glilimith

Makoto's dad is the real MVP. It's one thing to support your kid if they come out, but it's another to proactively say "if you're not sure, you should give it a try and see how you feel". On the other side, it's hell on earth to have a parent make your struggles about them, and Makoto's mom will not be forgiven.

I thought it was interesting that Makoto kept using "boku" even at the end of this episode, seemingly implying that they've settled on being a boy who likes crossdressing, though I still don't trust that that will hold and suspect they're deep in egg mode.

Also, Ryuuji, I'm still on your side here but you gotta step it up. You were absolutely put to shame this episode.

Happy to see Elusive Samurai jump up like this. I think it probably got overlooked before the season started because it's a historical fiction starring real historical figures (I did not learn this until after episode 2 because I don't pay attention), but I've heard the sakuga sections have been circulating and I suspect that's why it's picking up speed. Cloverworks is going ham with this one and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

For reference, and without too much spoiler content, here's what the show is up to

It's the subtle moments that I think really pull the show together. When Masha meets Kuze you can see the moment her brain goes from "this is my future brother in law so I should make friends with him" to "oh no, this is my longlost childhood friend / first love", and we never get any exposition explaining it, nor do we get any when she test him by speaking russian to him. Beautiful storytelling.

I'm honestly really sad for Masha. It's clear she's going to ultimately lose the love triangle, and I think she already knows that. The Sa-kun she was in love with is in the past, and while there are still some lingering feelings between them, they don't have a connection anymore like Kuze does with Alya. And Masha seems like she understands that doing anything other than letting those feelings go and moving on would ultimately do more damage to her sister and their relationship than it would do any good for herself or Kuze. But maybe that's just me reading into things a little and we'll end up with another mess like over in the other sister love triangle anime, lol.

So cute and so comfy. I'm liking this a LOT more than I expected to.

I was pretty sure that the revive + re-kill day was going to end up having revived Ryuuta, but I wasn't expecting that reveal to happen so quick, nor that no one would react to this revelation with any real amount of surprise. The explanations this episode were at least possible to follow, but it feels like they're doing set-up and reveal so quickly with these "mysteries" that it's hard to even follow what's happening. Because of that, it's difficult to even tell who is on whose side, what anyone's motivation is, and what the reason for any strategy is. But I'm grateful the wackiness is getting turned up via the prime rights, since it reminds me that there is no reason to take anything this anime is doing seriously.

I super don't trust Doga Kobo with any anime that has "children" in the name, but I looked it up and it looks like it's actually a different type of weird than I thought (adopted-sibling romance)! Not great, but better than what Doga Kobo's often up to....

Still not really sold on this yet, but I'll give it the full 3 episodes to prove itself. It definitely looks great, but I think it's sort of funny that Mashle, which has a very similar premise but in the form of a comedy, seems to consistently have higher stakes than this show. Like, it looks like the students who got taken out in the dungeon last time who I thought were for sure dead are actually just.... perfectly fine? So the only pressing issue here is "will MC see his girlfriend again" (without answering the question "why does he need to get accepted to and graduate from wizard grad school to be able to see her?")

ok, let's try this one

This is almost certainly the lowest-stakes mystery show I've ever seen. The case of the dry sink is solved! ....and I'm very mad at Kengo about it, lol. I loved that, even as pointless as the mystery was, the show still did the mystery thing of giving us all the little clues before we even knew they were important.

I went into this blind and last episode I suspected we were going to be getting a supernatural twist, but this time I'm leaning more away from that possibility. Either way I'll be curious to learn why these two weirdos have decided to "become ordinary", but I think a lot of the confusing scenes from last episode were symbolic or stylistic rather than literal, though I'm not sure what they all mean yet. For one of them, though, it seems clear to me that the shots of Kobato in place of the perpetrator (which happened in both mysteries) is expressing his process of looking at the mystery through someone else's eyes.

Now, let's see if I can solve the mystery of getting a screenshot to work.... (Edit: so far, no, but I'll give it a few minutes in case lemmy needs to think very hard about it) (Edit 2: I am too ordinary to solve this mystery, I guess)

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It's real rough watching the kids deal with the horrors of war, but they seem to be having fun, so i guess it's fine?

I feel like this show is getting slept on and I'm not really sure why. Cloverworks just keeps flexing, mixing and matching different artstyles to create just the right vibe of goofy and serious in a way that looks amazing all the time.

The shadows in this episode were SO distracting. It sounds like the studio outsourced a lot of the animation to a company that may have sub-contracted a studio in North Korea, and so a bunch of work had to get redone last minute, which definitely would explain the rough quality this episode has. Hopefully this will mostly affect early episodes and later ones will be able to get at least some of the time they need to look a bit better, but only time will tell.

As for the actual content, last episode I was worried we were going to lose Carlo before the story actually got started, and it turns out I was right T_T

But it's really funny to me that we're 2 episodes into a romance anime and the main romantic interest still has yet to even show his face. Maybe next time, lol.

Last season I made threads for every show I watched (which is all of them), but this time I figured I'd only make threads for ones I'm actually going to keep watching, so I'm going to dump all my thoughts about the dregs in his thread instead: