#i was not impressed just looking at the charts but there were soooo many Pleasant Surprise premieres <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[cospinol]

*finally* finished with summer anime four weeks into the fall season, OTL... not much of an isekai log this time around since i didn't watch the vending machine one or either of the ones with no clear gimmick or fucking mushoku tensei, but nonetheless here's my Bad Genre Is Still Bad check-in for summer '23 anime:

^ slim enough watchlist that i included eiyuu kyoushitsu on the basis of it being maou/yuusha bs even though that parameter for the category would technically include helck, which will not be featured in this post because i actually like it. not much to say about eiyuu kyoushitsu in and of itself (it's an episodic comedy with no single element of huge offence, but enough minor annoyances stacked up with no mitigating factors at all WILL net you a 2/10 eventually. also don't put the demon lord character in the intro if he's not going to be in the show i am so serious i can't keep getting fooled like this) but the fact that i hated it as much as i did IS a little microcosm of the larger pattern of the season, which is that i was excited that there were so many magic academy light novel adaptations because that ecological niche seemed to get naturally-selected out of existence around the time of the isekai boom and for some reason i remembered its golden age fondly...? anyways, liar liar also closed out at a 2/10 for an accumulation of annoyances with no redeeming qualities, and i dropped nanatsu no maken halfway through the season for getting on my nerves. lesson learned

and seija musou & okashi na tensei are both the most intensely Nothing To Write Home About that this genre can get, just operating on different skill levels - seija musou is almost fascinatingly amateurish with no tone, pacing, or even a gimmick to speak of (it may try to trick you by briefly dipping its toes in the concept of an rpg setting where all healers are evil(?) but don't be fooled, a solid third of the runtime is dedicated to the protagonist raising his stats by fighting zombies in a basement alone) but has no actual annoyances (aside from its minor obsession with the running gag of ostensibly funny nicknames - turns out that the principle of 'you can't give yourself a nickname' also applies to light novel authors' self insert characters) annoying enough to drop it down to a 2, while okashi na tensei is competently constructed, with at least a little thought given to its actual themes, some fun political scheming, and about as good a core cast as you're going to get in one of these (lady brioche my beloved...), but no strengths strong enough to bump it up to a 6. i'd watch a second season of okashi na tensei but i imagine i would leave with as little to say about it as this one

andddd i've been watching lastame at a pace such that i'll be lucky to finish it before the end of the year but my preliminary review (assuming it doesn't completely overhaul its established formula in the second half) is an easy 7/10 (no more no less), nice to see an otome villainess reincarnation story where the premise isn't completely incoherent and/or actively in contempt of its own genre for once, ok cast, good character design, suwabe playing a grimy bandit character with a heart of gold, etc