Koharu is a witch.

Actually, that's not true. Girls Playing Baseball isn't really the new Girls Piloting Mecha because girls playing baseball isn't really a new thing at all. At a minimum, there's Princess Nine. Maybe I should have titled this post, "Princess Nine Xenoglossia."

Ryoko is a beast.

Really, this is just an excuse to talk about Not Idolm@ster Baseball (real name, Taisho Yakyuu Musume), which, quite frankly, can't get here fast enough.

Shimizu is a peach.

Realistically, this will probably be the Sky Girls of 1920s Japanese girls baseball, being a J.C. Staff production and all—meaning that it will probably be about interpersonal relationships instead of actual baseball service-service, but that's okay too.

Taisho Yakyuu Musume is Not Idolm@ster Baseball.

I'm calling my shot: The Best Girl in Taisho Yakyuu Musume is going to be the one in the front, swinging the bat. I can tell because she looks the most serious.

Narue is a Mamiko Noto tea kettle.

One thing that troubles me about Taisho Yakyuu Musume is the apparent lack of wooden bats. In fact, that seems to be the prevailing deficiency in anime baseball. Even Narue uses an aluminum bat during Narue no Sekai despite carrying a wooden one in the ED. Kasumi from Hand Maid May alone uses a wooden bat among anime girls playing ball that I know of, although the sound effect used in the show is wildly incorrect, alas.

If only those kids knew how easy Coach Tani was going on them.

Metal bats are quite an anachronism for 1920s baseball, although I doubt Not Idolm@ster Baseball will make any attempt at depicting realistic baseball of that era—or any era, for that matter. Not that I expect this to impair my enjoyment of this upcoming series. Surely it will be more important to keep a relationship chart than a scorecard for this show.

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.

It's probably so nasty under there.

Chou Kadou Girl ⅙: Amazing Stranger is about a sentient 1/6th scale anime figurine who lives with a fan of her franchise. Although there are other shows about tiny wives and the people who love them (for example, Nona arguably has more in common with her Frame Arms Girl counterparts), I'm still going to point to Hand Maid May as the best example of this sort of thing. I think it's because I enjoy the two human leads in Hand Maid May (Kazuya and Kasumi), whereas I'm mostly ambivalent about Haruto from Amazing Stranger. His kid sister seems okay, but she's not in the show much. Both Hand Maid May and Amazing Stranger do feature copious amounts of fan service and lots of meta humor, so I guess they also have that in common. I've written about Hand Maid May a fair amount on this site already, so just read those old entries if you're still curious why I seem to like it so much.

The explanation for why Nona sleeps in the refrigerator was not at all convincing.

With regard to Chou Kadou Girl ⅙: Amazing Stranger, it's sort of uneven, but I find some of the gags amusing. I also like the robotic autotuned voice in the OP. More importantly, I appreciate that Nona is not entirely dense, so the show isn't structured around increasingly strained misunderstandings and complex scams. That is a nice change of pace. It also makes her a bit more human. I guess that's technically a sort of racist thing to say about a tiny plastic space...whatever she is, but it is an important part of getting me to care about the events within the show. That was something notable about Hand Maid May—I cared about where the characters were going to end up. Amazing Stranger isn't quite there yet, but hopefully its remaining episodes will provide at least a little more emotional resonance.