Anime

So first up for me this week was the rest of Punch Line, which I started last week. It was actually surprisingly good all in all. It started off really cheesy and contrived, and then wandered off into all sorts of seemingly disjointed weirdness, then actually pulled the entire mess together and tied all of up into a neatly complete and satisfying story. It wasn't great by any means, but it was entertaining enough, and if nothing else impressive just for making some sense of the mess it was in the middle.

Then I (sort of coincidentally) went on to an entirely different one that also turned out to be better than I expected - Sounan desu ka? aka Are You Lost?

It's a simple tale of four schoolgirls who are marooned on a desert island - an oujosama, a childish athlete, a meek meganekko and a loner who conveniently enough spent large parts of her childhood traveling around and learning how to survive in the wild with her father. The challenges they face are generally relatively minor and things work out relatively easily for them and it's mostly focused on character interactions and gag humor. And like Punch Line, it's not great by any means, but it was fine all in all.

Then came the highlight of the week, and one that's been on my TBW for years - Dimension W. And it was excellent. It's a fascinating and compelling story with a wide range of interesting characters, and it's very stylish and visually and musically appealing, but more than anything else, the two leads - Kyo and Mira - have wonderful chemistry. And Kyo drives one of the coolest cars ever - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_2000GT. I just enjoyed everything about it, from start to finish.

Then came another that's been on my TBW for years - Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai. I mostly enjoyed it but with one notable exception - as it went along, I found myself disliking Yozora more all the time, and by the OVA, I was ready to reach into the screen and just kick the living shit out of her myself. I don't care what sort of history she has - she's a foul, loathsome, cruel, vicious bully and she richly deserves every single awful and horrible thing that might ever happen to her in her sorry excuse for a miserable, fucked-up life.

Other than that though, it was okay all in all. 😁

Then, because I apparently hadn't had enough of dislikable characters, I finally did something I'd been steeling myself to do for a couple of years and dove into the second season of Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Comedy wa Machigatteiru.

The first season has the unique distinction of being the only anime I've ever seen that didn't have one single main character in it that I liked at all. It's not until you get to Hachiman's imouto that there's finally a character who isn't awful in one way or another.

But I guess, to their sort of credit, though they're all awful, none of them are as utterly vile as Yozora (though Haruno is close), and that made them sort of tolerable at least. Mostly though I'm just trying to slog through this season because my understanding is that they finally start being actually decent human beings in the third season, and I want to see that.