At least the flower on her head is not a fried egg.

I started watching Seikaisuru Kado because it is an entirely 3DCG anime, and I liked at least one of Toei's 100% 3DCG things, Rakuen Tsuihou: Expelled from Paradise. Unfortunately, Kado: The Right Answer, despite not featuring periodic shots of Angela Balzac's spanking-brand-new 16-year-old butt, is a lot less interesting than Expelled from Paradise. In fact, the most compelling episode thus far was the episode zero prologue about chrome plating, to such an extent I sort of wish the series were entirely about chrome plating instead.

The face of a Best Girl trapped in a harem comedy with a loathsome protagonist.

Despite some very questionable components, I liked the first season of Saekano a decent amount. Unfortunately, its Saenai Heroine no Sodate-kata♭ sequel (How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend Flat) isn't working for me. All of the problems I have with the show were present during the first season, but either the execution was better or I was simply more willing to accept its shortcomings, something I acknowledged when I blogged about it. Ultimately, it's Potato-kun being a shitbag and the show's proselytization of the Otaku Virtues that kill my enthusiasm for Saekano Flat. These are the sort of bits that can sort of work from a meta perspective when lightly used, but the heavier a show relies on these tropes, the less meta it feels and the more bona fide it becomes. And then you just end up with regular ol' tsundere bullshit and a harem comedy gravity well which pulls inversely proportional to its hold on reality.

I bet those boxes are empty.

What I'm left with is loathing for Potato-kun and open disdain for every other character on the show with the sole exception of Megumi, who has rocketed so far ahead in the show's Best Girl standings that she can almost assuredly boat race the rest of the competition from here on out. And this is nearly entirely a consequence of her (thus far, through six episodes and one pool-romp prologue) refusal to go along with Tomoya's high-intensity idiocy. That said, I'm still not quite as hostile to the show as these couple of paragraphs might suggest, so it's not as if I intend to drop it. I'm just disappointed Saekano Flat keeps tumbling into avoidable pitfalls. The show is unworthy of its animation and its Misaki Kurehito superlovely character designs. I guess it does deserve the glare of displeased long-hair Megumi, though.

Fruits Basket Face.

I think it's reasonable to expect a few changes to Pretty Cure now that it's been running for more than 13 years. Its current iteration, Kirakira☆Pretty Cure à la Mode, deviates a bit from typical Precure norms, but not too drastically. For one thing, this is a "furry" Precure in that the transformed forms incorporate a few animal-based cues. We're still talking about the sort of thing children play at, and not lifestyle choices. We also have a couple of high school students as Cures again. There's precedent for this, but they're pretty rare. Nearly all Cures (and there are a shitload of them now) are 14-year-old middle school students.

That tail is too big.

The biggest change, however, is that they are no longer "legendary warriors," but are "legendary pâtissières" instead. Yes, those of you who remember this entry, baking is back. It works, though. The war has got to end at some point, right? Magikal girls might embody Peace Through Strength, but maybe its okay for them struggle against something other than chaos and destruction. Cure Whip does suck at baking, though. Considering that Peace Through Baking is supposed to be the underlying theme of Kirakira☆Pretty Cure à la Mode, it's a bit sad that she's so terrible at it. Cure Bloom and Cure Rhythm must feel so bad for her. Saki and Kanade can't ever appear in a crossover bake sale with Ichika. They'd stand there baffled by her ruined batch of chocolate chip cookies (some of which are still on fire) and have to pretend people will still buy them.

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.

No pressure.

My preconceptions about Shūmatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? (WorldEnd: What are you doing at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? also known as SukaSuka) were generally negative. After all, it's an anime adaptation of a light novel with a stupidly long title. It also seems to feature a lot of shrimpy anime children. Moreover, the lead is a male character who seems to be absent from much of the promotional art, which instead focuses on yet another girl with a sword. On the plus side, her hair isn't red and she didn't seem to use fire magic. That's at least a departure. And she has a giant witch hat. So, while I could find positive aspects, it was not an inspiring first impression. Nevertheless, I was at least willing to give it a shot. Thankfully, through three episodes, Shūmatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii Desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii Desu ka? is surprisingly all right.

Ruri cosplaying as Mini-Kashima.

Notably, the show has neat little gags. And while they aren't kneeslappers, they are a lot more amusing and deft than the sort of thing you typically find in run-of-the-mill light novel adaptations. Does it also feature a duel between the male lead and the female lead? Of course. That's basically a given. However, I liked the way the scene played out, making it apparent why Chtholly was getting so agitated without dwelling too much on it during the short fight itself. I am at least willing to accept them both as soldiers.

I like the design of Chtholly's wings.

Now, three episodes is not enough to make reliable projections as to how the rest of the show might turn out. That positive three-episode run might just be a lucky streak and the rest of the show could pretty easily turn into a garbage fire, but it's a good start so far, and a welcome surprise for something I had nearly written off on general principle. Alternatively, it could also easily turn into Saikano, which is itself not necessarily a bad possibility. Having lots of shrimpy anime kids in a war story does increase the likelihood that it will end up with wall-to-wall dead kids to generate maximum traumarama. What can I tell you? War is all Hell. Sometimes even light novel war.

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.

Most of that will buff right out.

I learned everything I know about the Granblue Fantasy game from an IRC and the Twitter. It seems like it would be a moderately amusing way to waste time, but I'm mystified at how dedicated some of the players are, particularly those who probably would not self-identify as especially hardcore or committed. It seems as if there is an addictive quality to the gameplay, because when people talk about how they are doing, the representations always seem to be about quantifiable achievements and metrics, instead of how much fun they are having. This (admittedly small) circle of fans seems disinterested in the anime. They are either critical of its quality, or they ignore it entirely because it stars Gran (the male player character) instead of Djeeta (the female player character alternative).

At least take off the metal gauntlet first.

I am watching Granblue Fantasy the Animation with no real understanding of the gameplay or story and only the aforementioned framework as any sort of context. From this vantage, Granblue Fantasy the Animation seems "fine," but isn't particularly captivating. It's a fantasy anime with fantasy-type elements, but these elements are not components of a well-thought-out world, but rather just there because they're just expected to be there or because they make for neat visuals. Just don't be thinking too much about them; it's fine.

She's even wearing her new sandals indoors.

As for the characters themselves, again, they are merely adequate or unobjectionable, without really any particular aspect that seems interesting or novel so far. The antagonists who have been introduced through three episodes are all very obviously villainous with cartoonishly evil voices to assist the audience in establishing cursory perspectives about them without having to really pay attention. Maybe Djeeta has something going for her, and the show suffers dramatically from her omission, but—as I understand it—the game plays out exactly the same regardless of whether the player chooses to play as Gran or as Djeeta anyway, so I'm not sure what her presence in the anime might have improved aside from perhaps maybe everything just works so much better because Djeeta is easy on the eyes.

Is there a reason why the shrimpiest character is the only one with a Big Gulp?

Granblue Fantasy the Animation also competes with Zero kara Hajimeru Mahou no Sho (Grimoire of Zero) and Shuumatsu Nani Shitemasu ka? Isogashii desu ka? Sukutte Moratte Ii desu ka? (WorldEnd: What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?) this season, both of which are better shows for the time being. The former has Not Shimakaze explaining the difference between majutsu and mahou (a distinction you may remember from Fate/stay night) and is yet another entry on my list of anime about people who love books, along with Read or Die, R.O.D. the TV, Dantalian no Shoka, and Demonbane. SukaSuka is the adaptation of a light novel and has a super-long title, so I'm pretty dubious about it, but the first episode was reasonably good and non-objectionable, so maybe it has some promise. It's too early to tell how Granblue Fantasy the Animation is going to end up, but it's starting in third place among its peers.

Looks like 2016, going by the calendar.

From what I've been able to gather based on the first episode, the basic premise of Re:CREATORS involves the arrival of various characters from contemporary popular fiction to the land of their authors: Japan. That is, rather than Potato-kun getting hit by a truck and reincarnating in a fantasy world, characters from these fantasy light novel, video game, and/or anime worlds are transported to Japan instead. There have been shows with similar premises (e.g., Hataraku Maou-sama!), but this twist is still fresh enough to give Re:CREATORS the edge in capturing my attention this season.