Probably the last person who should have a gun.

When the series began, the science-based exploits described in Dr. STONE seemed somewhat plausible, at least for a show where everyone on the planet was petrified by a mysterious force and our protagonist measured the passage of time by counting in his head for thousands of years. Now in its third season (specifically, the second part of its third season), basically everything requires a similar sort of acceptance. It's not that the scientific principles are unsound, it's more that the viewer is required to ignore the engineering demands necessary to realize these designs, and the amount of time it should take to get stuff built.

Now would be a good time to break out some of that Jedi Mind Shit, Gen.

It's fine, though. Heroic achievements and overcoming incredible odds are very much a part of Dr. STONE, so I'm not bothered that everything gets constructed on time and works perfectly as intended, just as the superhuman physical feats that characters casually perform don't bother me.

We're never going to find out how the thing on her head survived thousands of years.

I don't actually know how much of the series remains. I think there are only five episodes left in the season, but I don't know if that means there are only five episodes left overall. In any case, the anime is still entertaining, and knowing that there will be an actual ending goes a long way towards reassuring viewers that the time invested in a lengthy series is worthwhile.

Don't let rabbit shit go to waste.

Sounan desu ka? (English title, Are You Lost?) has turned out to be reliably amusing thanks almost entirely to Homare, without whom the rest of the girls would be as fucked on that island as they would be on the moon. For perfectly valid anime reasons, Homare spent a considerable part of her childhood getting stranded over and over with her hyper-competent survivalist father. This provided her with the knowledge and experience to keep herself and the other girls who are stranded with her on a deserted island alive through an otherwise harrowing situation. Every other girl with her is basically dead weight, but Homare has managed to provide substinance and shelter with relative ease, so she's already advanced from survival basics to quality-of-life considerations.

Look at how happy she is to have metal.

In this respect, there are some similarities with Dr. STONE in that both shows are about pursuing makeshift improvements in a primitive environment, and applying science and cunning against the various threats posed by nature. Dr. STONE is significantly more ambitious in this regard as it also involves threats posed by man, whereas Sounan desu ka? takes a more matter-of-fact approach toward its concerns, many of which are inspired by whining teenage girls. Lucky for them, Homare is a treasure, and incredibly patient and accommodating. It is abundantly clear to me that she would be perfectly happy being stranded apparently indefinitely. Really, if you are going to be lost in the middle of nowhere, being lost with Homare is basically your best-case scenario.

At least the apartment she's cleaning is also small.

I think it's been more than 10 years since I last re-watched Hand Maid May. I probably have a disproportionately positive perspective on what is ultimately a 20th century fan-service-laden harem comedy. I can't guarantee I would still hold it in high regard if I were to watch it for the first time now, but I do still remember it fondly. (The impetus for bringing Hand Maid May up again comes from the latest episode of Hataraku Saibou.)

That ladder bridge looks less and less safe as the years go by.

If anything, re-watching Hand Maid May now might help me clarify one aspect that I've always been sort of uncertain about. Namely, how old is Kasumi? Her current English Wikipedia entry describes her as an 18-year-old college student (with no citation), and the current Japanese Wikipedia entry claims she is a student at Kazuya's university (also with no citation). I don't remember this ever being established within the anime itself.

Further proof that Kasumi is right-handed..

It is pretty likely that she is at least out of high school, because there is a flashback in episode eight to Kasumi's graduation, and we never see her in a school uniform outside of those flashbacks. But since (as I understand it), compulsory education in Japan ends with middle school (after completing 9th grade, by U.S. reckoning), it's not impossible (albeit unlikely) that she dropped out to run the apartment complex, coach baseball, and flirt with Kazuya full-time.

Behold, the bespoke kotatsu, in all its glory.

Okay, I didn't really build a kotatsu. I bolted an electric wall-mountable low-wattage ceramic heater to the underside of a cheap square coffee table.

My first encounter with a kotatsu was almost 10 years ago, while watching Love Hina. There's an early scene during which Keitaro is forced to hide underneath one for some contrived reason. At the time, I couldn't understand why he was complaining about the heat. Reading the manga (incidentally, offered online for free by its author, Ken Akamatsu) clarified things a bit. 14 volumes of Love Hina gave me a better understanding as to the functions and features of this weirdo heated table thing. Still, I couldn't understand why Keitaro wasn't bending Naru over the kotatsu at every opportunity, but that question is not germane at this time.

Naru's kotatsu is big enough for two. Three, if you're perverts.

There are probably a few changes I would incorporate were I to construct Ghetto Kotatsu 2.0, pending further testing. It doesn't help at all that the temperature in Southern California was regularly in the 80s this January (think high 20s, if you use Celcius).

While I consider Chobits be a failure in the robot-girlfriend genre, Hand Maid May is surprisingly good. All 11 episodes are already available on three DVDs, and while I've only seen the old, low-res fansubs, I'm prepared to heartily recommend them.

Hand Maid May and Kazuya Saotome

Hand Maid May neatly joins two staples of anime: The robot-girlfriend and the maid-uniform genres. (See also Mahoromatic.) It's a fairly simple, silly, stereotypical anime in the giant-sweatdrops and "falling down after hearing something surprising" vein with rampant rampant fan service throughout the first episode. Somewhat ironically, because it's not at all ambitious, it succeeds brilliantly. Hand Maid May is simply a cute comedy about a clueless geek (Kazuya Saotome), his spirited sex bomb neighbor (Kasumi Tani), and a tiny devoted robot maid (Cyber Doll May), and on that level it works very well.

Okay, Kotaro Nambara (Kazuya Saotome's chief rival and antagonist) is incredibly annoying, albeit intentionally so. However, I am willing to cut him some slack because everyone else in the show is pretty charming. Besides, Nambara's voice actor is Ueda Yuuji, who also played Urashima Keitaro in Love Hina and later went on to do fairly innocuous soft core porn with Asakawa Yuu, the voice of Motoko from Love Hina and Sakaki from Azumanga Daioh. Whoop!