This was really good. Felt weird to see the Reflector lore so much more fleshed out compared to the game, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing? Time loops and parallel worlds are not where I expected Blue Reflection to go, making the two sequels so far feel largely at odds with the original. I’m not the biggest fan of making Yuzu and Lime into general Reflector fairies either since it compromises their personal connection with Hinako. But still the series had a lot of heart. Deceptively fantastic, in a way not at all unlike the game. The amateur-ish presentation and somewhat generic story create a surface-level discolouration, but when you pay attention at all beyond that the music and characters border on incredible. That last group transformation before heading into the Common had so much impact.
Well, that’s finished at long last. I decided to take it slowly because rushing Cardcaptor Sakura of all things seemed like it’d miss the point, but I perhaps took that sentiment too far and in my lethargic pace I (coincidentally) took exactly a year to complete the show. But what a show it was. Have you ever heard anyone say anything even remotely negative about Cardcaptor Sakura before? I haven’t, and I’m certainly not going to be the one to do it either. The art is consistently gorgeous, which works with the cinematic soundtrack to make every episode feel like its own little movie. This is very much something special within the medium. Being this ambitious at a length of 70 episodes you’d honestly have expected it to collapse in on itself by the end of the second cour, but it totally doesn’t. I’m not sure what else to say other than, yeah, this is indeed Cardcaptor Sakura. And those who know know.
Very charming. There are a lot of plot conveniences and short-sighted power-scaling in its design to prop it up as the ultimate conflict that perhaps aren’t executed as organically as they could have been, but meh. Heck yes I want to watch an hour and a half of Sakura aggressively blushing at Syaoran.
I did prefer the way the original TV adaptation handled this part of the romance, but that’s ultimately irrelevant to what this was. A very nice remake and I quite appreciated getting a little bonus like this before heading into Clear Card proper.
Not quite the direction I’d have personally taken a continuation of Sakura’s story. Immediately discarding the Sakura Cards and her unique staff does feel like an insult to her story arc in the original series, and simply having the opposing party be another of those trios we’d seen twice before is a bit cheap. I would say it displays a lack of understanding for how CCS’s slice of life was designed, based on a misconception as to what a sequel “has” to look like. They’re caught up in this notion that they need to justify its return with another conflict, when actually all Clear Card really needed to be was just 22 episodes of Sakura and Shaoran flirting. The hard-fought battle is over, so just let it genre-shift into a romcom. That’s what Cardcaptor Sakura’s storytelling and directing actually wanted to do.
But it is nevertheless a very enjoyable watch. Look at Sakura bein all modern n’ stuff. Tomoyo has never been my spirit animal as much as she has in this moment. During the last arc of the TV series my thoughts were “heck yes I want to watch a cour of Sakura aggressively blushing at Shaoran.” During the movie, my thoughts were “heck yes I want to watch an hour and a half of Sakura aggressively blushing at Shaoran.” For Clear Card my foremost thought was, unsurprisingly, “heck yes I want to watch 22 episodes of Sakura aggressively blushing at Shaoran.” Though the old one is more interesting from an artistic standpoint the new art style still looked amazing, and it was pure spectacle seeing them in modern digital HD after so long on early 2000s cel animation. The fact they got every voice actor back was nothing short of a miracle, and even if their voices had deepened with age a bit it was still an absolute treat getting to hear them on high quality mics. Being an aesthetic phenomenon is kind of Cardcaptor Sakura’s biggest calling card, and the new one did that in its own new ways.
Lum-a-likes is the best genre and I will not be taking further questions. Nuku Nuku’s design and the array of blatant parallels to other characters which surround her put this in the category of the most obvious Urusei Yatsura homages like Seto no Hanayome or Vlad Love, and although it isn’t a romance it still has that absurdist superwoman style. This OVA was super fun. Super, super fun. I would have preferred it be a normal slice of life comedy, since the action in so many of these romantic invader shows feels like mere obligation, but otherwise incredibly well put together. The art was some of the best I’ve ever seen come out of the OVA era.
If it hadn’t been made apparent yet, this year I worked on a lot of my romantic invader backlog, since I’ve spent the whole time pecking away at a script for that very same topic. DearS is part of that journey Character design elements are pulled in from Lum and Ran, and on the whole the show borrows a lot from Chobits. Though it is ultimately better because, even if it is present, this one doesn’t tone-shift to bring its annoying sci-fi conspiracy to the forefront.
Love it, love it, love it. I had such high expectations going into this for frankly no real reason, but nevertheless whatever preconceptions I had heaped onto it were handily met. The character designs are gorgeous and unique. Aesthetically it’s a real standout, and it launches into that very quickly. There isn’t really any fumbling period at the start, it immediately knows what it wants to do in terms of comedy and SoL. Quirky personalities and fun character chemistry make it an addicting show right from the start. A super pleasant surprise all around.
I think this was an independent teaser for the later project, not just episode 1 aired early. So it gets its own entry on here. I won’t give it a score yet for not being a full project, but it was fantastic. So much CCC, and they referenced Carnival Phantasm’s “kono hito de nashi” running gag.
The setting for this seemed a bit interesting until the war started and everything just became a generic battlefield. Then it turned boring. I wanted to see more of Marth and Sheeda’s relationship instead.
Nice characters and some of the coziest ecchi in the genre. It’s self-explanatory. Fascinatingly I do think the Twitter series is one of the coolest nonverbal stories around, but the TV version and volume-exclusive manga shorts with actual dialogue are definitely a lot easier to follow.
The new art style really takes some getting used to, and I’m not the biggest fan of them making one of the newer guys voiceless even though the established characters all still talk. Whenever that guy is on screen he makes Tawawa look lesser than it is. But beside that this is still cute. Still cozy. Sequels carry a level of natural advantage by way of the better-established character chemistry, so that was enough to mitigate the artistic downgrade from the prior season.
Although they were perfectly serviceable CGDCTs I don’t recall ever fixating too much upon the previous entries. They blend into the mass. But for some reason Bloom is just cranked to the next level. It is downright unfair in how good it is. The character-centric comedy is phenomenal and there a bunch of nice emotional moments.
Last time I watched this I left it a 6/10 on my list, but revisiting it now I don’t see why. I guess it must be that I just hadn’t solidified my love for this genre yet in 2017. Nowadays I watch this and I think it is really quite good. The constant references can definitely be jarring, but Nyaruko herself makes the show such a blast. It’s a lot of fun how every character plays off each other and continuously escalates how silly the joke is.
There’s a subtle increase in production values here. It doesn’t feel like they actually changed all that much, but it totally transforms the viewing experience. This season is gorgeous.
Well this is a shock! Turns out this actually isn’t a rewatch after all. It must be that I mistakenly marked this as Completed on MAL before. This was all new to me. I wasn’t expecting to get fresh content in this rewatch so discovering that I hadn’t actually seen F before was a very nice surprise to cap it off.
Short-haired Rin? That feels like some totally inconsequential spoiler I don’t understand on account of not having seen S2 yet. Hmm.
Had a rather interesting art style. I watched this with the intention of knocking it out before going onto the Horimiya adaptation, but I guess that’s a 2022 goal now.
Fun.
An insanely well-done adaptation of one of my favourite manga. It’s a great source put to the screen by people who really felt like they cared. All of the character animation and effects go the extra mile, and together with their decision to skip chapters enough to reach I Can’t Hear the Fireworks in the finale it comes across that this was made by fans for the fans. It’s fantastic.
If the previous season was fantastic, then this one reaches phenomenal. Admittedly I’ve cooled on the manga considerably in recent years. For one reason or another I just haven’t been compelled to read Kaguya in about 100 chapters now, and so I was a bit hesitant to approach this. It wasn’t entirely apparent how much enjoyment I’d get from the anime’s second season. But that was a whole lot of putting it off for no reason. The second season is outrageously funny. Between this and GochiUsa BLOOM I really lucked out on comedy anime this year. The previous season was something that I put at a 10 immediately after finishing it, but that had a faint undercurrent of obligation and I eventually took it back down to a 9. This time, I put it at a 9 to begin with and am pretty much just holding back for now on giving it the 10 I imagine it’ll eventually receive. I love it. Great characters, great comedy, great chemistry; everything that was great about Kaguya-sama at its greatest made even more great. Love it.
Fantastic character designs.
It’s never a bad time for a K-On rewatch, because it’s always a good time for a K-On rewatch.
What does one even say about this other than “it’s K-On”? That is an indicator of overwhelming quality itself. Azumanga Daioh is one of the most important manga of all time for creating the entire ‘offbeat female ensemble’ niche, and K-On is one of the most major inheritors of that will. K-On has surely eclipsed Azumanga in relevance by this point. Yet despite that, I do think it’s kind of interesting how few things ever moved on to then be inspired by K-On. Love Live wears its inspirations on its sleeve, and Bakuon is specifically a K-On parody, but other than that I don’t have much. Rifle is Beautiful and GochiUsa are just about all that comes to mind. Central anime milestones like Urusei Yatsura, Azumanga Daioh or Haruhi are constantly being referred to and built upon, but here everyone holds it in such high regard to the point that it almost seems like K-On is a summit that nobody is willing to challenge.
The original series is about establishing the absurdist personalities and humour of each member, but the emotional core of the second season just pushes the show that much higher. The characters are explored deeper and taken farther. K-On is at heart a story about the older girls coming to love and cherish Azusa, and that love is conveyed across so, so well.
Didn’t have all the full rewatch context heading into this since Animelab lacked the specials, but eh. Still a great watch. It’s essentially just an extra long episode of K-On and K-On is the good good.
What an odd little gem. This anime is awesome! The art style is fantastic, the soundtrack is spectacular, the humour is quick and punchy. Every aspect of the animation production feels so bouncy and lively. And for me – I love seeing Tomatsu Haruka as yet another pink-haired Lum-a-like. I guess that’s just her calling in life. Aside from a handful of unfortunate non-PC jokes made in poor taste, this entire thing is surprisingly solid. Yet I’d never even heard of it before, merely stumbled upon it on the whim of Crunchyroll’s recommendations. It definitely deserves more attention.
A song of love. The single light.
Goodness what a finale. Burning out upon the stage like the most brilliant supernova; nine goddesses a single white light suspended in heaven. That which creates an entire new world of idols. So exalted as to serve as the guiding star for all who will one day inherit their will. Shining for truly only the shortest of moments, but so powerful that this fragment in time will never be forgotten. My word, how they roar. Yet beyond all that, obscured behind the cry of its glamour, was simple love. It was their precious little secret, belonging to them and no one else. So powerful that a whole new era was borne unto their final performance, yet eclipsed within that blinding light were just nine ordinary girls. And that moment, that group, it was theirs alone. Running straight through a place that had nothing, and leaving nothing behind. Creating light where there was once void. Like a shooting star that bursts upon the empty night and vanishes as suddenly as it appears, yet in that brief moment how brilliant doth it shine. Even when that glorious streak has long since faded the ground still looks to it, mesmerized in its afterglow. I love it. Love Live is good. Poo you mr idol-animays-cannot-be-goodly-writtened strawman yes I am the one person who has Love Live in his favourites list primarily for the overhanging narrative and thematic interaction, and I will never apologise. This obviously rings way, way truer when repurposed through Sunshine as a sequel than in School Idol Project’s stop-and-start story with its obvious dramatic shortcomings, but dang it they just get so much mileage out of the deified ‘muse’ and all aesthetic implication contained wherein.
I have a lot of emotions and a lot of thoughts for this that I’d probably get more meaning out of keeping within than trying to thrust into the symbolic order where words will surely betray them, but I guess if I had to share anything it’s that School Idol Project is a good anime. Against all odds. It stumbles and stumbles, and it absolutely pales in comparison to the beast that Sunshine is about to become…but it’s good. There’s so much heart in it. You follow along this meta journey within as the writers and production quality of the show fumble to find their footing in the world of anime, just like μ’s in both fiction and reality. There’s a roughness to it refined over the course of the show that makes you want to root for not just μ’s as a cast but for Love Live itself.
As much as I praise Sunshine, it always takes a little time before I feel ready to move on. For reasons both in the show and in real life I feel like Sunshine necessitates a bit of breather to let everything settle; to internalize the earth-shaking power of μ’s last concert and reconcile the fact that they are now a past legend. μ’s – what a group, what a story! Sunshine is so much the better side of the coin to the extent that I often feel like it manages to make School Idol Project look bland, but these rewatches always remind me that, you know what, μ’s isn’t exactly anything to scoff at either. Nine lonely goddesses call to each other and sing of love. How brilliantly they shine.
A song of life. The next rainbow.
Sweet, sweet melancholy.
I could say a lot here. Or I could also not, as I already have said so much before.
Wow.
This new MV art style they’ve been using in this and subsequent videos is so good.
mikan ponytail/10
Might be the best Aqours MV ever, for one of the best songs in their already ridiculously stacked discography. Given that it’s city pop they pay their obligatory respects to Urusei Yatsura through the blue background with its pastel stars, and that’s a bonus if I ever did see one considering how deeply entrenched I am in Urusei reference culture. Just a stellar 6 minutes all around.
in which yoshiko downloads a hundred viruses
Oh look Superstar is out – time to finally finish the previous release. Something I think this anime deserves a lot of credit for is the genre-shift. There are light harem elements injected into it with the girls all competing over Yuu, and Ayumu constantly getting jealous. The flirting rings a bit truer this time around. Every Love Live entry has had its background ships and obligatory idol yuribaiting, but given that she’s Perfect Dream Project’s poster girl the harem transforms this into a more genuine progressive romance. So that was refreshing. The amount of presence they gave to other gacha idols like Haruka and Himeno, as well as namedropping the School Idol Festival, were a very welcome surprise too.
I don’t want to discredit Perfect Dream Project, because they’re deliberately a more experimental interpretation of Love Live. There are plenty of stellar songs in their library and the anime did some interesting things. But jumping into the familiar art style and compositions of Superstar just immediately felt right. The sense that I was actually sitting down and watching the beginning of a whole new Love Live group hit in a way that the PDP never did. It feels like home again. The Love Live DNA runs a lot more strongly in it, and the music is super fresh for the franchise. I fell in love with Liella straight away. Superstar is definitely more of a School Idol Project than a Sunshine, but I feel that’s to be expected from the franchise at this point. It’s still damn solid idol anime, contained within my favourite setting to come out of the genre.
I had been reading the manga since the massive amount of chapters seemed like it’d make for a nice filler ensemble, but even by chapter 140 I was still struggling to decode the art style and consistently identify each character. So I decided I should watch the anime first after all, in order to solidify my understanding of the setting. A lot of these Azumanga-derivative comedies live and die by the adaptation anyway, since their absurdities naturally beg to be animated. This series was fun enough, though the lineart was sloppy and the weird closeup art style was even more jarring here than in the manga.
An immediate and radical leap in art quality. This season is plagued by the blandest self-insert anime-original geek to ever exist in history, but putting him aside it’s an improvement across the board.
I can’t offer much thoughts because I’m dumb and decided to put the other films off for a few days and then would you look at that it’s been 5 months and now these are a 2022 goal.
Garbage. There was like one cool combo interaction with Deku and Bakugo, but the rest was a snorefest. Wannabe All For One is disappointing, and the One For All transferal + hand-waving away at the end was mindblowingly dumb. Heavy on the series recaps and exposition for no real reason.
Once more (thanks alphabet) I don’t have a huge amount to say in review here. I accidentally took eight months to watch this I can’t give tell much other than that it was a very nice time. Perhaps Non Non Biyori is ultimately something designed to be experienced at such a leisurely pace however. The original season was fantastic, but subsequent entries felt too samey and didn’t manage to capture that same spark. However watching this one, I have to wonder whether that was the anime themselves or if it was simply that I watched them all in too close a proximity. Even though it was only 12 episodes I still managed to get a lot of enjoyment out of just watching a few minutes in moments where I truly had nothing else to fill time with.
Very fun. Romcom or otherwise, roommate-style shows are always the best.
Absolutely, unbelievably, overwhelmingly riveting. Downright sublime. Anno stuck the landing. He stuck the landing so hard. Perhaps because I’ve rewatched the entire Evangelion saga so many times, read the manga and had done all my homework in order to write two pieces specifically about 3.0’s Impact mechanics I was able to actually follow and decode everything rapidly unfolding onscreen. There, shockingly, was no point at which I actually felt lost within the imagery. The Gates of Guf and that which lies beyond. The Vessels of the Adams. Mark 5. Unit 13. The Evangelion’s curse of immortality. The Lilin. The L Barrier and coreization. Mari’s true identity. Second Impact. Near Third Impact. Third Impact. Fourth Impact. Another Impact. The Ayanami series. The Black Moon. The Failures of Infinity. Asuka as the Ninth Angel. Ayanami’s soul still contained within Unit 01. The Lance of Longinus. The Lance of Cassius. The Real. The Imaginary. Believe it or not – I get all that. I could have turned to my brother and said “yeah, I understand everything that’s happening right now” and had that not be the obvious satirical punchline. Really the only thing I didn’t have fully pinned going into this was what the Key of Nebuchadnezzar actually is, but that’s something which isn’t even all that relevant since it’s just a fairly standard substitute for the original’s Adam fetus. It did open up a couple new questions in regards to how characters relate to one another in the ending sequence, but by and large this genuinely all made sense to me. Actually comprehending the overload of nonsensical jargon made all my prior endeavours feel rewarding in a way that surely only Evangelion could achieve.
That left me with enough breathing room to really soak in all the beautiful character moments. Because there were an abundance of them in this film. That ending was everything it needed to be and more. Hooly dooly. Whether the Rebuilds or the other supplementary material actually possess any level of design synergy with the original project is still highly in question, but as an alternate route this has been utterly masterful. I have always been a proponent of the Rebuild. Sitting in the cinema basking in the melodies of Beautiful World back when Madman did their Evangelion Marathon event is probably one of the most cathartic moments I’ve ever had in my life. Once the credits started rolling I remember getting up to go refresh myself in the break between films, but then sitting right back down because the song had just washed over me. It was beautiful and mesmerising. That moment in time is so precious to me. So yes I have always held the films in high regard. But even after how blown away I was by 3.0’s storytelling and set design, Thrice Upon a Time really just upped its game by several orders of magnitude. Did Evangelion actually need this? Debatably so since the manga had also used this rewrite as its ending and with them in tandem it kinda reveals that this might have always been Evangelion’s final destination, but by and large no. Much of its happy endings and character revelations are story threads already encoded within the original, and really all the Rebuild has done is draw them into a more visible position. However I still am thankful that the Rebuild exists. The way it parrots End of Evangelion at the end to finally redeem its most tortured characters is just sweet. It’s sweet and full of love. Overflowing. The body may be different but the heart is there. I cherish the Rebuild of Evangelion and I do not care who knows.
I’m not gonna make any kind of analysis or explanation video because, given that it’s Evangelion Final, I’m sure a million and one other people have already done it better than I ever could, and at least while it’s fresh I feel as though commodifying my feelings into a presentational form would betray the undiluted happiness that spreads within when I reflect on the film. Dissecting it with any specificity would only impair the warmth it makes me want to bask in. The only reason I’ve ever published things in the first place is because sometimes there are particular thoughts or feelings I want to draw out and frame, rather than simply letting them fade. Envisioning the square confines of a blog post or video as a form of metaphorical display case. So I guess there’s a part of me that, no matter how brief, no matter how insubstantial, just feels compelled to bleed into the collective narrative, become a face in the crowd, and say that, yeah, I was here. I watched it. I felt the love. My goodness, I feel it. To say thank you and goodbye to an old friend who, after so much struggle, has cried out all his tears and finally become ready to move on with his life. Evangelion, you have done great things.
To be completely honest with you I didn’t think that Ikuhara had it in him, but lo and behold! What a film! I won’t say it’s the best one quality-wise, but even among its peers this might be the single densest symbolic piece I’ve encountered. Within Revolutionary Girl Utena’s discussions of adolescent self-discovery and willingness to tackle some rather raw sexual storytelling, I like what it does, why it centres upon these things and how it conveys its messages. But as far as the actual viewing experience is concerned, still the subject matter is just really not my thing. However here, I feel it works phenomenally well. Movies are always where anime tends to truly get experimental, and when you serve that up with a heaping helping of Ikuhara’s directing it inevitably leads to a masterclass of abstract presentation. The artistic flair in this film is outstanding. Although I do admit that my reaction during 90% of the film was “I have no clue what on Earth is happening here”, I did come out the other side feeling that the tighter narrative in this format tells its piece far more cohesively than the TV equivalent. The story isn’t as expansive and multi-layered as the 49 episode series, but I think that is ultimately to its benefit. It’s somewhat easier to take in the various character messages because the storytelling occupies a more fluent format, and for every one story beat from the original cut out that is replaced with three or four different imagery lines each more complex than the last.
I say this about a lot of 90s sci-fi series, but its world and presentation really felt like a JRPG in video form. Lime a cute. Soundtrack a good. Art…sometimes good. The hard sci-fi backdrop that informs the romcom antics is such a weird and fascinating decision. It’s just your standard Urusei Yatsura type for most of each episode’s runtime yet then sometimes has these Xenogears-esque moments of exposition littered throughout, detailing the conspiracy of interplanetary disaster and emergency colonisation. Surprisingly too, those bits land a lot more than you’d expect from something which is ultimately just an excuse to make cutie robot girls in a flavour-of-the-month romantic invader story. However despite that and its fun harem cast, for whatever reason it was really hard to actually find motivation to watch – to the point that it took me seven months to watch 26 episodes. It’s something I would call enjoyable, but it rarely demanded my attention.
Trying to situate this anime reveals it as something of a scene oddity. It’s an anime-original magical girl show from a well-respected studio, which came out of nowhere and then promptly dropped off the map soon after finishing. But yeah, this is still my second or third favourite magical girl show. The great art, soundtrack and bubbly nature of the show make it an aesthetic treat. Everything is so vibrant and alive.
Every time I approach Lain I think to myself “yeah this will be an easy watch, I totally understand this show by now” and then am immediately slapped with reality. This show is confusing, huh. Every new episode paints a clearer picture and it all ties together surprisingly neatly by the end, but trying to orient yourself in the first half is a challenge like no other. However! I feel like here, on my sixth rewatch of the show, I have finally managed to comprehend the timeline and events of the first episode. And that’s exciting.
As is the standard for Urusei-derivatives, its off-kilter comedy is incredibly funny. Out of the many, many entries I’ve noted down in that ever-expanding lineage, this might be the show that adapts Urusei Yatsura the most blatantly, making it a great option for a bite-sized alternative.
Surprisingly fun offbeat comedy. Probably. Actually I just have that phrase left behind on my Watching spreadsheet and I can only guess at which show it was meant for. But for what it’s worth Kurumi was indeed a fun offbeat comedy, though given my affinity for romantic invader shows that isn’t actually a surprise.
Halfway into Motto I decided I might do a proper rewatch after all (alongside feeling that it’d be good to rewatch Nyaruko next after finishing). Excluding the first season of course, because screw that. It’s a bad combination of wholly anime-original and terrible. So I went back to the OVAs midway. These are really good. It might be the best art style of all the entries and adapts the series at its most fun point.
The first season is horrendous and I’m frankly just not that big of a fan of Darkness, so my options to approach To Love-Ru’s anime are always surprisingly limited. But Motto is, for the most part, in a nice spot for a quick, cozy rewatch. The shorter skit-based format of each episode works really well with the manga’s style, and it comes at a particular time when Xebec’s art style was at their best. Momo’s presence already begins to bleed Darkness stylings into it, but beside that I love this series dang it.
I don’t like To Love-Ru Darkness. Yet I also can’t bring myself to give its anime any lower than an 8. That should speak to just how much I adore To Love-Ru. To get it out of the way first – yes, Darkness is not without its positives. The most prominent thoughts I have to offer for it trend negative, but that doesn’t automatically equate to a blanket statement. It has plentiful merits of its own. Particularly Mea, who slots into the cast so naturally that it makes you wonder how the series ever worked without her. She breathes a lot of fresh air into the relationships. Her and Yami are apprehensive at first but steadily move toward accepting each other as family and it’s such a sweet little story arc. Mea is not only an incredible newcomer herself but she pulls the best out of Yami’s performance too, since Yami is able to channel her own character development into the interactions. Their relationship is incredibly engaging and genuinely tickles the heart.
But I ultimately still feel the same way. As such a devout fan of the series in its original form it sucks to see Lala thrown out for Momo like this. It just sucks. To Love-Ru’s characters are pretty fantastic if you ask me. They aren’t championing extreme emotional depth or anything, but in terms of their presentational qualities like design, performance and how they all interact I think this is one of my all-time favourite ensembles. I hold each of them to such esteem and in a vacuum Momo is no exception. But placed within the actual context I really don’t like what she turns the series into. I have such a difficult time reconciling it, since although the original was always pervy the sheer disregard this shows for the original’s style and cast frankly makes it feel like a porn parody more than a sequel.
The short format is a welcome return in these sidestories. Even amidst my criticisms of Darkness the OVAs are still a bit more fun since they aren’t so much centred on the main story or Momo’s interference.
In the rare moments when Rito or Momo aren’t onscreen actively attempting to derail the show’s integrity, then it’s brilliant. Arguably the best it’s ever been. The story between Yami and Mea is honestly fantastic. As sisters, each has something the other doesn’t and it’s only by finding a meeting point between their strikingly incompatible personalities that they show each other how to grow. It’s one of my favourite stories in anything. So I can only think it a shame that the surrounding is To Love-Ru Darkness. That grating shift from ecchi gags to all-out perversion, and the reverse in style, betray what made the first manga so captivating to me with a pinpoint accuracy. Alongside that, this anime season is a step down in quality from the previous. I’m fairly certain I was watching the blu-ray, so I guess it’s just part of the production that the art style is so much more inconsistent than the first Darkness.
Sure. Sephie’s visit is fun.
It was cool to see something modern so deliberately mimicking the style of Urusei Yatsura’s episodic insanities. I do feel that Mai could have been put even more front and centre like Lum was though. At the end of the day the thing that I wanted most out of this series were moments with Mai and Bamba, but surprisingly she tended to be less visible than the extended cast.
Fun.
This was incredible. The comedy is so punchy, and the characters are all so well defined! If I had to compare them to their contemporaries it was like having a Yuuko (Nichijou) and an Osaka (Azumanga) together in the one show. Though I do find it curious that they never addressed the elephant in the room that Yukari and Yuzuko didn’t actually seem to be particularly friendly outside of their fixation on Yui.
I thought this was supposed to be based on a card game but that immediately became irrelevant. The large cast and mish-mash of genres across its episodic stories was an interesting idea but I can’t really say it panned out, rather it just left the show feeling aimless. The Persona-lite character designs were great and it had a handful of fun insert tracks, but that’s it. It was your standard game promo anime, just with weirdly good production values this time.
Having been orbiting it for discussion, I decided to rewatch this after all. Zero no Tsukaima and the dreaded violent tsundere somehow always put this series in the same “you aren’t allowed to say nice things about it” corner as stuff like Nisekoi and FranXX, but I’m such a fan of its cast and setting. Angry Kugimiya Louise, Saito the idiot, flirty gal, thirsty Yui Horie maid and talking sword bro. Right from the beginning it’s pretty neat to see how although they frequently butt heads or tease each other, Louise and the rest are never enemies. There’s not a standard bullying setup there. Likewise I think it’s refreshing that the show never feels the need to hide that Saito is from another world. It makes for an interesting dynamic. There are an exciting amount of locales that make up its world too. Perhaps there is some nostalgia retained from my first time watching it too since iirc this was probably the first isekai I ever encountered, but yeah it’s a total joy to watch. I love it. In regards to that lineage discussion again it’s also interesting to see this potentially informing Konosuba some, in how all the magical treasures are actually weapons transported from japan, and the explosion girl who can only use one overpowered spell. Though I’m not familiar enough with the genre to see what the earlier step that ZnT is probably itself pulling from is.
Saito vs the 7,000 is still such an iconic scene. Julio is nowhere near as intrusive as I remember him being, which was a very welcome surprise. Louise getting her electric explosions here affirms to me that I probably should have this series on my Urusei Lineage chart after all. Ideally as a link into Konosuba (Urusei -> Megami-sama + Zero no Tsukaima -> Konosuba), but my gramphic designy skills are not up to par to figure out how to squeeze it on. Also the soundtrack begins to become outstanding from this point on.
I have a blast with how hard this series commits to Louise. Nearly every single dramatic reveal is cut short when she suddenly appears on the scene and starts berating Saito. Even Tiffa’s introduction is afforded no exception – she barely even gets to speak before Louise shows up and starts insulting her for seducing Saito. I guess I should be voicing the same complaint from Megami-sama 2008 where they backtrack the confession for every single drama point, but frankly I just like this show more. By this point Louise and Saito’s Urusei Yatsura inspired banter is in full swing, and Siesta has let loose her super sassy mode, among other things. It’s such fun.
However by this point it starts to get grating how Saito will kiss literally any and all females that come within a five metre radius of him… But the production gets a nice boost which was a welcome surprise this late in the game, and everyone’s character performance again gets even sassier.
skapbadoa 
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