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Dated 16 November 2021: I don't care if Takt Op. Destiny probably isn't supposed to be written as {tákt: op. Destiny}

Ms. Brown, Cosette, and Anna
To a Musicart with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I'm adding braces and styling the title of {tákt: op. Destiny} this way because doing so approximates how it appears in the anime. It also seems appropriate because the series itself is also very stylish, possibly to its detriment. It is a neat looking show, but I don't know if I can call it good. Nevertheless, at a minimum, the idea of using eccentric superpowered girls to fight off the monsters that attack whenever they detect music is sort of interesting. It's not exactly the sort of anime that everyone will like, though.

Walküre
Walküre should definitely be singing while fighting.

It would probably benefit {tákt: op. Destiny} to feature more music. Since the focus is on classical music, I guess it's not realistic to expect the Musicarts to sing while fighting, Symphogear style. I would absolutely enjoy an aria or two, but Takagaki Ayahi is not in the cast, and I don't expect there are many other seiyuu who would theoretically be up to the task.

Takt, Cosette, and Anna
I find it odd that no one is riding shotgun.

This is also a road trip anime. I appreciate those because they're sort of rare. (I get the feeling Japan's extensive rail infrastructure contributes to the relative scarcity of road trip anime.) It works here because {tákt: op. Destiny} is set in the United States. I guess it's not technically a road trip anime, but there is a road trip in it. Close enough, eh.

Dated 19 October 2021: In re Isekai Shokudou 2: Still looks like a nice place to eat

Aletta
Aletta is pleasant.

There's honestly not all that much to Isekai Shokudou (Restaurant to Another World), but I enjoyed the first season enough to watch its sequel. Isekai Shokudou 2 continues its first season's parade of enthusiastic patrons whose displays of excitement are not entirely over the top, unlike some other food-reaction-shot anime. I at least don't remember any guests literally orgasming from their meals.

Kuro
Kuro is pleasant on the inside.

There's also not really very much tension or drama. There are a number of side plots related to the customers and how they happened to find the magic door to the restaurant, but these are also secondary to showing off the various dishes and encouraging viewers to try them. In that respect, Restaurant to Another World is fairly successful. At a minimum, it's a reminder that I have available to me an incredible assortment of different cuisines and the means to sample them (even if they do cost more than a few coppers, typically). I should probably do so more often. I don't even need to travel to another world to do it.

Dated 10 August 2021: Here we go again (Umimi 2021)

Umi
It's already been five years.

Dated 11 May 2021: Godzilla Singular Point seems to have more than one point

Mei
Mei stares a lot in this show.

I don't actually know that much about the Godzilla franchise, but I'm under the impression that the movies typically start with people noticing something unusual, and then something really unsettling happens, and then everyone gets their shit wrecked, sometimes by Godzilla, sometimes by whatever Godzilla is fighting. This at least holds true of the few Godzilla properties I have seen, and it seems to hold true in the Godzilla Singular Point anime.

Jet Jaguar
Have harpoon gun. Will travel.

Godzilla doesn't appear in the first six episodes of Godzilla S.P, but there is a nerdy grad student who wears birth control glasses that are constantly on the verge of sliding off her face. There's also an AI that's probably technically malware, and an old man with a bitchin' car and a totally sweet garage-built robot, and some regular dudes who don't have the greatest survival instincts, but are getting by so far nevertheless.

Yun, Gorou, and Haberu
You have to be the size of a child to fit in this robot.

As an anime, Godzilla Singular Point is pretty good so far, and is probably worth your time once it hits the U.S. Netflix at, I dunno, some later date. Or at least it's worth your time providing you have any sort of interest in either Godzilla or nerdy girls who wear birth control glasses. At a minimum, it's better than the three-movie 3DCG thing that's already on the Netflix. That one just wasn't very compelling. I did feature Ueda Reina, though.

Dated 23 February 2021: Back Arrow is full of idiots

Shuu, Bit, and Sola
Here is the stupidest character flanked by the smartest one and the second-smartest one.

I think I enjoy Back Arrow, but these characters are all so dumb. I mean, they're supposed to be, for comedic effect, but it's sort of extraordinary. The villagers are the worst offenders. The series introduces one of the main characters in the first episode by having her rescue—at the last possible second—a child who pretends to accidentally fall off a cliff because she enjoys the thrill of being saved in mid-air. Later, an amnesiac plummets from the sky in a pod. The villagers assume it contains food and start a large fire under it to cook its contents (without checking to see what's in it first). This inspires the pod's mysterious passenger to leap out and create a ruckus. If this is how the village prepares all of its meals, remind me to never eat there.

Ren
Actually, the lady with the fucked-up bangs is probably second-smartest.

Anyway, this is the sort of cartoonish logic that governs the characters' behavior. But at some point, Back Arrow just needs to ditch these villagers. First of all, they worship The Wall because they're superstitious nincompoops. And they are literally dead weight. Like, they're all on this massive mobile battle fortress, and none of them figured out how to turn on the lights. They're still huddling in tents and burning wood to stay warm instead of just taking up inside the dreadnought's living quarters. Maybe they're distrustful of these accommodations because their captive was the one who informed them of these facilities and the galley (which they're also not using, of course, but I've already gone over their culinary failures). Again, this is all done for laughs, but I don't think the gags are going to stay amusing enough to justify dragging these hicks around for two cours. Especially Bit. Fuckin' hate Bit. Kid's worthless.

Dated 15 December 2020: I'm probably less likely to watch Wonder Egg Priority if I find out what it's about before it starts

Ai
Every word in Wonder Egg Priority is English, but that combination has no meaning!

The Winter 2021 anime season is going to be a busy one. Not only are there a mess of sequels coming out, there are also a fair number of anime-original offerings for anyone exhausted from years of light novel adaptations. One such show is Wonder Egg Priority from CloverWorks which recently released a PV but offered basically no other information. I know it features a character with heterochromia and there is at least one dekochin, but I'm otherwise entirely ignorant about it. However, I am curious enough to watch at least the first episode, and it seems likely the anime will at least look good.

Elisha
I guess this post is getting the "Girls With Guns" tag.

The promotional material for another original anime, Back Arrow, features cowboys and giant robots. These are not things I associate with each other (well, there was Bakuretsu Tenshi years ago), so there's the potential for some originality here. It's reportedly going to be at least two cours and I'm reasonably confident Bones isn't going to just half-ass this project. It looks like it has a fairly large cast, too, and I spotted Ueda Reina's name associated with the show. The combination of these factors are enough to get me to at least check it out. The PV could use more robots, though.

Shadow and Reki
Prince of Stride: Alternative at least had Hanakana supporting its racers.

Among the remaining original anime offerings, I'm almost certainly going to ignore all the ones about idols. I'm also staying away from the GoHands project which looks suspiciously like another secret sequel to Hand Shakers. You're not getting me twice, fuckers. On the upside, there is a racing show called SK∞ (SK8 the Infinity) about dudes skateboarding down into a mine shaft while beating the shit out of each other. It probably suffers from not-enough-anime-girls syndrome, but it might turn out to still be entertaining anyway.

Dated 10 August 2020: Here we go again (Umimi 2020)

Umi
Philips 1180X
Close enough, eh.

Dated 7 April 2020: I finally finished Dimension W

Dimension W manga volume 16 cover
The glow-in-the dark covers are a nice touch.

The Dimension W anime ran for 12 episodes during the Winter 2016 anime season. I liked it a lot more than I was expecting—specifically, good enough that I started buying the manga. It took four years, but I have the final (16th) volume now. This took a bit longer than I would have liked, but the manga itself was still ongoing when the anime ended. (The manga completed in June 2019.) Ideally, there would be less time between when an anime ends and when its source material wraps up. I, for one, would much rather watch original anime or adaptations of properties that have already concluded, but those types of shows do seem to be in the minority. At least four years no longer seems like an extraordinary amount of time to wait after an anime stops airing before finding out how the series ends. I'm not sure if that's necessarily a good thing, though. I have to admit it's a little troubling to notice how fast years seem to whip by now.