Yeah, Hotaru's eyes are always like that.

I'm not going to watch all of these shows, but here are the ones at least on the radar. They're even sort of in order.

• Dagashi Kashi: The original manga about cheap ass candy is fucking delicious. I don't see how anyone could screw this up as long as the anime keeps the crazy crossed eyes and incredulous reaction faces. This is your best God damn show, right here.
• Gate: Jieitai Kanochi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri second cour: Yeah, I know most viewers have a fairly negative opinion of this show. I'm almost inclined to say they're opposed to it as a matter of principle because it glorifies the military, sort of like how some readers loathe Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers because they find it "fascist." Whatever, man. This is some good shit.
• Aikatsu!: I only gave Aikatsu! another chance fairly recently, but I'm totally on board now. Bring on the idol activities!
• Go! Princess Precure and Mahou Tsukai Precure!: The current season will end in about a month with episode 50. I'll be sad to see it go, but the next iteration is frickin' WITCH PRECURE for crying out loud. We're there.
• Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu: I don't really know what this is about. Something about an ex-con who just wants to tell stories? In any case, it seems different, and probably won't have any of that "moé shit" people love to cry about.
• Dimension W: I'm going to watch this for Ueda Reina and the Toyota 2000GT.
• Luck & Logic: ORIKASA FUMIKO. Holy shit. Omigawa Chiaki, Kayano Ai, and Ueda Kana are in this too, as are Uesaka Sumire, Taneda Risa, Touyama Nao, and Minase Inori. I hope this doesn't turn out to be too much bullshit about the trading card game or whatever, but I'll at least give it a chance thanks to the cast.
• Akagami no Shirayuki-hime 2nd Season: I'll watch the second cour if I ever get around to finishing the first one. I stopped watching because I was tired of watching Snow White getting conveniently rescued from would-be rapists every week, but I heard the show stopped being about that.
• Detective Conan: Yep, here's my control.
• Hai to Gensou no Grimgar: Eh, it has pretty watercolors.
• Prince of Stride: Alternative. As an avid runner, I have to watch this. I'm also guaranteed to drop it in disgust the minute someone does something unrealistic, like I did after the first chapter of Suzuka.
• Ao no Kanata no Four Rhythm: I know at least one person who's psyched about this, so I'll give it a try. Something about flying kids.
• Oshiete! Galko-chan: Something about three girls fucking off in class. Based on a manga which I've not read.
• Ajin: The manga is sort of interesting. Kaji Yuuki is in this, though.
• Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo!: It's DEEN, but it has girls who twist their bodies a lot, at least according to the promo art. That's something, right? Really, though, I am curious to see what Studio Deen is up to these days, and Deen is responsible for the best anime of all time. Besides, the people who were loudest at jeering, "LOL DEEN," were the ones who worshiped SHAFT until Madoka went mainstream.
• Divine Gate: I guess it would be interesting to watch TWO shows called Gate in the same season, right? Besides, Ito Kanae is in this.
• Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut: I really wish this would have come out three months ago so we could have had a triumvirate with Cavalry and Asterisk. It's the same setup.
• Musaigen no Phantom World: Eh, it's Kyoto Animation. I'll keep watching if it involves ghost girlfriends.
• Shoujo-tachi wa Kouya wo Mezasu: This sounds like a shittier Saekano.
• Ooya-san wa Shishunki!: This is a three-minute show, right? I ain't watching if it's not a three-minute show.
• Mahou Shoujo Nante Mouiidesukara.: I think the period is part of the title. How bad could it be? It has Mahou Shoujo right in the title!
• Sushi Police: This looks too shitty to not at least try.
• Ojisan to Marshmallow: It's got an old dude as the love interest. That never happens.
• Nurse Witch Komugi-chan R: Eh...it's not Momoi as Komugi. But she plays her mom instead. Is that good enough?
• Nijiro Days: Shoujo about three dudes? I guess one is in love with some chick and the other two dudes cockblock him for sport?
• Bubuki Buranki: I have no idea what this is, but it's an original anime. That still counts for something, right?
• Boku dake ga Inai Machi: I'm not especially interested in this time travelling manga artist mystery thingy, but whatever. Really, I'm just not up for another noitaminA show right about now.
• Heavy Object: This show is hot garbage. I should really just stop watching. Seriously. Hot garbage.

Christ, that is a lot of shows. There are also a bunch of specials and OVAs. I hope you weren't relying on me to keep track.

This merchandise prints money, girls. At least pretend to be excited.

I recently re-watched the original Futari wa Pretty Cure (hereinafter First Precure), Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart, and Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star. I.e., the first three years of the franchise, consisting of nearly 150 episodes plus three movies. Anyone who has been paying attention likely already knows I consider First Precure to be the best overall series of this mahou shoujo juggernaut and Splash Star to be the most underrated one. Admittedly, to some degree, much of this is due to nostalgia glasses and a not-so-subtle attempt to trumpet ground-floor-fan cred, but these first two generations of Cures really are good in ways unique to Pretty Cure as a whole—ways we're not likely to see again.

Raising Heart gets to be in the show, but Bardiche didn't have a single line.

As long as they keep making more Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha anime I'll keep watching them, providing the shows are not complete shite. I'll even keep watching even if Nanoha and Fate aren't in the show anymore, even if it barely qualifies as mahou shoujo anymore, and even if it stops being lyrical. Once a franchise I'm following gets enough momentum, I'll pretty much keep watching new installments. Well, providing the anime continues to hit above the Cosprayers Line, that is.

Nanoha doesn't always tell Fate everything.

This is pretty much how I ended up watching all of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid. It's not good by any means, but it's particularly bad either. Every episode of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid seems content to underachieve with bloop singles, never swinging for the fences like its early predecessors. Unfortunately, I can remember approximately fuck all from the previous installment, Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS (it's been eight years!) and I don't read any of the Nanoha manga, so I didn't know hardly any of the ViVid characters at all.

"I said, I, I, ah ah ah, I, I want the knife."

It turns out it's not actually necessary to know any of the Nanoha ViVid characters, because there's also no plot and the anime doesn't have an ending. In fact, the anime didn't even try to fake a non-ending ending; it just drops off where I presume it left off in the manga and follows up with a low-effort clip show summarizing most of the Einhart (Einhard, whatever) moments from the 12-episode run, pretty much for no reason.

Ass shot.

Speaking of whom, Einhart starts the show as the putative villain. She uses ANCIENT BELKA magic and picks fights with random people. With the potential for DARK MAMIKO in the wings, so far so good. But then she's hit with the most powerful attack in the Nanoha universe, Friendship, and the series decides to coast from there and cruise through the Onsen Episode, Training Sequence, and Tournament Arc checkpoints.

The Chantez Series? They've been completed?

Training sequences were the bane of StrikerS, and aren't much better in ViVid, but at least they don't seem to drag out endlessly. Unfortunately, essentially none of the tournament battles in Nanoha ViVid save the Corona v. Einhart bout mattered to me because I didn't know any of the characters and thus didn't care who won or lost. But the ViVid tournament arc doesn't even finish during the course of the season. I suppose if and when someone scrapes together some more dirty Nanoha money, perhaps we'll see the end of the tournament in a split cour. We'll still need some sort of plot for the show, though. Is it too late for Einhart to start ripping people's heads off? What if someone kills her kitten?

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.

Vivio's heterochromia is excessive.

The first 10 episodes of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid essentially went by as background noise because I "watched" them without actually paying much attention. For example, when underboob nun appeared in her red cropped habit last episode, I didn't realize she was the nun from the previous episode because her habit in that episode was blue instead of red. Oh, and it didn't leave her half-naked. I'm barely following Nanoha ViVid because I don't know any of the characters (sort of a Catch-22, that), I can't remember anything from the previous series (StrikerS), and I think this whole tournament thing is rather pointless.

I wonder if this is the same church Ciel goes to?

You see, I'm one of those jokers who thinks the best season of Nanoha was First Nanoha (technically I think the best "season" was the second half of the first season and the first half of A's). StrikerS was a complete drag because it seemed to consist mostly of tensionless training sessions in a conveniently deserted urban ghost town occasionally interrupted by fights with pregnant clones. Then years went by, so don't expect me to remember who all the Numbers are after all this time. Hell, I've spent most of ViVid wondering if Bardiche is going to talk or if something happened to the voice actor. My highlight thus far was seeing FATE TESTAROSSA drive a minivan.

Never bring a knife to a starlight breaker fight.

But all this changes next episode because Corona is fighting Einhart. Or more accurately, Corona is going to get fuckin' WORKED by Einhart. Hell, I give it a 50/50 chance that Einhart overboosts some attack, momentarily unleashes DARK MAMIKO, and puts Corona into a coma so the cour can come to a close with at least a little drama. I'm pretty sure extensive ViVid spoilers ought to be readily available. The anime is based on a manga, isn't it? Anyway, Corona is the shrimpy kid who pulled a cake knife on her opponent in an alley during an intermurals match. It was a funny enough image to distinguish her from the other more boringer characters.

Yes, Einhart's magical jobbie is a kitten.

Anyway, Corona's tournament fight against Einhart continues in the upcoming episode. Einhart was set up early on as the evil so-and-so reincarnated as a little girl who smokes the dog shit out of honorable decent characters not named Nanoha or Fate. But then everyone ganged up on Einhart and befriended the Hell out her so she (just like everybody else in the series) has done fuck all since. I don't know how many more episodes of Mahou Shoujo Lyrical Nanoha ViVid are left, and I don't know any of the manga spoilers, so I get to at least anticipate one episode of this otherwise boring series because it'll probably feature a MAMIKORE beat down as Einhart loses her cool, lets a little Old Evil leak out, and drags Corona up and down the Thunderdone, maybe forcing all the other characters to pile on in order to take her down. Don't worry, I'm sure Corona will be fine after some mild convalescing, and Einhart will be sorry for what she did.

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.

Yes, Sawashiro Miyuki voices a a Pretty Cure character now.

I'm pleased that Go! Princess Precure continues to have solid fight scenes and generally has good production values. These are pretty important attributes when your primary reason for watching Pretty Cure is to see girls in pretty dresses kicking deadbeats in the neck. Oh yeah, the characters are also good. I'm particularly enamored with Kirara, the model who chimes in to remind impressionable young viewers that it's also important to be beautiful after Haruka boasts about being strong and Minami adds, "Be excellent to each other!" But seriously, though, it must be humiliating to get your ass beat by a 13-year-old calling herself Cure Twinkle.

This is not a pretty dress.

All three of them routinely wreck shit, actually. It's a relief since I was expecting Cure Flora, the lead Cure, to be freaking out about being more princessish by now. The inevitable fourth Cure hasn't appeared yet, but I don't have any reason to worry she'll usher in a wave of nonsense about feelings and stuff. Actual spoilers are probably available now, but based strictly on guesswork, I'm presuming the fourth Cure will either be Haruka's roommate or the recently introduced Sawashiro Miyuki villain. Just as long as it isn't Pafu, the dog mascot thing. I'm still racist when it comes to non-human Cures.

At least they didn't make her bend over the entire time.

I'm looking forward more to the upcoming Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya 2wei Herz! series than I am to each weekly installment of Fate/stay night: Unlimited Blade Works. This is not because I think the former is a much better series. (I was only moderately impressed with the last Prisma☆Illya installment.) On the contrary, ufotable's adaptation of Unlimited Blade Works has been excellent thus far, so I should like it more than I do. True, the Fate/stay franchise itself carries a lot of baggage, but the fact that this baggage exists isn't what's affecting my anticipation so much. It's because I already I know what happens for the most part.