Blatch

This is what I've always wanted. In a couple ways. 😇

#1: Most of this episode is fairly light, so imagine my surprise when Risa (a.k.a. the daddycon idol) marches in and pronounces the Third Entertainment District's producer as a lolicon, and she says it three times. While Poke has rated this word w/ a 14D in the past, it seems to be a 14 set nowadays. I rated it as such in Kakegurui (wow, remember when I was interested in that series?), and so here it goes again.

You might've noticed that I didn't give a description for my first clip (of Memories of Phantasm), opting to let it speak for itself. But I'll go back to my old habit here: these two scenes might key you in on the fact that this show focuses on one idol per episode, starting with a dreamy cold opening and continuing with Arisu looking befuddled at her new boss as everyone else questions him.

#2: Second verse, same as the first, except this time Risa only calls YonaiP a lolicon once.

For clips, we have Nina going about the start of her day, and then a cameo from the Makisupa Policeman, plus a reference to my other half.

#3: One use of "sucks", which also appeared last episode but didn't factor in the rating, and YonaiP's boss dragging him and Shin by their necks out the door, the former (as in YonaiP) getting strangled by his tie.

This time around, Miria is the lucky girl in the intro, while the commercial break drops us off at Planet Usamin.

#4: No profanity, but there is a PG set for peril. Momoka's bungee jump in this episode got me all fired up, and hopefully it makes you feel the same.

The first clip is a reminder to always support your local shrine maiden idols. It goes on a little long for my standards, but I wanted to include some funny irony (for someone who's never seen the show/read the books) as it cuts into the next one. And you can look forward to me finally getting omnibuses out on a regular basis.

#5: The big sticking point was this episode was figuring out the issues of incest and polyamory, because not only does Risa love her dad so much she wants to marry him, she wants to become Prime Minster of Japan and change the rules so that he can marry both her and her mom at the same time, with the rationale being "It's OK so long as you're in love". Since incest is apparently worthy of a PG straight, polyamory is no worse than it, and the whole segment is presented in a platonic and jokey matter regardless, this episode doesn't get any subratings, even though I considered giving it a PGD or even a 14 straight. Overkill, much?

These clips feature the entire first segment of the episode, which has a lot of cuts, and then high drama as Risa has a talk about failure with YonaiP.

#6: This episode has more subratings than any episode I've seen of CG 2015. For starters, it has the first notable instance of profanity in the show: a "pissed" from Haru, on top of "Damn it!" and "sucks". Yeah, she's a potty mouth. For violence, she kicks a soccer ball straight into YonaiP's face, which makes him bleed a bit (unless he was just horny). But the big willie of this episode comes from "Nightwear", the new song from the unit LiPPs that was a world premiere within the anime. With lines such as "Destroy me with your fingers, come on", "A vague kiss won't be enough for tonight", and "Do everything wrong to me / and dirty my hands to warm them up", this is about as risque as you can get without describing any particular act. And Haru danced good during it, too.

Some context as to how I make these clips: the video editor I'm using has mostly basic features, but it does allow you to divvy up the video by scenes lasting at least one second (per the default setting), so that allows me to go in and pick what parts of the episode to use, always encompassing at least 16 seconds where the bug appears (even though I don't include it for the first second). In the second clip this time, there's a very long cut (for this show, at least) that made the decision of where to stop easy. As for the first, Haru do be runnin'.

#7: How fitting that the episode that most resembles a Disney movie ends up garnering this series' first G, paralleling iM@S 2011. And like Episode 11 of that show, the only notable set of any kind is a character falling down, in this case Karin again.

And another thing: I'm using encodes of the episodes with hard subs made using HandBrake. I wish there was a more efficient way, but for now, I'll stick with these rips I can watch on any device with no real difficulty in case it ever comes to that. This time around, we have what I can only describe as... uh, MILF Koharu, and then a scene with YonaiP frantically searching for her after she gets enthralled by a magic spirit butterfly. Exotic!

Boy, they really pulled out the stops for Koharu's episode. Nice chance of pace that it's more whimsical than what's come before, plus she got her new song plus an OneCin solo, and Karin cameoed. Although at this point, I think I only like the latter because I have a shrine maiden fetish.

Our good friend James Beckett said he thought Anna's transformation into Destiny right at the end of the show was an ass pull, but while I can see why someone would say that, I love it. My personal theory is that, after Destiny turned into a little memory unit (and Cosette was the one that actually died), Anna was able to use it presumably temporarily to turn into Destiny, and she can transform into her and back at will. This begs the question of what would happen if a male used the memory unit: would her essence be transposed with their gender, or would they just put on the dress and rose-themed high heels?

Also, while he didn't really jibe with Sagan's final speech and ultimate motivations, they seem pretty obvious to me: he's an accelerationist. Why bother having to suffer through late-stage D2 disaster capitalism when you have the chance to get it over with and have them sacrifice the whole North American continent? Modern politics transposed onto my animu: you love to see it.

So yeah, that was a nice show. Seems the developers have taken the Umamusume route of "the longer the game is delayed, the better it's gonna be", but what it not turn out that way and crash and burn a year in.

Just mopping up. Helps that Marulky-poo is cute as fuck.

The only set without any notable content is the second one, but then again, make what you will of Marulk falling on Nat, the latter smitten. The first short features Marulk's attempts to wake Ozen from a nap, but it ends with them being hoised up as their clothes start to slip off, in a parallel to Riko's schoolhouse punishment. In the third short, Marulk finds a lewd magazine with a female adventurer being bondaged by tentacles, their clothes damaged and copious boobage showing. And in the final short, more out-of-nowhere violence, as the shorts' content switch to seriousness: we get a flashback to how Ozen found Marulk, the sole survivor of a raiding party whose airship crashed near the upper edge of the Third Layer. Their father (turns out blue hair runs in the family) was killed and had his intestines exposed to the elements as an abyssinal monster swoops in for a bite. The next time we see him, he's just a bloodied skeleton.

Couldn't let this one go by without starting a new show. I figured I had a golden opportunity after watching another show that fucks with gender. I'm not sure if this one would've been cut out for Waai!, but unlike Himegoto, it's also drowning in pure sakuga.

#1: And just like that, we rocket to the top rating (above CR's blanket of TV-14) with talk about how, since Mahiro is now a girl, she (him?) won't be able to handle the clitoral orgasm, which according to her genius scientist sister Mihali Mihari is 100 times as strong as the penile one. There's also references to eroge (there it is again), Mahiro himself being sad that he can't abandon "the no-fap lifestyle", and a few naked scenes, one of which takes great care to censor Mahiro's pussy. Interestingly, the show doesn't really portray her with boobs, even though a plot point is Mihari taking Mahiro bra shopping.

#2: Mahiro and Mihari go to a public bath, and the results are what you'd expect: lots of steam-obfuscated nudity, but the sheer duration of it plus a few more revealing shots of Mihari's boobs amidst it all earn it the S. Honorable dialogue mentions include Mihari wondering if Mahiro has swollen breasts, a pervert mention, and the latter brushes up against saying the word "period" because Mahiro has them now, but her pain proves to be too much. Also, some of the posters of anime in Mahiru's room might deserve a mention. One of them has a girl in a school swimsuit with a suggestive-looking bulge.

#6: Just two bath/shower scenes, neither of which show a lot of detail. Yuu has actual boobs while Chito is drawn as flat. The only other notable content is when Ishi's plane (she's another rare traveler our protagonists find on their journey) breaks up in mid-flight.

More weirdo ratings image situations: this time there's only one, but it's a good one. Pretty early in the episode, too. And despite adapting three chapters, only the title of the last is shown in the episode, right before the break. So yeah, here's your moment of bathing zen.

#19: Miku talking about a sexy dance...

Images: New Generations judges you, and Miku airs her grievances with Kanako and Chieri, plus a hidden Anzu.

#20: ...and a cover of a zombie movie featuring a bloodied Koume.

Images: An idol named Syuko, because I've decided not to leave everything mysterious, and those two other girls in Triad Primus.

#10: In a series with dime-a-dozen D2 violence, the most intriguing ratings go to the episodes that pit Conductors and their Musicarts together. This time, it's a 2v2 between Takt and Destiny and Hell and Heaven, with Titan assisting the former two. Before the battle commences, a lengthy flashback on Lenny's end includes another glimpse of the Boston Tragedy from his perspective. The most objectively cruel violence comes when Destiny, having been depowered following a massive energy blast, is reduced to human form and Hell kicks her aside like a defenseless puppy. But right as Heaven is about to kill Takt, who by this point is red in about half his face and his entire right hand, Lenny saves the day by taking a bullet for him, setting up a heartbreaking curtain call where he uses the last of his power to help Titan unleash a huge final attack that takes down Heaven and puts Hell at bay, bleeding more and more as he goes and eventually leaking some onto the ground. The latter bleeds a bit too from the sheer power overload. It's the best this chronically interesting show has been throughout its run, even if it's turned into Classicaloid Symphogear by now. And don't forget the swearing: one "bullshit" from Takt during Lenny's final moments.

This time around, we have... strings and things. Pilot the EVA, reader, or Lenny will have to do it again.

#11: After gazing in awe at the Black Nite Siderite in the heart of the New York Symphonica, Sagan slams his hand right into the middle of it, gushing reasonable amounts of blood. A whole lot of D2 violence dotted the rest of the episode, which included a survival horror segment with Anna and her disabled scientist sister Lotte trying to escape part of the Symphonica after it's been flooded with monsters; this part also contributes the requisite profanity from the episode: a "shit" from Anna.

For screenshots: an artsy shot of the Symphonica amidst New-ish New York City, and a disorientingly blurry shot of Destiny and Titan from Takt's perspective that might give you Re:Zero flashbacks.

#12: Cleaning up with the best rating. To start off, Destiny gets her yuks in against Orpheus, the merged form of Heaven and Hell, in a fight that mostly features explosions but sees Destiny chip away at her, her body turning into a morphing purple liquid. (The shot of her having been broken like a porcelain statue at the waist looks ridiculous.) Then, right as they go full Ashita no Joe on each other, a flashback reveals that Sagan was broken by the war against the D2s due to its attrition; amidst all the cries for help and pleas for life to go back to normal, a solider takes a big fleshy bit out of a victim's chest. A more sakuga-filled second half to the Destiny/Orpheus fight climaxes with the former punching a hole through the latter; while this goes on, Sagan lectures to Takt like a good villain should, but eventually gets shut up. Orpheus starts to petrify and soon crumbles away, the D2s follow suit after Takt deals the killing blow to Sagan, and that's that. And then Destiny sort of dies after kissing Takt; it's more that Cosette died, though Destiny is the one who kisses Takt, and then she turns into a small memory unit. For swearing, we have "half-assed", "bastards", two "damn"s, and "God".

The OP starts the finale, so one screenshot, and it's an artsy one. I'll let the pixels do the talking here:

Ratings rubdown (I like it raw):

• PGV (1, 3-5)
• 14V (2, 8, 12)
• 14L (6/7)
• PG (9)
• 14LV (10/11)

Nice and simple splits. The second half was heavier than the first (outside of the second episode), but it also had the show's tamest episode.

Character tally:

• Takt: 6 (1B, 4A/B, 7B, 9B, 12)
• Cosette/Destiny: 8 (1B [barely visible], 4B, 6B, 7B, 8A, 9B, 11B, 12 [only appearance as Destiny])
• Anna: 6 (1B, 3A, 4B, 6A, 8A, 9B)
• Lenny: 3 (4A, 9A, 10B)
• Other Musicarts: 5B (Walkure), 8B (Hell), 11B (Titan)
• Miscellaneous: 1B (Suzuho diner waitress), 2A (Takt's father), 2B (circus performers and crowd), 3A (some dude, kinda looks like Shaggy), 5B (construction workers), 6B (Anna's fake mom), 7B (bunch of randos), 8B (Schindler!), 10A (string players in an orchestra)
• Nobody: 1A (flower and animals in prologue), 3B (Fernando Tatin Jr.), 5A (Black Nite Siderite in transit), 7A (car; nobody visible, I mean), 11A (New York Symphonica)
• Notable losers: Heaven and Sagan

This time around, our winner is one of the characters in the title. Not very innovative, but I like these splits also.

Screenshots with dialogue vs. without: 12/11
Screenshots without: 3A, 4A, 5A/B, 7A/B, 8A [OP], 9B, 10A/B, 12

So that was takt op., the first full-length show I've managed to finish ratings images for since 2018, the exact case being the OG Idolm@ster show. It's a pretty nice 6.5/10 anime I probably don't need to watch again. Maybe I'll check out the mobile game as a bit.

#3: From this point on, I'm going to give each episode a 14 straight assuming the OP is still intact. This one has a lot of PG-level-with-subratings content, some of which I thought was juicier when I first saw it. Haruka joins in on the student committee and flaunts her boobs while taking off her uniform to reveal a cheerleading outfit underneath, which the camera gets a juicy view of. Then she runs into Yu's big sister Mitsuki, the president of the student council, in classic ecchi anime fashion. The episode's second segment featuer her wearing a school swimsuit with "I <3 You (Watanabe)" underneath, and her clothes soon get wet and become transparent, revealing her fine curvature in the swimsuit beneath. In conclusion: Haruka is kind of a klutz, but she also has C-cup breasts rather than D-cups, as remarked upon by Yuzu and Kaede, two of the other students who don't seem to be romantically involved at the moment, before they're corrected by Yu.

#4: This time around, Yuzu and Kaede are shuffling about a convenience store and accidentally start reading adult magazines, one of which features a woman with a Mai Shiranui-esque ill-fitting swimsuit on the cover, which is also literally called "Big Tits".

#5: The first segment is free of any egregious content, unless you count a double-decker Starbucks expy. The second has exaggerated boob motions from Mitsuki, in one instance when she's smothered by Haruka and Yu, but the big willie of this episode doesn't come until an omake segment afterward: Today's Shizuku features said character in the bath, with all the fixings (mostly of the bubble variety) you'd expect... until she becomes chibi. Yes, this is supposed to be a fan service [sic] scene.

This one's got a pleasing variety of danmaku violence, from Yuyuko deflecting Marisa's bullets with her sword (although she's no match for the Master Spark), to having to wave through Yuyuko's waves of deathly butterflies. Yuyuko herself is no match for Reimu's suffocating matrix of ofuda, which eventually delivers the killing pichuu~n. But the decisive factor here is, of all things, Yuyuko being generously breasted and appearing to have puffy nipples underneath her kimono. After consulting on this with an expert, I decided a 14 straight seemed correct, even if this is fairly minor compared to the usual fanservice. There's just not much to go off of. But don't you worry, because there's more fanservice to come in this series.

And now it's time for a personal first...

Yup, it's a clip. I previously said I'd use U149 to pop my (cherry merry) cherry, but after thinking about it, since Touhou was my first love among Japanese franchises it only felt natural for this series to jump the queue. Plus, it's going to be a bit of a technological struggle to make clips for an officially-licensed show, as opposed to one where I can cheat and use my personal converted MP4s with no worry about not matching the original stream.

I'd rather not clog up this forum's servers with the data from all my clips, so I might figure out another home for them at some point, but this will do for now. Besides, I just tried Imgur, but while they let you upload videos with sound, they don't embed properly, and the quality is worse.

#5: Nokker violence this time around includes a scene where one attacks a village by burrowing underground; Fushi defeats it by falling into a hole, then creating exposive rounds and burning them by turning into Gugu. Later on, he manifests the seemingly dead body of a noblewoman (the daughter of the castle lord, to be exact) named Anna, who ends up coming back to life after the death of her old body. Swearing includes one "damn it" and three "sucks", the latter from Pocoa, one of Bon's siblings who decided to tag along for the ride in all her annoying glory.

#6: A tale of two halves: the first featured violence breaking out in Entus City after Fushi fails to perform a miracle; Todo (the boy-ish girl who's accompanying Fushi and Bon on their journey to spread the word of his kingdom) gets stabbed in the chest but no blood comes out. She said "ass" earlier, and right before the stabbing, one of the guardsmen provoking the violence says "Bastards!" But later on, Fushi is trapped within a large iron cell and is killed after molten lava is poured into it. Yikes! As Tonari, they let out a horrifying scream, as they're doomed to be burned alive over and over again in the cubic cell. Then one of the townsfolk, unhappy Fushi has been sealed away, says it's horseshit.

#7: The episode begins with a flashback to Fushi getting smothered with lava, but while we see close-ups of his charred, featureless body throughout, the episode is mostly free of violence. The worst of it amounts to swearing, which encompasses three uses of "suck" or "sucks", two "bastards", and one use of "cockwombles" from Bon. No idea how to rate that swearing, but I figured given that "cocksuckers" and "cockblocked" are TV-MAL material while this one isn't intended to be a hurtful swear like those, I feel like it could be 14-caliber. Since two "bastards" will already get you a 14L in most episodes, this ratings seems like an easy decision. At the end of the episode, Bon is prosecuted for heresy and dies at the guillotine in Entus City; in the preview for the next episode, we see his severed head, with some blood pooling around it.

#8: What appeared to be mass murder in Entus City following Bon's execution was actually Fushi's doing, first by drugging the crowd as Ligard the owl, then by creating a fake Bon body right before the guillotine dropped. The latter event, with blood pooling around the head, was the first noteworthy event at the end of last episode. The second was a simple shot of Kahaku writing while hunched over, his Nokker-filled arm on the ground with some bloodstains around it. This time, swearing encompasses two uses of "shit", one as "bullshit"; otherwise this was a fairly light episode.

#9: A mix of tension and body horror. Fushi fights a lot of Nokkers in this one and loses numerous vessels in the process, as he blows them up with boxes of explosive ordinance he creates and they prod at him with their tentacles. The Nokkers turn poeple into zombies again and also go to town on some townsfolk. Later on, Fushi fights a Nokker inside a swamp and things get even worse for him. Also, Fushi's... caretaker (basically god, if god was an evil-looking hooded dude and voiced by Seto Kaiba) makes him a horse, but instead of harvesting dental floss it gets hit by a Nokker itself and blood comes out. Swearing? You bet: one use of "bastard", plus three "damn it"s and a bonus "hell".

#4: Only real PG set was a few references to Kasumi's airsoft player nickname: the Thousand Kill Angel.

#5: By default. Only thing close to actual offending content was Saya getting crushed by several 10-ton weights as a slapstick metaphor for being flustered.

#6: Kasumi fires her airsoft gun, and that's it. There's also a joke about Kae beginning her "journey to the heavens".

#7: Mostly by default. Mana has some tense flashbacks to the time she joined the idol club at Marehoshi Academy's main branch; one student sternly says "I wish you had never come here!" through tears, which appears multiple times.

Feels great to breeze through entries like this, right? I mean, it's not too different from Cinderella Girls, but this time, I expect the ratings to be low.