I've been catching up with Nippon Sangoku, and it's brilliant!

It's produced by Studio Kafka, which is in the Twin Engine group of studios, and the animation is just super

It's intelligently written, has an interesting and charming set of characters, and a very seinen feel to the plot.

Under the contrivance of a post-nuclear holocaust Japan that has reverted to Tokugawa technology level, this is effectively a Warring States drama, set in the ruins of modern Japan.

Although I do find it curious that nobody remembers how to make analog electronics, radio, or even industrial machinery from the post-WW2 era that Japan was famous for.

Edit: Best show of the season so far for me, but there's a lot that I haven't watched.

I completed both seasons of Assassination Classroom last week.

My initial impression of season 1 was just "meh". But the more I watched it, the more I enjoyed it. The humor was hitting for me, plus I liked the cast of 3E. It was nothing groundbreaking and has all the usual shonen tropes, but in terms of entertaining value it was fantastic.

The second season though...

It's obvious that they were building up towards the climax all throughout season 1 and the early parts of season 2, which means my expectation was built up, setting a higher bar for it to clear.

And yet it exceeded my expectations anyway.

In hindsight, it did everything right for me. The comedy and soundtracks suit my taste, the main cast of characters were sufficiently developed for me to care about them, and are actually sufficiently smart, etc.

There are a few things that I could nitpick here and there, but if there's one thing that I must call out, it's that some of cast weren't given enough screen time, and thus weren't sufficiently fleshed out. However, I do acknowledge that it is tough to balance the writing of such a big group of characters versus pacing and duration. So really the anime did as best as it could in this regard too.

A more meta complaint is: I picked this up because I wanted something lighthearted after catching up on all seasons of Made in Abyss. But it ended up being a gut punch.

But it's well worth it; definitely going into my Peak Shonen list

Watched a sort of interesting movie - Kimi no Koe wo Todoketai aka I Want to Deliver Your Voice.

It was a valiant attempt at a heartwarming slice-of-life, and had a pretty good central idea and nice art and character designs, but that was about it. The story was told too fitfully - sometimes too quickly and sometimes too slowly and with too many gaps, so it didn't flow as well as it should have. The animation, in spite of the nice design, was consistently subpar. The voice acting seemed to fail in random directions - sometimes too frantic, sometimes too dull, sometimes too loud, sometimes too quiet and so on. Overall, more than anything else, it felt like it was made by an unusually talented amateur anime club that got in way over its head - like it knew what it was trying to do, and occasionally achieved it, but mostly came up just a bit short, not through any lack of effort or anything like that, but just because the skill and experience wasn't there to add that last bit of polish that would've made it genuinely good.

And I suspect that that's pretty much what it actually was. It was made by Madhouse rather than an amateur anime club, but just from the feel of it, I'd be willing to bet that they took a few of their newer employees and maybe a few older employees who had never quite made it and said, "Here - here's a bit of a budget - you go do this and let us know when it's done." Like the management didn't really care one way or another and they were just sort of going through the motions to put out a slice-of-life drama, so the handful of employees were pretty much on their own with their pittance of a budget, and did the best they could with it, which was sort of admirable, but only sort of.

I liked it all in all, but it could easily have been much better.

Current stuff:

It struck me the other day that this has been an oddly mediocre season. It has a remarkable number of anime that are somewhat above average, but it also has essentially none that are much better than that. There hasn't been a standout either way really - either amazingly good or amazingly bad. It's just a whole lot of "Yeah - that's pretty decent I guess."

An Observation Diary of My Fiancee is still holding as my personal favorite of the season. As soon as you say "reincarnated as the villainess," you're notably getting into current cliche territory, but the story is told from a unique angle and has taken some unusual twists and turns, it neatly balances humor and drama and, most notably, Bertia is simply adorable, which is not only pleasant, but plot-relevant.

The Ramparts of Ice keeps getting better, essentially entirely because the characters keep growing and gaining detail as we get to know them better. What started out as a set of pretty straightforward stereotypes is becoming four very distinct personalities. Neat trick that - more anime should try it.

Agents of the Four Seasons appears to be setting up for a showdown, but is still scant on details, so that's necessarily, and unfortunately, fill-in-the-blank conjecture. Overall, the series almost managed to be a good mix of traditional ideas of Japanese gods and goddesses with crass modern opportunism and faceless government intrigue, but it's played its hand too close to its chest for too long. I have some pretty solid guesses about where it's headed, but that's all based on the most oblique of hints - even at this late date, they've revealed essentially nothing of any substance. And unfortunately, that makes it near certain that the end is going to feel rushed, because they're going to have to reveal too much too quickly in order to fill in all the blanks.

In poking around a bit the other day, I stumbled on a very simple fact about Akane Banashi that, had I known it from the start, would've saved me having to wrestle with the then-unfulfilled fear that it wasn't going to actually settle anything, and was instead heading toward bland shounen action perpetual motion - it's a Shounen Jump series. So of course that's what it's heading toward - there's literally no alternative.

I'm likely not going to drop Akane Banashi, but only because I've come this far so I might as well see it out. I don't expect any surprises.

I have effectively dropped a bunch of series, but none of them because I'm no longer interested in watching them. Instead, it's just started to feel too much like work keeping up with series that combine unusual settings and a fair amount of mystery and intrigue - having to re-acclimate myself to the setting and story every week, only to get a bit of it, then have to wait until next week for more. So instead I'm going to binge them all later. That includes Snowball Earth, Nippon Sangoku, Killed Again Mr. Detective, Needy Girl Overdose and Scum of the Brave.

And My [horribly localized] Reincarnation is still a surprising gem. Not only is it consistently funny and impressively animated - it keeps revealing additional details about the characters that are interesting in their own right. And funny.

Not exactly a unique opinion, but that cliffhanger was wild. I need the next episode ASAP.