Rindis.com

Well, it’s been three months, and a new season of anime is about to start. There’s been more distractions and problems here than normal, so it has been more like only two months of watching.

Yamato 2202 — Now that the entire series is out, we’ve circled around to start over from the beginning to get the entire story fresh. We’re still in the part we’d seen before the long delays between episodes stopped us, but as ever is being excellent.

Ascendance of a Bookworm — We’re now into the second season of rewatching with the guys, and maybe midway through that. Everyone is definitely enjoying it, especially with the head priest’s growing exasperation of Myne’s nearly instinctual rocking of the boat with ideas that seem to come from… nowhere.

Lower Decks — I picked up the blue-ray of second season a bit after it came out, and we’re all of four episodes into it. So far, they’ve been solid episodes; the arc getting Boimler back to the Cerritos is an odd thing to juggle, and tended to occasionally disrupt episodes, but overall was well handled.

Komi Can’t Communicate — We’ve only seen the first few episodes (suggested by Baron). It’s been very good; one of those well-written anime that has a point far beyond its story. It got accidentally dropped thanks to our break in viewing, but we’ll certainly come back to watch the rest.

Devil is a Part Timer — We were all very happy to see another season of this finally come out. We’ve shifted gears on the plot, so I assume we’re about half way through and entering the second novel adaptation of the season. It has been continuing to be very funny and hitting a lot of the right notes with all of us.

Jobless Reincarnation — Okay, this has been far better than I thought it possible to be. Smudge and I are well into… third? season now. The main painful point is just how much of a pervert the main character can be, but much of the time there is way too much adventure and other things going on for that to impinge to hard. Better yet, there’s a lot of well-done characters, and Mr Pervert is truly growing as a character.

Orbital Children — Finished this off shortly after the last post. It got a lot more head-trippy at the end than I would have expected, though plot-structure-wise it carried out all its promises. Not excellent, but well worth a watch, especially if you need more SF.

A Lull by the Sea — So, we’re in the second half, which has a five-year transition break in the plot. Of course some of the characters have been in hibernation for this period, so…. It was a bit jarring to find out that this is supposed to be happening in modern-day Japan, instead of a place that just happens to look a bit like it and also has people who live underwater. The second half is really showing that this is developed from a visual novel; I’m a bit happier with the first half in retrospect for not making it so obvious.

Utawarerumono: The Mask of Truth — Smudge and I just recently picked up the latest series after the last one was a bit of a letdown at the conclusion. Again, it’s been long enough for us to have to spend some effort remembering who everyone is, but it is continuing along the route of well done-politics and strategy.

Kingdom — My comments last time are still true. A series that doesn’t even begin to live up to its own strengths. A lot of it is being aimed very squarely at a male junior high audience, and the lowest common denominator version at that.