This is how everyone sees Honda Tohru and yet people
still manage to be assholes to her.

It's sort of difficult to talk about Fruits Basket: The Final because it's a 13-episode conclusion in a 63-episode adaptation of a well-regarded 23-volume manga. It's also a do-over succeeding a 26-episode series from 20 years ago which was also really good even though the source material hadn't ended yet. So, there's a lot going on.

Is cat.

I do wish I had paid closer attention when I started watching this iteration of Fruits Basket when it began in 2019. There are a lot of characters, and there is a lot of setup, and I'm certain I missed a lot of subtleties early on. I suppose that is an argument in favor of re-watching the series, even if it is 63 episodes long, but that isn't going to happen until I've finally gotten around to reading the source material. It's gonna be a while.

This bedroom is fantastic.

Probably everyone who has heard about Fruits Basket also knows opinions about it are almost universally favorable. Likewise, anyone thinking about getting into the series probably knows at least as much as I did concerning what it's ostensibly "about" before I watched the first anime (the 2001 one with Hocchan). One thing that surprised me as I got deeper into the plot is how monstrous the zodiac aspects are regarded in-universe. They're not set up that way at the start of the series at all.

Look, a rotary phone.

I don't really want to write about Fruits Basket, since it's basically one of those shows where you can just sort of say, "Look, everyone says it's good. It is good. Just watch it." I can also see how it might not be for everyone. You have to have to have an appetite for romance and a tolerance for assholes. So many assholes. Honda Tohru is, like, the nicest, sweetest, goodest girl in the entire world and she's constantly surrounded by bitches being bitches and assholes being assholes. Back the fuck away from Honda Tohru, people.

People are also assholes to Machi.

I guess viewers also have to be okay with "problematic" 'ships. I don't know if this heightened anxiety is an actual sign of the times, or if it's just localized sensitivity found on the Twitter. There are multiple age-gap pairings. There are people being mean to the people they love. Honda Tohru's mom dies. It's a whole thing. I guess the Fruits Basket 'ships are less "problematic" than the ones in Card Captor Sakura, but if these are the sorts of things that genuinely bother you, shoujo might not be for you.

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.

Emiru is probably remembering that everyone at school still thinks she's nuts.

Now well past the halfway mark, Hugtto! Precure is better than it has any right to be. Based on the number of strikes it normally would have against it, I shouldn't be enjoying it so much. Namely, it's got a magic baby. It has a shrimpy Cure. And it has my least favorite battle costumes of the entire franchise. It turns out, though, that the magic-baby scenes are not as objectionable as I had feared (although I could still do without them). The battle costumes are tragic; I guess that's not going to change. On the plus side, though, the shrimpy Cure is tops.

Actually, most of the cast is pretty good.

Cure Muse basically ruined shrimpy Cures for me. Cure Ace, I guess she was okay. Aguri was definitely more endearing than Ako. Emiru, though, as Cure Ma Chérie? Emiru is frickin' great. It's mostly because she's completely neurotic, which we got to see ahead of time in her two really good pre-transformation introductory episodes. It also helps that she's partnered with RUR-9500. The two of them bring out the best in each other's scenes. I suppose I can't quite say the same thing about Cure Amour, although they are fine together as well. After all, they do have beam-rifle guitars.

This bus did not have safety glass.

More people probably would have watched Punch Line if they had banked on its noitaminA time slot instead of its first episode. I know a lot of people were immediately dissuaded from watching the series due to its premise. "A teenage boy develops superpowers whenever he sees panties? What is this ridiculous fan service horseshit?" It turns out the real problem with Punch Line is that it has too much plot. Thus, anime fans who might have enjoyed the time looping, mystery, and conspiracy components of the show but were turned away by an aversion to fan service missed out on the series. Likewise, many anime fans who wanted PANTIES and FIGHTING and PANTIES may have been let down by the more serious parts of the show.

It's because he saw panties.

I belong to the latter camp. While I did not find anything particularly wrong with the Punch Line plot, it brought a lot more complexity to the show than I was expecting. I basically wanted an entire series about Strange Juice doing Strange Juice things and maybe stupid missions assigned by the talking cat ghost. Instead, Strange Juice was barely in the show and I ended up finishing the series almost entirely due to the charm Kugimiya Rie brought to her character, Meika.

Angela Balzac shows Dingo how large the pizzas are in DEVA.

The past couple of years have been pretty good for Kugimiya Rie roles, as it appears she has moved beyond the tiny, flat-chested modern tsundere typecasting that plagued her for so long. Notably, she was excellent in Rakuen Tsuihō (Expelled from Paradise) as Angela Balzac (admittedly another tsundere, but fortunately the neoclassical variety). Ordinarily I would not have expected her in a role like this, but she did an outstanding job. The movie itself is also excellent, so I'm definitely buying the Blu-ray when it comes out later this week.

Co-starring Kugimiya Rie. Natch.

Just because I stop watching a show doesn't mean I've dropped it. This is the case with nearly every show in my Also Watching category, some of which have had zero progress in over two years. With regard to this season's new shows, I am way behind on Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to and Mushishi Zoku Shou, albeit for different reasons.

Relax, it's cool. He's her teacher.

I'm watching fewer shows autumn 2013 than I usually do. I suppose on average it's still about one episode each night, but with less time watching anime and less attention devoted to The Twitter, I do have noticeably more time to pursue other interests—to include updating an anime blog that's nearly in its 13th year.

I couldn't think of a gouda cheese pun to use for this caption.

Summer 2013: Silver Spoon [1-11] > Uchouten Kazoku [1-13] > Symphogear G [1-13] > Love Lab [1-13] > Genshiken Nidaime [1-13] > Prisma☆Illya [1-10] > C3-bu [1-13] > Turning Girls [1-7] > Detective Conan (701-711) > DokiDoki! Precure (23-34) > RailgunS [13-24] > Dog & Scissors [1-12].

These two are pretty upset even though Yoshino's not pregnant.

Dropped: Gatchaman Crowds (1-9) > Servant x Service (1-3) > Kiniro Mosaic (1-4) > Kitakubu Katsudou Kiroku (1-2) > Gen'ei o Kakeru Taiyou: Il Sole Penetra le Illusioni (1-3) > Chou Jigen Game Neptume The Animation (1) > High School DxD NEW (1-4) > Futari wa Milky Holmes (1-2). WORSE THAN COSPRAYERS: Shingeki no Kyojin (13.5-14).

This chart started out as a joke, but has grown kinda out of control. Of course, the whole ranking anime thing started out as a joke too, and then suddenly five years went by.

Yoshino makes me want to eat smoked cheese more than Churuya ever did.

Gin no Saji (Silver Spoon) was easily the best summer 2013 series that I watched. It was consistently entertaining and I was impressed with how Hachiken's character developed over the show's 11 episodes. Even the quandary with "Pork Bowl" ended up much better than I expected. That was the plot point I had the most reservations about, but I'm quite pleased with how Silver Spoon resolved it.

Five will get you tengu he's going to trash the joint.

Uchouten Kazoku (The Eccentric Family) stands out among the summer 2013 shows for being intelligent about idiots and being strange while feeling familiar. The focus is on tanuki family dynamics, but it turns out the problems fuzzball shapeshifters have with their families aren't too different than those experienced by humans, except perhaps tanuki aren't as quick to embrace Shakespearean revenge tragedies. To be fair, all I really learned about tanuki is that they are dumbasses and that they are easily panicked, but maybe that's all anyone needs to know about tanuki.

Tall-collar service.

More importantly, I learned Mamiko can knock 'em dead better than ever. Her work as Benten was transcendent. I've never wanted to be a decrepit old man more. In fact, thanks mostly to Noto Mamiko's superb work, but also because Benten herself is such straight-up trouble, I'm nominating Suzuki Satomi for 2013 Girl of the Year. I'd also like to mention that Nakahara Mai is better than ever, although I encourage her to take more parts like her role in Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita and and fewer roles as young boys.

The Shimogamo matriarch is lucky so many dudes wanted to do her tanuki-style.

Senki Zesshou Symphogear G: In the Distance, That Day, When the Star Became Music... had a great ending. Basically, if you didn't like that final episode then you just don't like anime. That said, the show itself did have a few issues. First of all, Dr. Ver's comically evil persona never seemed particularly threatening, except for maybe when we learned he wanted to make babies with Maria. Second, Maria herself turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I certainly was not expecting her to spend most of the show crying. I guess it's a good thing there's not going to be a follow-up cour devoted to her efforts at repopulating the planet, because she'd probably cry the entire time then too.

Listen, sugar, either go back to whaling on some deadbeats
or help me repopulate the planet, but get to work.

Sorry, Maria really needed to focus more on tearing shit up and coming up with new cape-fu moves instead of all the moping she did. Still, I'll ignore a lot of faults when a show spends most of its time focusing on mahou shoujo whaling on each other while singing. Shirabe and Kirika were endearing even though their fights lost a lot of impact because there was no danger of anyone getting hurt. Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS already demonstrated that providing lots of collateral damage is not a substitute for emotional resonance.

The fan service in Prisma☆Illya gets out of control.

I've already written about the endings to Love Lab, Genshiken Nidaime, and Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya.

Oh, hey, it's Evangelion's Train of Despair.

Tokurei Sochi Dantai Stella Jo-Gakuin Koutou-ka C3-Bu spent too much time on Yura taking all the fun out of a game, but that was sort of the point. In a way, C3-bu felt as if Gainax wanted to stretch out a Gainax ending as far as they could. Technically, C3-bu did have a Gainax ending, but then they went ahead and made another episode that seemed to contain material I'd usually expect in a standalone OVA. Maybe that's the way it was originally planned, but someone figured at the last minute that it probably wouldn't sell or something.

I finished watching Turning Girls weeks ago.

Ran shows off her crazy metabolism again.

I fell behind on Detective Conan but managed to catch up by the time I finally got this thing written. As for Meitantei Conan itself, it's still a reliable control for comparing shows season-to-season. It does need more Kazuha, though. I was concerned maybe her prolonged absence was related to Miyamura Yuko's longer commuting requirements. (She moved to Australia a few years ago.) I'm not sure if that's a factor, but it appears autumn 2013 starts off with at least four Heiji (with Kazuha in tow) episodes to follow the two that finished up the summer 2013 season. I'm certainly in favor of a six-episode block of Kazuha episodes, but I'm curious if they would have been spaced out instead if Miyamura Yuko still lived in Japan.

Relax, yo. Cure Rosetta has got this.

DokiDoki! Precure did two notable things during the summer 2013 cour. One, it introduced a sass-talking Kugimiya Rie Cure. Two, it raised the stakes in the all-singing, all-dancing 3DCG ED wars. Aside from that, DokiDoki! is turning out to be one of the less interesting Pretty Cure generations, although episode 34 did have some rad Cure Rosetta beatdowns.

This made no sense, but I'll allow it.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun S needed more SATEN, but I'm glad it found excuses to trot her out in different hairstyles and various street clothes. The ending of the series was rather ridiculous with its casualty-free battle between espers and drones. I guess I was pleased to see SATEN behind the controls of a giant robot, though. P.S. Spoilers.

I already covered Dog and Scissors.

I won't revisit the shows I dropped except to say I also dropped Gatchaman Crowds. This one comes as a bit of a surprise because it seemed so promising after a strong start. However, I was unable to take the villain seriously and never cared what he did. I also did not sympathize with Rui at all nor had any interest in his reasons for crossdressing. The turning point was the episode where Rui is mercilessly beaten for what ended up being a hilariously long time and I realized I had absolutely no emotional investment in any of the characters and was only still watching to see how long Hajime could prolong her violently upbeat attitude. I fell behind after that, and once I learned how disappointed other fans were with the series finale, I decided to simply quit watching altogether.

Hey, sweetie, eyes on the God damn road.

This season summary is a lot more piecemeal than previous ones, but I kinda get the feeling the amount of time required to compile these things does not expand linearly with the number of additional shows watched. Maybe the one I write three months from now for the autumn 2013 shows will be a lot more cohesive and contain greater detail and not be dragged out over several weeks. At least, maybe it will be that way if I continue to watch only three shows. I've got up to 10 I might consider, but I can't see following more than seven for the time being.