Last season stuff that finished since the last thread:

Sakamoto Days - finished up the second season (part? second part of season 1? I’m not sure how or why they’re categorizing it) and it was fantastic across the board. Stylish, great animations, unabashedly silly and creative, and I don’t remember anything noxious about it at all. A

Dandadan - I think this wasn’t done yet by the last thread, so really just what’s already been said about it. It’s fantastic, incredibly stylish and gorgeously animated, with an absolutely no-fucks given approach to throwing in creative and silly concepts, while at the same time diving into really dark places. Everyone already knows all the drama over whether it’s content is exploitative or not so I won’t rehash that. S, it would easily make a top ten list if I made one and probably even a top five.

There’s No Freaking Way I’ll be Your Lover! Unless… - Have you ever stopped and thought “you know, I really liked Bocchi the Rock, but I didn’t like the band stuff and I really wanted to see a cross between Rae Taylor and Seto Kaiba gaslight and manipulate Hitori Gotoh in a weird toxic yuri thing instead and also it’s a harem”? Of course not, that’s horrible, but unfortunately that’s what this is, in spirit. It’s absolute slop, although it has made the valuable scientific advancement of discovering that just making harem slop yuri instantly makes it way more tolerable. It also gets points for consistently setting up just how incredibly unsettling Mai is as a person, where it’s clear literally every word out of her mouth is some kind of lie or half truth aimed at manipulating someone else and when one tactic isn’t working she just gets this blank, dead expression when the other person looks away as she tries to come up with a new strategy. Loved the ending of the season, and I hope the 5 episode continuation doesn’t ruin it. What does this even get? C? B? It’s problematic slop from a problematic genre that’s only redeemed by being yuri and having at least some awareness of how Mai is the literal worst.

Things I picked up since:

Secrets of the Silent Witch - “What if Bocchi the Rock was an overpowered secret agent mage going undercover at an elite boarding school, and all the very attractive noble boys were really nice to her but in a way that respected her agency and had no ulterior motives?” yep it’s shojo reverse harem slop with a dash of OP protagonist who is at the same time very anxious and socially awkward. There’s really not much to say: it’s entertaining, inoffensive, and well executed enough to be fun to watch. It’s nothing mindblowing, but it’s a big trough of kind of generic but pretty good slop. B

Apocalypse Bringer Mynoghra - It’s Temu Overlord but instead of WoW it’s Endless Legend/Age of Wonders, and is somehow less noxious than Overlord in the process. It’s absolute low grade slop, with shoddy execution, mediocre animation, very little writing, shoddy worldbuilding, and not great pacing. It does do all of these things better than Overlord though, which I find incredibly funny and nets it some bonus points. D

New Panty and Stocking - It’s an edgy, trashy, absurdist shitpost of a series, like a much higher quality version of the old absurdist shorts from Adult Swim. I bounced off the Gainax season of it, but the new Studio Trigger one was actually fantastic so far as gross, edgy, absurd shitposts go. It also proved that you can in fact do that kind of humor without punching down or doing random bigotry, so for as transgressive as it is it never feels malicious. It’s also incredibly stylish in its own abstract way, and plays with different art styles and formats in a very creative way. A

Touring After the Apocalypse - Watched the first few episodes. It’s haunting, visually nice, and hitting some poignant notes. It’s not mindblowing but I like it so far. B

Dusk After the End of the World - Watched the first few episodes. I don’t know what to think. Nice sakuga action, haunting post-post-apocalyptic world, some level of background LGBT acceptance, a core plot that seems at least vaguely anti-fascist, but I can’t shake the feeling that there are a lot of red flags to it. Like how the villainous faction is called “ORWELL” which immediately tells me the story’s message is going to at best be completely incoherent, the way it sets up the worldbuilding for normalized polyamory is so transparently setting up for a male-centered harem plot, and the random inclusion of a random homophobic stereotype villain just makes me think “damn, still doing this shit like it’s the early 00s huh?” Not gonna bother rating this one, I’ll see where it goes and if my reservations were right or not.

A Wild Last Boss Appears - it’s Overlord except actually good, with a genderbent protagonist (who comes across as a hilariously oblivious egg in the novels imo) and much better themes overall. It’s not some mindblowingly well executed show like some of the things I’ve mentioned, just pretty good isekai slop that actually justifies it’s premise and plays with the idea that its setting is basically a shoddily written video game world that at the same had to exist diegetically because it’s also a real world that has to function for the people who live in it. I’m giving it an overly generous A

Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! - have you ever asked “what if Senshi from Dungeon Meshi was a girl, Laios was a duke and competent, and instead of there being an actual plot with like a dungeon and other characters they just fell in love and were just weird little freaks together?” Of course you have, everyone has, and this series is the answer. C-B

This Monster Wants to Eat Me - it’s like someone mashed up Elfen Lied and Twilight into yuri bait. And it is bait, I’ve read the manga. I’d say the OP and ED tell a better story than the actual anime. I do still kind of have a soft spot for it, though. The supernatural stuff and how the sapient yokai relate to humans and the world is genuinely well thought out and executed (in the manga, and where it’s shown up in the anime too), and some of the onscreen chemistry of Shiori and Hinako actually kind of works. It’s just so much of it is just this like mid 00s empty tragic suffering slop that’s just there to give the audience vicarious emotions without anything deeper to it - its themes where it relates to trauma, grief, and alienation are entirely surface level and aesthetic, and I find that Miko’s take on Hinako’s backstory hits a hundred times harder than all of Hinako listlessly wafting around looking sad and contemplative while a visual of sea water and strange ocean creatures surrounds the scene does. With its glacial pacing I don’t think it’ll even get to the more interesting yokai stuff and more about Miko’s backstory. C, peaking for brief moments at A maybe.

May I Ask For One Final Thing - top tier. Stylish, well animated, love both the OP and ED, great themes so far. There was a good thread about it the other day. A

funny thing about its genres and also why the ED is so great in particular (spoilers out through like episode 4)

It’s also an isekai. It’s a villainess-genre-slop isekai where the villainess archetype is the protagonist and actually good and the isekai hero is the real villain and largely absent, working mostly to fuck things up behind the scenes. The ED is all over this in a way that’s surreal and stylized but works so well when you realize why it’s like that. The series is an inverted Alice in Wonderland in the vaguest of narrative and symbolic ways.