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Smudge and I just finished up a couple series, right as the new set is starting for a change! The new season’s looking promising, and the old one wasn’t bad either.

Yamato 2202 — We’re currently about two episodes from the end, and everything has ramped up to appropriately space opera high stakes. I’d say overall the first series is better, but this still an excellent production and a must-see.

Trigun Stampede — Excellent remakes strike again! All four of us are watching this and are very impressed. We started watching it a bit late, so we’re still somewhat early in. The main thing is the real story and the conflict with Knives gets started immediately. The background and characters are much better set, and it’d be interesting to really know just when all of this emerged in the original manga, because the guess is that the main parts only emerged as the original series was in production.

My Hero Academia — Okay, at long last, we’ve had the big turning point of the series. BBEG is loose! There was a big season-long battle! (More like three of them.) And, basically, everyone fought to a draw. We’re still in the aftermath, and presumably the story will be diverting to a slightly different trajectory now that Deku has a clear antithesis villain, and the thrust of the story will need to start centering on how to defeat him instead of Deku’s first steps towards being a superhero.

Kaina of the Great Snow Sea — Polygon Pictures does all computer-animated series, and has gotten good at the style. This happens to be a good planetary romance story (a little more modern in values—the princess is a co-equal star), and gets a little predictable if you know what the general story beats that genre has. But it’s well done, and I hope we get another season.

Knights of Sidonia — And just finished watching the second season of Polygon Pictures’ first production. I saw a couple pieces of it when Smudge watched it when it came out, and I’m happy to finally see it. The beginning of season two had a bit of a tonal shift, but the plot worked out well. There is a movie as well, which we will need to see.

The Fire Hunter — A very interesting world and some good writing. The animation, not so much. The production house seems well aware of this, and does some interesting stylistic choices try and make up for it. But, it still needs a better budget. However, I do recommend it, and don’t let the animation quality put you off.

NieR Automata Ver 1.1a — Smudge and I started watching this, Baron came to say good night as he went to bed and then sat down to watch the second episode. So, this is now part of what we watch with the guys. It’s… about as unusual as the game in storytelling. There’s some odd choices, but the series works well. I’m a little concerned about how much sense it’d make without Smudge offering commentary (she’s played the game), but I’m certainly enjoying it.

Komi Can’t Communicate — It is a testament to the quality of what we’ve been watching lately that this is nearly the last thing on a list ordered by quality. Komi is still being very good and very funny, but everything above this is still better.

Kingdom —Still going through this very long anime. We’ve just finished with the siege of Sai, which was generally well done, but it still suffers from being a shonen fastball.