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Okay, the ‘wait for me to finish a season’ delay got so bad that I missed an entire summary post. So, we should be about at the start of a new anime season, and here’s what I’ve watched semi-recently. …Not all anime, but in rough order of recommendation.

Picard — I picked up the first season Blue-ray a bit ago, and we all just finished watching it last week. Any raves you’ve heard about it are correct; they did a really good job, and I’m eager to see the next two seasons. It goes a little more shaky-cam than I’d like on occasion, but other than that, the production is really well done, and the writing is great all through the show.

Violet Evergarden: The Movie — The biggest problem was figuring out when we were going to schedule a 2 1/2 hour movie for everyone. The series was very good, and this movie lived up to it very well. The usual conundrum of how to explain things for people who haven’t seen the series was handled very gracefully, and makes this the best series-to-movie move I’ve seen. Highly, highly recommended whether you’ve seen the series or not. (Though, go back and watch that too, it’s worth it.)

World Trigger — My biggest disappointment earlier this year was actually getting through the (current) end of this, after a very long time of getting through it all. After a sub-par start, the series got very good, and kept it up in the more recent seasons. So, I’m sad not to have solid show anchoring my watch schedule.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’ve been showing this to the guys, who certainly started liking it once past the first episode. We’re just no hitting the second season, so we’re still a ways out from the most recent season that started about the time we introduced them to the show.

Wakfu — I was unsure of the start of the third series, but it rapidly got better, and the ending sequence of episodes definitely wasn’t what I’d expected from the early parts of the series. All of the Wakfu and Dofus series need more attention as they’ve been very good.

Orbital Children — Smudge and I saw the first episode, and put it on the ‘to watch with the guys’ list. We’re now about halfway through, and it is continuing to be impressive. The budget’s pretty good, the world building is very good. The plot is trying to juggle about three major ideas at the same time, and succeeding. More good SF is always needed, and this is delivering.

Hisuian Snow — This is a short Pokemon OAV series that’s started coming out, and like all the specials they’ve done lately, it’s really well done. They spend a lot on the art budget on these, and stories are good too.

Girls Last Tour — This is a quiet post-apocalyptic tale. Two girls tour through the wreckage of a giant wrecked city on a kettenkrad. Most everyone else is dead, so there’s only occasional extra characters, leaving most of the time to Chito and Yuuri talking, questioning, and philosophizing on various subjects. Think… philosophical travelogue.

A Lull by the Sea — Smudge showed me the first episode of this a while back, but I didn’t bite (I barely remember the fact of that). Currently, pickings are a bit thinner on the ground, and I’ve just started this (three episodes so far), and it’s being good. We have a world that looks a lot like ours (above the surface), but some people can natively live under the water. It’s really something of a metaphor for the emptying rural life in Japan, and the drama’s being fairly good.

Forest of Piano — Okay, I have problems. A piano sits abandoned in the woods for years, and is still playable. Past that bit of fantasy, it’s a good drama with the usual decent-sized cast of characters, and the world of classical music.

Kingdom — This continues to be a potentially good series wrecked by its own production values. The dub is very sub-par (not too bad for, say, an early ’90s dub, but we’ve moved past that now), and it’s hard to say just how many problems are the writing and how many are the translation, but I have feeling they’re not doing each other any favors.

Pokemon Journeys — I’m surprised. Smudge and I have caught up with this. Well, what’s been released on the Pokemon Network so far; it’s likely it’s being delayed from Netflix. At any rate, it continues to be okay, and generally not much more than that. They recently did the sequence where they go through the main 8th Gen games’ plot, which is often weak when it hits the show, and continued to be so here.