I think this season was a little weaker than the others, besides episodes 1-3 and 8. Still very fun, still great action animation, still an import for me. But not as consistently solid as the others. It may be time to stop expanding the cast. I like Sharl a lot, but I didn’t care nearly so much about the characters in the last arc, nor about the villain’s backstory, and while he delivered an awesomely animated fight, shota bunny really needs to go away.

The fanservice also got a bit more in your face and lazier, as if they had some “tentacle and/or slime” quota to fill in a few episodes. I’m okay with fanservice in a silly show like this (or I never would have gotten through the first two seasons!) but it’s getting stale now.

I’m also slightly irked at how Gaul has started pushing Nanami and Rebecca out of their spots as Cinque’s equals, but the series has done a lot of other things right both in terms of female agency (fanservice aside) and making a Cinque genuinely likable MC that I can’t complain too much. Though it could easily be taken too far if the girls are sidelined any further.

I’d love to see at least one more season, though! Hell just give me a massive 12 episode war game tournament with nothing going on except cool animation and the characters being adorable and I’d be more than happy. That’s Dog Days at its best.

Well, except for episode 8. *That* is the best episode of Dog Days yet, and one of the best episodes of this year.

A strong continuation of the previous season that suffers from such a long time passing since the original aired. I don’t think I’ll ever feel as invested in it as I did before, even though there are probably at least as many reasons for me to enjoy x2 as I did the first season.

The show’s strengths are the same: plenty of interwoven plot threads delivered with a stylish as hell presentation – even if the production quality took a serious hit in this season.

I feel like they’re doing something interesting with Mikado’s character now. I mean, this is what would eventually happen to him, right? He’s an ordinary[?] kid surrounded by extraordinary people and deep down he desperately wants to live in their world. It’s probably the only interesting direction you can take his rather bland character, but I’m genuinely looking forward to how it goes.

While the show handled its ever-expanding cast with a finesse few shows can, my favorites were, predictably I suppose, Mairu and Kururi, followed by Akane. I look forward to more of all of them in the next two seasons.

A step up from the meandering first half of Stardust Crusaders, if still not quite on par with the pre-Stardust arcs. Joutarou never did impress me as much as Jonathan and was totally overshadowed by Joseph. Joseph and Polnareff were consistently the most amusing characters, and I took quite a liking to Avdol too.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this show – it was a decent time-killer that was much easier to get into the mood for than most shows, even if I never emotionally engaged with it to any significant degree. Pure popcorn, I guess, but it works as that. I’ll come back for as long as they want to keep animating it.

A story about learning how to love, and (re-)learning how to be loved.

This isn’t “a cooking anime”, meals are just a stand-in for the emotional bonds that form between people – a medium through which those feelings pass. Eating a good meal prepared by someone you love is a way of figuratively (and I guess partly literally?) internalizing their feelings. Working with them to prepare that meal is a way of forming those memories together.

For Kirin, it’s about emotional growth. She’s much less mature and emotionally developed than Ryou when they first meet. Kirin is nervous around adults, self-conscious about her size and apparent youth, slow to make friends, and doesn’t appear to have particularly deep personal relationships with anyone. Throughout the series we get to watch her become more conscious of others’ feelings. See her chip in and help instead of sit back and passively consume. See the changes that come over her as her relationship with Ryou goes from weekend roommate to soulmate. Her growth is more subtle than Ryou’s and doesn’t occupy as central a position in the narrative but it’s just as satisfying if you pay attention to it.

For Ryou, it’s about emotional healing. She’s much more reserved than Kirin, and lacks her (surface, at least) self-confidence and vigor. On the other hand she comes off as much more mature and empathetic. When we first meet her this is causing her more grief than comfort because her grandmother, the woman who raised her with gentleness and boundless, unconditional love, has passed away. Her emotions flow in a deluge towards that feeling of loss, draining the rest of her world and leaving behind a dull gray. Until the day she meets Kirin – a vibrant flash of purple sweeps across her life, and steadily, bit by bit, with Kirin’s love and everyone’s help, Ryou moves forward.

Ryou’s journey climaxes in the final episode when she receives her grandmother’s old apron as a gift, shortly before Kirin formally moves in with her. Kirin, flexing her character growth muscles (and being quite pleased with herself for it), opens Ryou’s eyes with a suggestion that memories aren’t just artifacts of the past, but something you create going forward too. Even if the person you’re remembering is no longer with you Ryou’s weakness is being bound by the past. Kirin’s is in living only in a nervous present. Together, the can overcome this by living for a future together.

With her friends and family near, with her grandmother’s apron wrapped around her, and above all with Kirin’s love right by her side, Ryou finally has all the ingredients she needs.

Koufuku Graffiti is about as close as a show can come to a 10/10 for me without getting one. A sequel would almost certainly address that… but I’m not holding my breath. ;_;

Where the first Idolmaster anime was working with deeply established characters with half a decade under their belts, the cast of Deremas carried a lot less baggage, for better and for worse.

This means that while Animas made a lot of (generally warranted) assumptions that we knew the characters, and started with a fully-formed agency, Deremas makes few assumptions, and takes establishing its characters as a top priority. It pulls it off beautifully. The strength of the first cour is undoubtedly its ability to take a large cast and systematically make everyone one of them unique and interesting and worth caring about. It’s not entirely even – Kanako and Chieri for example are still significantly less developed than the rest thus far – and the assumed protagonist trio actually fade into the larger group rather than clearly stand out.

But the former can be dealt with in time (and it’s not like Animas didn’t have its less-developed characters [hi Azusa]) and the latter is more a testament to how well the cast is developed as an ensemble than a criticism of the New Generations crew, all of whom I find rather charming (especially bedhead Shimamu).

The care with which the show managed its characters was strongest in Miku, Ranko, and Minami’s stories.

Miku’s increasing frustration at being passed over for debut and subsequent struggle to form a unit with her polar opposite (Riina) was a real rollercoaster, providing both the show’s early emotional set piece and the most interesting unit-formation story by far, with probably the most interesting result.

Ranko’s initial inability to express her personality (see how the Producer assumes she wants something dark and scary) was handled well but even better was her stepping up to support Love Laika when Minami was unable. Ranko is the lone solo act among the Cinderella Girls, so keeping her integrated with the larger cast by supporting Anastasia and Minami was a brilliant move.

And where to start with Minami? I’d pegged her from the start as doomed to be by far the least interesting character but then, unexpectedly, somehow, SHE BECAME THE BEST!? She’s one of the unlikeliest picks for group leader, but she nailed it. She has no real equivalent in 765Pro, because while Haruka was the emotional center of the group she could rely on much stronger administrative backup from P-san, Ritsuko, and Kotori. The 346 girls have much less to work with. P-chan, much as I love him, is just not as capable or naturally empathetic as Animas P-san was. Chihiro could have filled Kotori’s role, but we simply don’t see a lot of her. Minami, then, takes on much more individual responsibility than any of the 765 girls had to, and while it’s not easy on her she settles into the role and becomes the linchpin of the group. Her despair at missing out on most of the climax concert made for probably the best-executed and most emotionally powerful scenes of the show.

So how does it stack up to Animas? The one area it clearly lacks compared to its predecessor is visual quality. There are a few stand-out scenes/episodes, a few embarrassingly bad scenes, and a middle that’s “okay”. Big step down from Animas, which is one of the best productions out there.

But overall it’s simply a very different first half from Animas’. It starts with a different sort of cast and has to do different things with them. If I were to pick one story aspect where I think it lacked, that would be on the business/administrative side. One of Animas’ strengths was the shockingly good P-san, the lovable Kotori, and the stellar role Ritsuko played as an idol-cum-new producer. Even Pres Takagi’s occasional interjections displayed his intense faith in his idols, which they in turn appreciated.

On the other hand this allows more focus on the idols dealing with each other, which I’d generally mark as a big plus. But I’m hesitant to count that as a big edge over Animas, because Animas did quite a lot of *that* too, and P-san was so good that even when he solved problems it felt natural, because /that’s literally his darn job/. It did not feel at all like a harem MC monopolizing all the interaction with the girls. So point to Animas overall on this one too.

Even so, I feel like Deremas does have the potential to get on the same level, if the second half cleans up the visuals and builds on the first half’s engaging character writing. If it’s as good at utilizing a fully developed cast as it was in developing them in the first place, we’re going to see some real magic in a few weeks. I’d like nothing more than for it to fully earn that 10/10.

Too flawed to be a favorite, but it clawed its way into becoming a very worthwhile show. Episode by episode, scene by scene, minute by minute. It culminated in a truly beautiful finale, and with that as my last memory I’m going to remember the show fondly.

Its weakness was that its characters were shallow. They were largely imagery and catchphrases, and while I understand the director’s abstract, highly symbolic style lends itself to that, it doesn’t really allow (at least in this particular case) me to feel like I know the cast very well. Not in one cour anyway – and that is a problem, the show felt too short for its ambitions.

Lulu was the only character who felt fully fleshed-out in the way I want my characters to be. She felt like the only main character with true agency. The only one that made her choices because she wanted to, rather than because of “Destiny”. It’s not even that I didn’t like Ginko or Kureha. I liked them a fair bit, and there were a lot of fun secondary cast members too. But that Lulu should have ended up standing out so much is less a testament to her greatness (she is great!) than to the lack of competition she had. I think laser girl and mecha-bear’s single scene in the finale end put them at roughly the same level of emotional investment as I had in a full cour of Kureha and Ginko interactions. That’s a problem!

But the show was ambitious, in a way I respect. Dealing with sexuality, both in terms of the protagonists’ homosexuality and the show’s sexually charged imagery, is never easy. It tends to either follow typical heterosexual romance cliches or serve as cheap titillation that doesn’t support any larger thematic backdrop.

Yurikuma Arashi however is sexually charged from head to toe, ears to claws. Most of the imagery is built around this, and character motivations are tied to it. The bears, Yuriika and Ginko in particular, are driven by a love manifesting as intense lust, a desire to completely possess another both body and mind – to *consume* them. None of this is used simply to spice up a scene with nip-slips and fondling, it’s used because Ikuhara chose sexuality as the language through which the characters speak to each other and themselves.

Flawed, underdeveloped, ultimately shooting for the moon and falling short. But well worth your time, and it was certainly worth my import. Intense and ultimately respectful explorations of sexuality are rare in anime, let alone between young women. There’s definitely something here even if you’ve got to apply a lot of polish to see the shine.

Gao gao!