Blatch

Oh boy... another long layoff. I told Poke I'd try to get this out no later than Boxing Day, but given that he had a post scheduled for then on top of my usual anxious tardiness, I figured there'd be a short delay. So if your Christmas tree is still up, here's one more ratings omnibus to slide under it. Nichijou Episode 14: TV-PGLV Episode 15: TV-PGDV Episode 16: TV-PGSV Episode 17: TV-PG Episode 18: TV-PGV Episode 19: TV-PGDV takt op.Destiny Episode 1: "Concerto -Creed-" - TV-PGV The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Episode 7: "I wonder where I find the light I shine…" - TV-G (review post here) Good Luck Girl! Round 2: "This, Indeed, Has the 'The Battle Between God and Girl Now Begins' Feel to It" - TV-14DS Round 3: "Taking Orders from You Kinda Ticks Me Off!!!" "What Do You Mean, Kinda?!!" - TV-14DS If you haven't already noticed, no Wonder Egg this time. It's on more of a break than a hiatus. Frankly, I feel like I've gotten little out of this show other than "Wow, these girls are cute!", while all the subtext and symbolism and what not about how society grinds promising young women into dust gets thrown by the wayside, at least until I look up the weekly ANN reviews. But if my choice for a recent show ended up influencing one of Poke's, then I guess I'm doing something right. I may do a rewatch of the first half, but, either way... *knocks on wood* it'll resurface sometime soon. In regards to Poke about My Dress-Up Darling: I'm pretty sure this show doesn't have Wakana, the male MC, crossdress. He's merely helping out Marin live out her cosplay fantasies. Interestingly, having looked at the trailer (and an ANN review for the manga), the show will be featuring a character who wants to crossdress... but she's female, so that fits the WEP-esque angle a little more. Either way, unless you've decided to not watch it because of that (😛), I look forward to seeing your clips. Coming up next time: we kick off what might just be the Year of Maaya Uchida, takt op. fills out its backstory with the Boston Massa... I mean, Boston Tragedy, Ichiko comes across an adorable puppy and adopts it in what I'm totally sure isn't some sort of gambit by Momiji to take her happiness energy (and maybe other stuff, since I tend to watch multiple episodes of shows without images), who the hell knows what Nichijou has left in store, and I get around to rewatching an anime comedy that may have sorta predicted the rise of VTubers. Will this be a thing in 2022 and beyond? I hope so. Did I unconsciously crib it from reading old posts on this forum, namely Poke's rundowns of each week's Toonami lineup? Yes. Maybe he'll be inspired by it in return. [bullet hell will eat you all]

Okay, guess I'll tag in. Cowboy Bebop 8-14 (rewatch) My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X 3-9 Nichijou 19 I got my annual rewatch of Akira done this year, this time using the 2001 version. R.I.P. that guy who designed the logo. And I started a rewatch of Sweet Punishment, which... well, it's still hentai, but I'm actually enjoying it this time. I was so hung up over the fact that it had little actual bondage when I first saw it.

You know, when the live-action Bebop got cancelled, I was wondering if Netflix would decide their rights to the anime were worthless and give it back to [as]. I certainly didn't expect it to happen this soon! Good for [as]. I bet they'll be airing a promo where TOM acts all smug about getting it back... back to where it truly belongs. Otherwise, this is nothing out of the ordinary. Though if the fact that they're airing two marathons of the same show in one month ain't a sign that they've got nothing, I don't know what is. They could've at least scheduled another Fena marathon, or maybe more DC movies. Now all eyes are on January 8, where we're going to be hoping against hope that they finally have something cool and new to air. If they manage to stall yet again, that's probably going to be the moment where most fans of the block start to lose their patience, which is the thing CountFrylock thinks is already happening.

Guess I'll do a double post. Bokura no Mahou Shounen 1 (reread)-3 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls After20 Vol. 1 (first two chapters are rereads) The Quintessential Quintuplets 35-41 Atsumare! Fushigi Kenkyu-bu 63-69 So many stories, so little time. But I don't have to recap all of them. The first title is a crossdressing series I read the first chapter of back in 2018, and I didn't even track my manga back then. I thought it was too weird to appreciate, with an art style that that feels more like a western series, especially in regards to the petty villains, as well as the fact that... well, the main characters are pre-teens. Oh, and there's a lot of swearing, and I'm not sure if the underaged protags spouting much of it makes it better or worse. Just the thought of reading it again made me feel like I was going to be put on a list. But I felt obligated to, partially because the person translated it (whom specializes in this type of story) abruptly disappeared earlier this year. And they translated the Himegoto manga, which I consider my introduction to deep weeb shit. So it goes once more. But yeah, getting back to Mahou Shounen, I like it. It's a little skeevy, mostly in Ch. 2 w/ Kaito's magical girl outfit turning into various fetish-ish get-ups (ending with a revealing and furry catgirl outfit), but better than I was expecting. It's going to be interesting to see where the plot goes, as the third chapter featured a falling out between Kaito and Makoto that I didn't get much enjoyment out of. At least they got back together again by the end. If the mangaka always wanted to use that plot, I guess it's good they got it out of the way early. And then there's A20, which is about adult idols and food. That's basically it. Disappointed the guy I follow on Twitter who does lettering for hentai dropped this one after the two chapters I reread, even if I can't blame him. It was just nice seeing his splattery style applied to an all-ages series. Coming up next: more Quints, plus the first volume of Witch Hat Atelier. Without realizing it, I continue to pledge my allegiance to Kodansha Comics. [whatever you do, take care of your shoes]

LOL. Get fucked. I'm almost never swayed by current pop culture trends, but this remake did get me to rewatch the original series on Funi's streaming service, save for two episodes I never got to see on Toonami. I bet that's the only thing it was good for for a lot of people.

I mean, I get that, but what I want to know is why they never picked out any other comedies. The way the Toonami crew explained it, PPTP was going to mark a grand new era of airing whatever types of animation they thought were good. But once it finished, they went back to the same old action anime. At this point, I'd be open to something like Date-A-Live airing, if only for variety.

As joking as it may be, this reminds me of something I've wanted to bring up for a while: whatever happened to Toonami airing non-action anime? It seems like they aired Pop Team Epic, then either completely forgot about the plan or intentionally abandoned it. Were DeMarco and company just talking out of their asses back then?

If they're going to lead with Black Lotus on New Year's Day, I hope that they make a big deal out of it. At first, I was afraid that they might not have enough money for something new even after the new year, since the yearly budget doesn't reset on January 1. But given that they had shows lined up they weren't able to get, I assume that kerfuffle didn't take up any money. Either way, we'll see.

Showtime! Uta no Onee-san Datte Shitai 8 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls 7 Cowboy Bebop 1-7 (rewatch) Good Luck Girl! 3 My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! X 1/2 Well, that was fun. And by "fun", I mean that while I did like it, it was the first ComicFesta show I've seen (out of three) that managed to be genuinely titilating, made even better by a few particular acts in the final episode. I suppose I could critique the actual plot, as I had a few reservations with it (most notably, the Songstress... doesn't really sing in this show), but given that this is porn and I'm sure most people know what they're getting, that would be a foolish enterprise. Happy it's getting another season. The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Episode 7: "I wonder where I find the light I shine…" [a hormone collector]

So they went with a Matrix Resurrections tie-in as opposed to moar DC movies. Not bad. Maybe they're saving the latter for either Christmas or New Year's, with the other night being a marathon. Other than that, not much to complain about. These schedules pack all the fun of a lowball poker hand, but at least we're still getting premieres.

If it came to that, they'd probably rerun Fena again, or choose another fresh show.

Yeah, DeMarco said they were prevented from doing that by [as] because it would make the movie run too long. Pretty disappointing. I ended up deleting my DVR recording as I realized there was no real reason to put on a censored version with none of the Toonami flavor over the version on HBO Max... although they're currently caught in a controversy involving a censored version of Birds of Prey, so who knows about that, really. I did get to watch Black Out 2022, and I liked it. Interesting that Sentai did a dub of this, because I wasn't aware that it had one until now. And the Black dude who plays Nyanta in the Log Horizon dub voices the main character? Sweet. Also, in a nice coincidence, I just saw a tweet today featuring a screencap from Bebop that talked about a loss of all data from before 2022? Since this is a Watanabe joint, I have to assume that's an intentional reference. 🙂

It's outside of Toonami, so I have no reason to complain. But really, I like this move. It helps that the show is probably going to turn out better than Fena did.

Atsumare! Fushigi Kenkyu-bu 35-62 The Quintessential Quintuplets 31-34 Inuyama Tamaki Channel! The Story of Our Secret! 3 Fairy Tail 5-10

They'll probably be reaching into DC's bag of tricks and airing at least one more superhero movie for the year. I'm not expecting anything else, unless someone was able to give them a really good deal on an anime movie (as in, basically free). And we'll probably get the obligatory Christmas marathon. Having thought about it, it's not that I'm disappointed in the fact that they're stalling. The budget must be completely empty and Toonami doesn't want to go a few weeks with the only premieres being Blade Runner, Yashahime and Shippuden, Especially when the middle is almost out of episodes and they wouldn't have anything left to continue that. It's just that if they're going to go a whole month with non-standard schedules and they can't spend anything to spiffy them up, they could at least be more creative. Why not do marathons of shows that are both free and haven't aired in a long time, like the FLCL sequels? I'd be down with that, regardless of if I'd actually watch them.

Disappointing. So I guess they're really gonna stall for the rest of the year, huh? 🙄

Nichijou 13-18 My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! 6-12 Showtime! Uta no Onee-san Datte Shitai 6/7 takt op. Destiny 1 Good Luck Girl! 2 Yup, I'm keeping busy. I want to go in-depth in Villainess for a bit, because this show surprised me in multiple ways. Actually, the only reason I started watching it was because Poke did content ratings for it. My policy on this stuff is that if either an official network or someone else who does formal ratings has seen it, I don't need to do them. So it gave me a cheat I could use while I settled into the habit of rating (as in, typing out my reasons for) everything else. And yet, I ended up loving this show. Totally obsessed with Catarina and the rest, to the point where I've been looking up merchandise of the series. Who knows if I'll actually buy any, since this stuff would be imported from Japan and probably only palatable to countrymen and weebs with big salaries. But given that I've bought limited merch before, we'll see. Finer points: I came into this show not knowing that "reincarnated into an otome game villain" is the most popular flavor of isekai for women. So it's weird to think that a parody of the genre ended up getting an anime first, unless there's another show I don't know about. Not that I care, although I kinda want to pretend that this is a totally original concept for a series that nobody's tried to imitate. And guess what? They're making a ComicFesta show with this premise, which I find even more awkward. Good thing we're getting a second season of the Songstress show to go with it. A lot of the doom flag stuff feels corny to me, like trying to force RPG mechanics into every other isekai story. Still, the moments with Catarina's inner monologue were cute, on top of being a voice acting showcase for Maaya Uchida. All of the characters are great. Most of them have a particular trait that stands out, but then you've got Mary, who... well, I can't remember what her deal was supposed to be, aside from probably being a royal. But she has great comedic chemistry, just like the rest of the cast, so I cut her some slack. Seriously, this show is funny. Episodes 7 and 8 were my favorites, but the latter stands out for its fun premise, doing the sort of "wild take" humor that Nichijou trades in maybe better than Nichijou itself, and a wild climax. In short, lookin' forward to S2. And the dub, since Sentai is putting this one out on Blu-ray.

If nothing else, I'm happy they're airing a mostly-normal lineup for Thanksgiving weekend. Now the question is whether they'll do one on December 18, and I don't think they will.

To Your Eternity Episode 20: "Echoes" - TV-PG The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Episode 6: "Finally, our day has come!" (review post here) Nichijou Episode 11 - TV-PG Episode 12 - TV--PGV Episode 13 - TV-PG Wonder Egg Priority #6: "Punch-Drunk Day" - TV-14D Good Luck Girl! #1: "Are You Sure You Haven't Confused Being a God of Flat-brokeness with Being a God of Flat-chestedness? - TV-14DS Well then... now that I've hammered out all that, it's time to up my workload with a new show! Joining the fray next time will be current simulcast takt op. Destiny (op short for "opus"), the show from Madhouse and MAPPA based on some kind of game, and the newest entry in the "music can save the world" genre. But this one takes place in bad future where music is outlawed; our plucky heroes keep evil at bay by playing classical music, amongst other shenanigans. And it even takes place in America, with the protagonists truckin' through the Midwest en route to New York. This new show will get screenshots, my personal thoughts in the anime-viewing thread, and whatever else I can muster, so look forward to it.

Atsumare! Fushigi Kenkyu-bu 20-34 Fairy Tail 3/4 The Quintessential Quintuplets 30 Oh, the joys of reading every day. Maybe I'll get back to the old crossdressing standards soon?

Showtime! Uta no Onee-san Datte Shitai 5 My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! 5 Nichijou 11/12 Wonder Egg Priority 6 Good Luck Girl! 1 (rewatch) [wang dang dingle]

Definitely the early era of Toonami Swim for me. 2014-16 was the tits, and not just because I was actively tweeting about the shows.

My hope is that they're really close to getting a new show and are just doing this to buy time. We've had cases of that before. As for Blade Runner, I hope they don't end up screwing it over with moves like this. If they're going to air a marathon (or more DC shit; we're due for at least one more night of that this year) on November 27, they should at least do like Fena and have an episode air in front.

To Your Eternity 20 The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Episode 6: "Finally, our day has come!"

Another month, another wasted opportunity. I swear, next time it'll all be a little more timely. The iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls Episode 5: "I don't want to be a wallflower" - TV-PGS (review post here) Wonder Egg Priority #5: "The Girl Flautist" - TV-14V Nichijou Episode 8: TV-PGV Episode 9: TV-PGLV Episode 10: TV-PG To Your Eternity Episode 18: "To Continue On" - TV-MA Episode 19: "Wandering Rage" - TV-MA Bakuon!! OVA #1: "Bakuon!!" [hoppy hallaween]