Delicious poison.

I started watching Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) because I've heard its source material is good. It turns out the anime is good, too—good enough that I watched all three of its simultaneously released episodes (yeah, it's another one of those shows) in a row instead of spacing them out as I originally intended. It seems this is also going to be a two-cours series as well, although I haven't worked out if that means 24 episodes straight or if they'll be split.

This is a terrible hobby.

Not knowing anything about the source material, I sort of wonder if this is going to turn into a medical drama where various plants and herbs will offer marvelous healing properties (like the sort found in fantasy stories such as Akatsuki no Yona because they allow characters to get fucked up without being removed from the narrative for months as they recuperate). Through the first three episodes, The Apothecary Diaries instead seems to be a period piece that's more about identifying and avoiding poison than about finding cures for ailments.

I don't know where she can spend any of this.

Hopefully, regardless of the path the plot takes, the execution will remain good. I'm particularly pleased with the way Yuuki Aoi (this same Yuuki Aoi) is voicing the role. I'm enjoying the anime as a whole, so it's not as if she's carrying this series on her own, but her work as the lead is a significant factor in how much I'm liking it. While I'm on the subject, I did also notice that the narrator is credited as Shimamoto Sumi, Nausicaä's own bad self. That's mostly just a bit of trivia, but it is good to see she's still active.

This is a picture of Mujina that doesn't show her thighs.

First off, SSSS.DYNAZENON is excellent. After this show and SSSS.GRIDMAN, I feel like Studio Trigger has finally figured out how to convey the sort of interpersonal tension and emotional baggage that they were trying to get right in Kiznaiver. As you may have surmised, the kaiju monster v. robot battles in SSSS.DYNAZENON are sort of incidental to the show's success. I mean, they're entertaining, but the series really is about the characters.

Both of them get their shit together. P.S. Spoilers.

If there's a weak spot, it's that I never cared that much about Yomogi. He's fine, but Koyomi (the NEET) had a much more interesting character arc. The bait & switch SSSS.GRIDMAN pulled with its leads was critical to its success, and I was sort of hoping SSSS.DYNAZENON would do something similar, but it worked out anyway. I don't know what this next thing is going to be, but I am looking forward to more.

I like it when they show the hidden eye of hidden-eye characters.

As I said recently, Back Arrow is bullshit. Appropriately, its ending is also bullshit, and none of that matters because I wouldn't have it any other way. Do the end-of-series reveals make any sense? Enough so, I guess. Do I wish they seemed more sensible? Not at all. How much you enjoy this show very much depends on your expectations for it. Ideally, you should expect scenery to get chewed. And how.

I came here to sing songs and kick ass, and I'm all out of songs. (Well, except one.)

Based on reactions I saw on the Twitter and elsewhere, reactions to the ending of Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song- are generally negative. I think most of the dissatisfaction has to do with logical inconsistencies, lazy storytelling, and not making any damn sense. Basically every criticism I've seen has been valid, although I'm considerably more positive about the show overall than its detractors. Potentially, this has to do with expectations and me setting a pretty low narrative hurdle for Vivy to clear. Possibly, I just have a soft spot for singing robots the way Jenny Nicholson has a soft spot for animatronics.

Extremely loose birth control glasses is somebody's fetish.

Godzilla Singular Point also recently ended. Y'know, there was a lot less Godzilla in a show about Godzilla than I was expecting. Unfortunately, what the show was mostly about was barely comprehensible technobabble. It had some neat ideas, but I'm not really sure a Godzilla anime was the right vehicle for it. Really, they could have just done that story on its own, separately, without involving Godzilla at all. (And they almost sort of did.) The other part of Singular Point, though, with the dudes and their extremely Kugimiya Rie robot, was a lot more fun, even if none of those characters wore birth control glasses.

Lucky for Mei, her extremely loose birth control glasses stay on when she runs.

I still enjoyed Godzilla Singular Point overall, but I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone who isn't obsessed with grad students who always dress like it's laundry day. For that matter, SSSS.DYNAZENON is probably the only one of these four that I would recommend without qualification. Back Arrow, I can recommend to people who enjoy bullshit and fucked-up bangs. Vivy -Fluorite Eye’s Song-, I can recommend to people with fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese. Also, robosexuals.

He had it coming.

Some of the shows I covered in previous posts (1st, 2nd, 3rd) included remakes and sequels or continuations. Well, there are more. Golden Kamuy also resumed this season. It's described as the third season, but really it's just the third cours of series. The anime remains as good as ever, thanks to the strength of the source material. In fact, the anime has improved by thus far avoiding the 3DCG pitfalls that unfortunately distracted from the first cours.

Daigo is short.

Major 2nd S2 remains consistently good as anyone who has ever followed the franchise would expect. The current arc again revisits events from the first season of Major 2nd, but it should still be accessible to new viewers. Well, they can be new to Major, but it probably helps to know at least a little about baseball. At a minimum, it will reinforce how relatively lucky the new girl has been so far despite making a lot of basic mistakes.

This is not actually a room.

One Room is also back for a third season. It's first-person-anime gimmick seems a bit lewder this time around than I remember from the previous installments. However, it's still fairly tame even though the first girl found an excuse to whip off her clothes by the second episode. I guess since the characters only gets three episodes for each arc they have to make the best of their opportunities.

Strike Witches is still Miyafuji's show.

Going the other way, Strike Witches: Dai-501 Tougou Sentou Koukuudan ROAD to BERLIN (the third "proper" season of Strike Witches) is definitely less lewd now compared to how it started out. The first season of Strike Witches featured uncensored casual nudity on a fairly regular basis. This season started with an appearance by Sakamoto Mio wearing pants, of all things. PANTS!

Sakamoto is more of a nutjob than I remember.

It's been more than 12 years since the first Strike Witches OVA. Since that time, we've gotten a proper television series, a sequel series, a spinoff series, a movie, more OVAs, and this season's Strike Witches 501 Butai Hasshin-shimasu! (Strike Witches: 501st JOINT FIGHTER WING Take Off!) comedy series with half-length episodes. Additionally, I understand there are more sequels and spinoffs in the works, so it seems we'll continue to wage the War on Pants for some time to come. The weakest aspect of the Strike Witches universe (now actually the World Witches universe) has always been the Neuroi—the boring, vaguely threatening opponents with no personalities that our stalwart witches must fight. Fortunately, Strike Witches 501 Butai Hasshin-shimasu! is entirely Neuroi-free, as the show is strictly about the 501st Joint Fighter Wing fucking around in garrison.

Go on, Barkhorn, curse the bitch out.

Surprisingly, this setting worked quite favorably for Erica Hartmann and Miyafuji Yoshika as characters. I wasn't fans of either of them going in, but I like them both a lot better now. I'm glad Hartmann in particular got more to do than merely be a lazy slob. I wasn't expecting her to be the focus of so many of the show's best gags. In Miyafuji's case, I think being free of her Main Character baggage made her scenes a lot better. Miyafuji stopped being on my shitlist after the Strike Witches movie, but she's still better off in a supporting role.

This style probably takes less time to draw, I'd imagine.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the character design changes. I'm not a huge fan of this style. I can understand why they're different for this sort of show, but the effect isn't as successful as, say, the changes for Isekai Quartet. Also, I do wish Strike Witches 501 Butai Hasshin-shimasu! had brought back casual nudity, which used to be a staple of the franchise. Sure, these character designs are not quite as...aerodynamic as the normal ones, but I think it would have made for some amusing gags. Casual nudity has been missing from the World Witches universe for quite some time now, so bringing it back unexpectedly in this guise would have been quite the bombshell in the War on Pants.

It's because its blocky shape makes it easier to embrace than other guns.

I guess this is a follow up to my recent post, "In praise of the oldest star in Gunslinger Girl." There, I linked to a couple pictures of anime characters hugging their FN P90 submachine guns (Iriya from Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu, and LLENN from Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online). Naturally, Henrietta also does this in the first episode of Gunslinger Girl, as depicted above, after going aggro with it against some chumps who totally had it coming, probably.

Rounds in the translucent magazine make a 90-degree turn before entering the chamber.

I believe Henrietta's P90 is the most modern firearm to appear in Gunslinger Girl. It was only about 10 years old when the manga began in 2002, and is quite a contrast to Triela's 19th-century shotgun. Its distinctive appearance probably also accounts for its popularity in various anime, Sword Art Online Alternative Gun Gale Online being a notable example. I can't rule out the possibility that some LLENN fan bought herself an FN PS90, cut down the barrel after getting an NFA tax stamp, and painted it pink for questionable cosplay purposes.

This was a pretty good deal for both parties.

Incidentally, I was somewhat surprised a minor character in SAO GGO carried an AR57, which is basically an AR-15 upper designed to accept P90 magazines on top and eject out what is usually the magazine well of the lower receiver. But I'm most impressed that Kirito never showed up in GGO for some bullshit ammo exchange contrivance, since Kirito's FN Five-seveN is pretty much the only other firearm that shares ammo with LLENN's dear P-chan. Kirito's total absence definitely improved Gun Gale Online as an anime.

I'm impressed Triela didn't get any blood on her.

I've written a fair amount about Gunslinger Girl, but haven't mentioned much about the firearms themselves. The first gun to appear in the show (outside of the OP) is Triela's shotgun, a Winchester Model 1897 Trench Gun with its big ass 17-inch M1917 bayonet fixed. I believe this is also the oldest firearm to appear in the anime. As its name suggests, this is literally a 19th-century design which Winchester started selling in 1897 (although it remained in production until 1957). In contrast, the primary weapon of the show's ostensible lead, Henrietta, is an ever popular FN P90, which was barely more than 10 years old when the manga began publication in 2002. Triela's M1897 is also the only shotgun in the first cours, but I don't remember it featuring in particularly many scenes. The old Winchester gets a lot more attention in the sequel, Gunslinger Girl -Il Teatrino-. (And occasionally appears in fanart.)

The action can git ya if you're careless while racking the slide back.

Prices of the World War I-era M1897 Trench Guns have risen quite a bit as of late, probably at least partially because of The Great War's centennial and maybe because of the shotgun's inclusion in popular media such as Gunslinger Girl itself and the Battlefield video games. For example, a "very fine" Model 1897 sold for $8625 in December 2018. I am somewhat amused that Gunslinger Girl features a firearm from the 19th century when basically every other gun in the series is from the Cold War or newer. I have to assume the original mangaka, Aida Yu, just really liked it. That's totally understandable, at least.

Nice hat.

Alice to Zouroku (Alice and Zouroku) is about a little girl with essentially magic abilities who escapes from a secret facility where people with flexible morals study kids with superpowers. She then takes up with a crotchety old man and various cute things happen. Well, between periodic bouts of trauma, that is. It's a neat concept, albeit one that's been done before in various ways, but making the male lead an elderly man instead of a teenage spud is a nice change.

Go on, Ace. Slap the shit out of her.

I only watched five shows from the autumn 2013 anime season. It really should have been six, but subs for Detective Conan lagged again.

Autumn 2013: KILL la KILL (1-12) > Golden Time (1-12) > DokiDoki! Precure (35-46) > Kakumeiki Valvave [13-24] > IS Infinite Stratos 2 [1-12, OVA2]. Dropped: None.

I'm sure Ryuuko is a sweet girl when she isn't psycho.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, it should comes as no surprise that I love KILL la KILL. Not only is it relentlessly brazen, it features girls with superpowers whaling on each other. This is the same reason why I love Pretty Cure, Symphogear, My-HiME, and Read or Die. Really, just having Koshimizu Ami hollering crude things every week is enough to keep me watching. It really makes me wish she had talked like that during Suite Precure♪. I'm definitely looking forward to the next cour of KILL la KILL. (Yes, I did just lump Read or Die together with Pretty Cure.)

Faceless eroge protagonist.

The anime adaptation of Golden Time faltered in a few spots, but the show is still good enough to easily claim the second spot on this list. I can't claim it's an exceptional drama or romance, but it's worth considering merely for not being set in a middle school or high school. I have it on good authority that White Album 2 is far superior when it comes to romance and drama, but I'm a little wary because I found the first episode of the first White Album anime to be insipid. I'll add White Album 2 to my ever-growing queue providing it is not a sequel to (nor requires familiarity with) the first anime, and as long as it doesn't feature the same idiot male character who could not grasp the concept of pre-recorded television.

Revisiting the bit about the carrots was a nice touch.

DokiDoki! Precure is okay, but mostly notable merely for not being terrible. I'm relieved at how the Regina and Aguri arcs are progressing. Barring any last-minute stumbles, the ending will probably be all right. I'm glad Cure Ace didn't turn out to be another Cure Muse. There was still a lot about her that was straight bullshit, but I'm willing to give her a pass simply for her willingness to embrace her "it's our destiny to fight" moment. I'm still opposed to having shrimpy kids as Cures, but Aguri is so much better than Ako that I'll let it go.

I like that she still took the time to do her hair.

Kakumeiki Valvrave is a terrible show. Really, it's god-awful. Unfortunately, the worst part about the second season is that it was only "so bad it's good" on rare occasions. Aside from never making any sense, it had awful characters in ridiculous social and political constructs promoted so earnestly I'm completely unable to determine whether or not their ideals and goals were sincere or farcical. On the plus side, I get to use my "Characters in Need of Better Shows" tag again. Poor Saki.

Fräulein's crazy, yo.

IS Infinite Stratos 2 would have been so much better had it been entirely filler. I didn't care about the plot or any of the antagonists at all. The second new girl, Kanzashi, also really sucks. Her big sister (the first new girl), Tatenashi, is okay, even if she does take Bruce Lee's advice a little too literally. If they ever make an IS Infinite Stratos 3, they should disregard whatever nonsense is canonically in the light novels and just make the entire cour a series of jokes about the wacky, goofball, anime-Teutonic things Laura does after waking up in Potato-kun's bed every morning. Charles > Laura > Cecilia > Lingyin > Tatenashi > Charlotte > Houki > Kanzashi.

Please, please, please, actually be the ghost of Nobunaga.

As you might expect, you miss out on a lot of anime when you only follow five shows in a cour. (Hell, I don't even know what some of the shows people talk about on the Twitter are putatively about.) However, you also miss out on a lot of crap. It's a real shame, because I probably would have gotten a lot of blogging mileage out of some of those crap shows. Luckily, we've got like three different shows featuring true facts about the Nobunaga and (I think) two shows about ghost girlfriends next season. At least one of those has got to be hot garbage.