin with. Anyway, onward and forward.

The only thing left to air is Ninja Slayer on Thursday, and that’s streaming only with an actual broadcast at least nine months away. I hope that it will supplant or add to Thursdays offerings, but the promos have too much panning and posing for me to be optimistic.

MONDAY

Mikagura School Suite

  

Two boring episodes spent aimlessly touring the school and characters, two minutes of some actual action.

TUESDAY

Blat! Euphonium

   

Girls stare blankly into space as inconsequential teenage melodrama spontenaously accumulates around them.

WEDNESDAY

Triage X

   

Needs to tone down the angst by about 90%, fix the tone consistency, and find a budget.

My Love Story

   

Same girly romance as always, except now it’s a giant oaf narrating what other people owe him as he does jack.

Afterschool Pleiades

  

Take the already dull OVA and pad it out massively by staring into space. Fantastic plan.

THURSDAY

Etotama 

   

The absurdism is ironically as standardized as it gets, leaving just some curiously well-directed odd CGI fighting.

 Punch Line! 

   

Four minutes I enjoyed followed by an entirely different show made almost entirely out of exposition.

My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU

Milfeulle has never looked cuter.

Re-Kan!

  

The first of multiple shows this season that just yell occasionally and call that a joke.

FRIDAY

Magical Schmagical Nanohagical ViVid

  

No budget. No plot. No magic. Action is little and poorly done. This is the opposite of every other Nanoha show.

False Love

Forte has never looked manlier.

Yada Yada Girls Not in a Dungeon

  

Lip service towards supposed character growth while it spends its actual time faffing with boob bounces.

The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki

  

Just exists for people who dream of Nagato x Kyon shipping, if the two had entirely different personalities.

Food Wars

  

Screamy ‘comedy’ that’s only contribution to the Jump-style food hallucinations is including masturbating.

SATURDAY

Rinne of the Boundary

  

Severe lack of a budget and the protagonists must be stoned out of their minds because they have zero reaction to everything.

Crazy Teacher

  

Writing is spectacularly awful and the production often matches it.

 Seraph of the End 

  

Rebooted itself after the first episode and won’t shut the hell up about the power of friendship.

High School DxD

こしょう少々、塩少々、しょうゆ少々。

 Gunslinger Stratos 

  

The Daibanchou world could be neat, but it lacks a budget badly and the protagonists are dullards.

Unlimited Blade Works

  

The reigning king of vacuous platitudes and announcing character development instead of developing characters.

Plastic Memories

  

Delivers melodrama with a sledgehammer and then badly tries to mix lowest common denominator humor into it.

Blood Blockade Battlefront

  

Weak protagonist, missing plot, more concerned with looking like it has action than actually having action.

Sunday

The Heroic Legend of Arslan

  

Poor budget and a lead who is a wide-eyed impossibly naive infant that just gapes at absolutely everything.

Baby Steps

Milfeuelle has never looked lizardier.

 Show By Rock! 

  

Really needs to recapture the drug-addled madcap vibe the first episode had because friiiendship isn’t going to cut it.

Grisaia

Can we appreciate that the Angels repeatedly tried to straight up murder those two obnoxious kids?

Yamada and the Seven Witches

  

You can tell where to laugh because someone yelled or there’s an impact effect in the background.

Hello! Golden Mosaic

I don’t remember this episode, but I’m pretty sure it was strange.

Wrapup of the Wrapup:

I’m already ready to move on to the next season. A lot of these have just about 2-3 minutes which I’m really pinning my hopes on seeing more of that and less of 90+% of what their opening episode(s) were. Characters especially feel particularly lacking this season, with everyone falling into one of the great triumverate of classical anime badness; the zombie who shuffles from point A to B doing nothing more than staring and then clenching their fist and being determined, the poor impulse control shouter who must announce everything happening in front of them, and the angstmobob whose very soul is darkness and is constantly beset by the ghosts of dead  children. Combine the first two and you’ve got most of the serious show ‘protagonists’ down to a T.

Maybe I’ll get fed up with it and play some random game and cover that. I say that every season these days… At least it’ll make me ready to forgive Symphogear’s second season’s many faults and look forward to the third in summer! That’s… at least something, I guess.