This past week I did try something different with posts elsewhere. It quickly reminded me that single-digit view counts are pretty much expected when starting fresh. Even when you write on Sword Art Online to start. Then, I did my annual off-site preview of the Premier League season on my personal blog I hadn’t touched in over a year. That was about the same level of interest after blowing 3500 words. Maybe I should have just posted a bunch of screencaps from Attack on Titan and bitched about the episode not meeting my standards. You’re actually here for the few screenshots of shows that I do watch and bitching about those shows, right?
Currently Airing Top 5
Love Lab
I was feeling in a comedic mood this week. Those who follow me on Twitter will probably think that I’m not being serious. As for Love Lab, there’s finally some element of practical application of all of the hypothetical love research they’ve been doing. Natsuo has no clue how to pick up social cues as illustrated above. He’s deliberately ignoring her, but she’s just going to assume he doesn’t speak Japanese. I think that’s the definition of KY. This was all driven in part by Riko having to remember the one boy she rejected since he became attractive at some point. The pair of them work well together in an episode and I think this show would be better off doing it much more regularly even if they’ve added members.
Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya
This series reached its halfway point this week with the return of Luvia and Rin into their magical girl forms. The quality of the writing dramatically improves at that point in the middle of their battle with Saber. It’s good quality complaining about each other in the friendliest way possible. That really illustrates part of the problem with Miyu and Illya as the main magical girl characters. The relationships involving Rin are so much more developed since she’s been used so often in other works and Illya basically having to be rewritten much younger. However with this being the 2nd farthest I’ve ever made it in a Type Moon series I may be completely full of it.
Free!
The boys return to swimming action this week with a bit of open water training. This episode felt like it was a bunch of relationship building. Makoto with pretty much everyone else and hints of some tragic accident on the sea. Gou gets closer to her older brother just by talking about Haruka. On the downside is the bit of utter stupidity on the part of Rei at the end of the episode. The moment someone feels safest in nature is the moment that they are most in danger. Swimming in the open ocean at night, alone and not really knowing how to swim is really a fatal recipe.
The World God Only Knows
Yui was conquered this week on Kaminomi and it really felt like they missed a lot from skipping her arc in this adaptation. They may have gone through the body-switching thing that was hinted at here, but there’s no sense of that experience carrying over to the 2 characters here. Sure, it was still a fun episode to watch with Mars constantly confused over the pair of them cross-dressing. Yet at the same time it felt like something important was missing from the pair of them.
High School DxD
There’s a reason I find this show entertaining. It’s very much like Index in that large portions of the battles are split up into brief action followed by heroic monologues delivered by a protagonist. That’s really just the shounen genre as a whole where that happens. Yet with High School DxD I get a variety of characters who get to play the hero, and I don’t have to have a guilty conscious from seeing women punched in the face at the end of every battle. This week, Yuuto got to play hero and channel a holy demonic sword to defeat his enemies. The shock of the villains is by the book, but it follows a well-established template in making shounen battles feel important as well as feeling empathy for the character involved.
The Rest of the Week
Watamote – The references grow ever more obscure and Tomoko’s battle for popularity feels ever more pathetic as it should. Empathy is where this show succeeds and it just wasn’t enough for me this week.
Genshiken Nidaime – Madarame only makes a brief appearance, but this felt like the first episode where the new characters to the franchise could carry scenes on their own. Hato, Yajima and the sisters Yoshitake’s scene at the end was one of the highlights of the season.
Kiniro Mosaic – The philosophy of this show has completely turned to the cute girls doing cute things and it doesn’t give a damn what anyone thinks. The girls are entertaining me enough so I keep watching, but there’s no real reach for quality here.
Uchouten Kazoku – I’ve really turned on this show since the excellent first episode. I think the description someone gave of it being Ghibli characters forced to live normal lives sums it up better than anything. Benten is also boring me as a character, but she’s supposed to be the most interesting of all of them.
C3-bu – Yura is turning into a monster of a survival game player, but so focused as to be incredibly useless in a team game. Unfortunately that was completely hidden behind a fanservice-heavy school festival episode run amok.
Senyuu. – It was an entirely different show this week as almost all of it was spent on developing the plot and there was but one attempt at a joke. Even the narrator called it out for being different.
Monogatari Series – Bye. Recap.
Updated Seasonal Weekly Average Ranking
| Season | YTD | |
| Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen | 1 | 2 |
| Stella Jogakuin Koutou-ka C³-bu | 2 | 6 |
| High School DxD New | 3 | 7 |
| Free! | 4 | 9 |
| Watashi ga Motenai no wa Dou Kangaetemo Omaera ga Warui! | 5 | 11 |
| Genshiken Nidaime | 6 | 12 |
| Senyuu. | 7 | 17 |
| Kiniro Mosaic | 8 | 20 |
| Love Lab | 9 | 24 |
| Fate/kaleid liner Prisma☆Illya | 10 | 25 |
| Monogatari Series Second Season | 11 | 26 |
| Servant x Service(dropped) | 12 | 29 |
| Uchouten Kazoku | 13 | 31 |
My Gatchaman Tweet of the Week
Since I can’t watch Gatchaman Crowds until I’ve caught up with the rest of the series, I’ve been tweeting my thoughts as I watch the episodes of the original series. My most inspired use of 140 characters over the week will go here.
Terribad
Nothing this week as stories were told of crippling Football Manager addiction and discrimination against the Irish in the Australian labor market. Terrible game OVAs will wait another week.
Lower Mid-Table 