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Dated 30 January 2017: I've got three shows below the Cosprayers Line

Tazuna and Koyori
Dude sure loves gears.

I started using The Cosmopolitan Prayers more than 10 years ago as a metric to measure the lower limits of tolerably bad anime. Long-time readers will recognize the familiar invective, "WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS" which started out somewhat facetiously, but evolved to become a standard I've applied regularly where appropriate, albeit usually for shows I've quit watching. Through the first third or so of the current season, I'm somehow still watching the following three shows which fall below the Cosprayers Line of dubious quality: Masamune-kun no Revenge, Seiren, and Hand Shakers.

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Dated 24 April 2017: I've already dropped 10 shows from Spring 2017

Nono and Fudou
This is not Re:Zero.

There are a lot more shows each season these days than there used to be. I'm willing to give a lot of them a try, but I'm not quite as willing to slog through something in hopes it gets more interesting later. Lest you think I'm being too negative because I dropped 10 shows before the fourth week, bear in mind I'm still watching 17. Cripes, that is a lot. No wonder I never make any progress through my sizable backlog of anime I'd like to re-watch someday.

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Dated 17 September 2018: I dropped two ghost-girlfriend shows in Summer 2018

Yuuna and Kogarashi
A ghost with legs? Inconceivable.

The main reason why I started watching Shichisei no Subaru (Seven Senses of the Re'Union) and Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san (Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs) was because both shows featured ghost girlfriends and thus gave me an excuse to pad the Ghost Girlfriends tag on my blog. Besides, Tasogare Otome x Amnesia and Nanana's Buried Treasure were both good, even if Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!? was, uh, not.

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Dated 4 March 2019: W'z is the Hand Shakers sequel I never knew I wanted

Yukiya
Totally normal background.

To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure I want a Hand Shakers sequel, and I'm already nine episodes into it. In any case, nobody else seemed to know ahead of time that W'z was going to be a sequel until after the first episode aired. Even now, it's unclear to me whether GoHands specifically hid this information or were just really bad at promoting the show. I suppose I could have guessed, since W'z shares the extremely garish 3DCG style found in Hand Shakers, although I find it much less visually jarring now than I did in winter of 2017. Whether this is because the franchise's aesthetic has improved or whether I've just developed a tolerance for it, I have no idea. The way the show looks is pretty much the only reason why I'm watching it, incidentally. I certainly don't care for the setting or the plot or the characters.

Haruka
You are way overreacting, Haruka.

In fact, there's not even much of a cohesive plot to speak of through nine episode. There are some unifying themes, and a number of points that the show continues to re-emphasize, but nothing I consider engaging. The characters are about what you ought to expect, if you remember how they were in Hand Shakers, although there are some semi-amusing changes to a few of them that occurred during the timeskip between the two shows. As far as the new characters go, well, Haruka is doing nothing to make herself endearing. The dumb side plot about her unspoken feelings for Potato-kun is crap and does W'z no favors. She's been entirely dead weight. I'm watching W'z so you don't have to, but if you're at all curious about what this, uh, visually arresting show is like, absolutely start by watching Hand Shakers first. It might be WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS but at least it doesn't have Haruka.

Dated 8 February 2022: Girls' Frontline: ✅ Shoot, ☐ Move, ✅ Communicate, ☐ Do Cute Things

M4 SOPMOD II
I do love me some Yukarin.

Having an interest in firearms did not enhance my interest in the Girls' Frontline anime. My unfamiliarity with the video game was probably also a significant limiting factor. From an outsider's perspective, the first two episodes of Girls' Frontline (also known as Dolls' Frontline because of...reasons) featured tedious, protracted gun battles during which an endless stream of gunfire was exchanged until one side was sufficient attrited enough for the episode to concentrate on something else. It didn't make for great storytelling.

MP5
I didn't watch long enough to figure out if people are constantly slapping MP5.

Girls' Frontline is hardly the first "girls with guns" anime to have this problem. It's not even the first "girls who are guns" show to suffer in this way. Enjoying this anime requires either having pre-formed opinions about the characters (such as from already enjoying the video game) or dismissing things such as development and motivation as less important than appearance.

M16A1
I appreciate that M16A1 shoots left-handed.

In any case, I had no interest in watching anime versions of what I assume are battles based on game events. It seems weird to admit, but I would have had more interest in Girls' Frontline if there were no fights at all. Cute Guns Doing Cute Things probably isn't exactly the sort of gimmick most people wanted to watch, but I would have been more interested in that than in what we actually got.

Dated 31 January 2023: The 80,000 Gold anime is okay

Mitsuha and Anke, Britta, and Carla
Is it normal to strip naked in a general store?

I'm still watching Rougo ni Sonaete Isekai de 8-manmai no Kinka wo Tamemasu (Saving 80,000 Gold in Another World for My Retirement), sometimes abbreviated as Roukin, but I'm not getting much out of it. It's one of those isekai fantasy shows where primitive locals marvel at modern conveniences that we take for granted. Boil-in-a-bag fish entrées?! Vegetable peelers?! Shampoo?! AMAZING!! This is also a world that is ignorant of crop rotation and fertilizer, so yeah, one of those sorts of shows. Maybe the king will eat a Dorito and instantly drop dead from the intense nacho cheesiness.

Mitsuha
I guess you do what you gotta do to experience "Rediance."

It's fine. I wasn't expecting much from it, and I'm not especially impressed by any of it so far, but it's not really objectionable. Well, there are A LOT of plot elements that would not hold up to even the slightest bit of scrutiny, not least of which is Mitsuha's severely underutilized teleportation ability, but don't worry about it. This is an anime adaptation of a light novel written by the author of Watashi, Nouryoku wa Heikinchi de tte Itta yo ne! (Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!) which got an anime release in the Autumn 2019 season. I guess the difference is I dropped Noukin after a single episode, rating it WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS, but I'm still watching Roukin after four episodes. It's got that going for it.

Dated 5 September 2023: Akikan! really is WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS

Budoko
Maybe Budoko gets more pleasant as the show progresses.

I started watched Akikan! (Empty Can!) as it aired during the Winter 2009 anime season, but I quit because I thought it was WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS. However, the irritating voice of a character introduced in the third episode did influence my decision to drop it then. As it turns out, this character's seiyuu was Yuuki Aoi, who has since gone on to have a successful career. She's rather popular, and I enjoy her work too, so I started second-guessing my 2009 self's opinions. Could it have really been that bad?

Najimi and Budoko
I admit Budoko's character design is amusing when she doesn't talk.

As it turns out, yes, it really was that bad. Budoko is a bratty, child-sized grape soda who speaks in a deliberately annoying voice. I think Yuuki Aoi was only 16 years old herself when she recorded the role, but I don't think being less experienced necessarily impaired her voice acting ability. If anything, she was probably too good at bringing a loathsome soda can to, err, life.

Melon and Kakeru
This scene is about erections.

I did actually try to watch further this time around, but I still only made it to episode four. Noto Mamiko voices a new can (a sports drink), but it's just not worth it. I don't know if the type of humor and tropes that saturate Akikan! are especially dated now. It's not as if I enjoyed humor of this variety in 2009 either. However, it also doesn't seem like the comedy styles found here are common in anime anymore. Possibly this is because I simply don't watch as many shows like this now, or maybe they're less common in general now that anime lineups are all isekai all the time. In any case, I suspect nobody besides boys discovering anime for the first time ever found the jokes in Akikan! funny either.