new mu

I've been trying to keep up to some degree with this season's anime.

This has mainly revolved around me making sure to watch the newly released episodes on crunchyroll each week that they come out.  I've been doing well, though there are a couple of shows I haven't looked at.

I therefore thought I'd do some mini-reviews as it's about a third of the way through the season.  Plus I couldn't think of anything else to blog about.

Hoozuki no Reitetsu
I'll start with one I found quite disappointing.  This is a very "talky" show - it's about a middle-manager in hell.  I don't mean a middle manager who has been sent to hell, but a demon who is a middle manager in hell.  I dunno, there are quite a lot of jokes revolving around cultural elements (both in terms of mythology and management culture) that I basically didn't get, and since that's all it is I basically dropped it.

Tonari no Seki-kun
There are quite a few short shows this season.  I don't know if that's normal or if crunchyroll usually picks quite a few up, the three I've watched have all been okay.  All three are basically gag shows and this is probably the one I like the most - the idea is it's about a boy who takes time-wasting in class to epic levels and the girl who sits next to him who we see things through the eyes of and usually gets in trouble for reacting to his antics.  It's possibly a bit too long per-episode, but it makes me chuckle.

Onee-chan ga Kita
This is one of the other short shows.  It's probably the closest to being one of those shows you could see as being a full-length show that actually they've made as a series of short episodes.  I mean, each show is self-contained, but could easily be expanded up into a full-episode, or several combined together to make a full episode.  However, the shorter length does seem to mean an improved budget, as the show looks good (not true of the other two short ones, where short probably reflects cheapness).  The subject matter is a bit odd - big sister (but via marriage, rather than genetically) who is in love with the main character.  However, for me it stays just the right side of freaky in most places.

Strange+
This is the last of the short shows, and is by far the weirdest.  It's basically a spoof of detective gang shows (I think) - it's very short and tbh is really more like a series of gags strung together.  One of the things I'm not keen on is that each episode seems to basically start at the end/middle and sometimes it's too confusing, especially given within just a few minutes the episode ends.

Saki: Zenkoku-hen
I quite enjoyed the original Saki.  There's been a sort of off-shoot show, which I haven't actually watched, but this is the proper continuation.  And it really is a continuation: it actually confused me to start with as it almost picks up as it it's a next episode and it's been several years since the end of the last series.  It also seemed to decide to go on a splurge of introducing new characters, which made me feel a bit lost, as well as constantly throwing them into hot springs type baths.  Now I've nothing against that, but Saki is really all about the OTT Mah-jong and so I got a bit bored while it messed around with this.  It's back to Mah-jong now, so I'm enjoying it more.

More mini-reviews in future blog posts when I can't think of anything to post about!