It's far better than what I saw of Season 1. It's humourless and fairly bland, but at least it's something you could imagine watching. The castaways have built a community. They've put up buildings, organised water searches, etc. The absurd, one-dimensional idiots are hopefully all dead by now.

This week, two couples leave the community. I bet they die. One are a normal-looking man and woman who want to wander around the island. The other departure is acrimonious and happens after a confrontation with knives, guns and accusations of attempted rape. If he's guilty, he deserves it. If he's innocent, then he's an idiot for being led by his pride and flouncing out in a huff.

It's a Netflix anime, so should be approached with extreme caution, if at all. Everything I've heard about Season 1 suggests that the show's laughable.

Looks like a fairly standard isekai. Our hero used to be a Japanese salaryman, but is now a powerful magic-user with lots of female companions!

The episode stands out from the pack mostly in being a flashback to when our hero entered this fantasy world as a five-year-old. Adult brain, but zero knowledge of who and where he is. I didn't like him. He bemoans his lot in being born the eighth son of a poor aristocrat whose family is lord of a village with only 800 people. (That's 800 people with less luck than him, for starters.) He judges his family's wealth by a lavish wedding and is then surprised to find that their daily life isn't always like that. D'oh. He's critical about his family's large selection of books, in an age when he's lucky to have any. Books were extremely expensive and his father can't read anyway. On discovering that he has MAGIC ABILITY!!!!, his "who'd believe that?" routine is overdone, as is his excessive terror of the magician he needed to meet.

There's some potential in the show's basic angle of mundane, unglamorous hero life, but does that fit the harem I see in this guy's future? Can't say I'm tempted to keep watching.

Our heroine's pretty messed up. She's dark, pessimistic and a social reject. She describes idols as worthless people who shake their arses for customers. Understandably, she's surprised to be told that she's been chosen to be part of an eight-girl idol group. No auditions. Very weird producer, who appears to be a computer or something. It's called the Wall.

She immediately leaves and is told "you will return". She loses her part-time job, because she can't get on with her colleagues. She sells her keyboard. She's miserable. Eventually, she returns to do the job she wants to do the least.

It's an idol show, but I might watch this one.

It's based on a mobile phone game. We have:

(a) A token female protagonist

(b) Lots of pretty boys who'll need to be recruited/collected by (a). Her dad's left her a semi-abandoned theatre and the bulldozers are moving in today. Can our heroine save Mankai?

(c) Street acting. Surprisingly, all the passers-by realise what's happening.

Naah. It looks okay in a formulaic way, if you're into reverse-harem, but I wasn't grabbed by the acting angle either.

They play baseball. For 24 minutes.

Adachi and Shimamura are naughty schoolgirls. One of them usually skips classes and the other usually doesn't even come to school. They just hang out, doing not much. They commit no crimes and would seem harmless to the casual eye, but I don't like them. They don't seem to have any reason for what they do beyond "it's fun".

The episode's tone is nice, the pacing feels right and I'm sure the show's quite good. But I'll still be skipping it. (It also has a mini-anime spin-off that I'll similarly be skipping.)

I stopped watching Aggretsuko during Season 2, but don't let that put you off. It's really good. It's sharp, it's painful and... bloody hell, Retsuko's life is going to be horrible forever, isn't it? She's never going to learn. This week's bad decisions include spending all her money on a virtual boyfriend. (He's a My Little Pony, because she's a red panda and everyone in this show is an animal.)

Retusko wouldn't defend her actions, mind you. She knows she's being an idiot. That never stops her, though.

It's fine. It's a good basketball show, if that's your cup of tea.

Two friends say they're quitting the team, but they're still talking basketball tactics while eating their Forbidden Ramen. Unsurprisingly, they're back ten minutes later. I like the cast. There are even two girls, albeit in coaching/support roles. There's nothing wrong with this show.

I don't watch many sports anime, but this one tempted me a little when I watched ep.1 last year. I certainly preferred it to Ace of Diamond, for whatever that's worth.

I'm fond of Aikatsu, but it's idol-vermin brainwashing for little girls. Aren't idols wonderful? Look, they wear all these fancy dresses!

Sometimes I watch Aikatsu and get tempted to continue. This isn't one of those times.

This is a continuation of Aikatsu on Parade!, so it's a multidimensional crossover of multiple Aikatsu worlds. This is bonkers in a show that's otherwise pure airheaded idol schoolgirl waffle. There's going to be an idol tournament. Every school has to choose three representatives to fight, uh, compete.

In other words, it's two tired anime formulae in one. Firstly, idols. Secondly, a tournament.

Good things: the episode has a message. (The timid Noelle thinks she's unfit to be chosen as one of her school representatives and has to be talked into believing that she's up to it. She doesn't think she's ready. She gets challenged on when exactly she thinks she would be ready, with the message of "not some day, but today".)

Watch this show if you're excited by CGI-animated idol stage performances and/or an Angel Sugar Premium Rare Dress. (Our heroines are on the point of orgasm about both.)

It's outrageously stylish. Look at all that cyberpunk. You could watch it just to drool over the near-future visuals. (It also has uncensored Blu-rays, albeit for violence, not sex. Decapitated heads, etc.) Unfortunately, though, it stars:

(a) a protagonist who gets herself arrested because she refuses to pay for her food with a measly 500 yen coin that she'd already tried to return to someone who refused the offer. He'd said he didn't want it any more. Our girl also gets herself in mortal danger twice trying to save a cat. Once is laudable. Twice is starting to look like mental incapacity.

(b) four unlikeable shitheads. #1 coldly delivers bombs to people and has no emotions. #2 likes to fight. #3 is a hacker. #4 performs surgery for fun on a passer-by in a train, killing everyone who says or does anything while she's busy. At the end, she's the only person left alive in the train car. But she wears a low-cut top and has big boobs.

Oh, and the shitheads all independently accept a mission to rescue a death row convict called Cutthroat before his execution later that day. No one takes any interest in whether or not this is a good idea.

Shi Fen has a colossally messy bedroom. He and his friend yell at each other for a while about his slobbiness and argue about whether or not to throw everything out. Shi Fen's sister Miao only shows up at the end.

It's Chinese and looks very Flash-animated. It's sort of okay. I have no objection to the series, but this isn't one of their stronger episodes.

I liked the imaginative variety of monster students. The title sequence had a wonderful selection, with my favourite being a wheelchair-legs Davros girl. The episode itself starred a Cyclops girl, a Noppera-bou (faceless redhead girl) and a vampire transfer student who arrives a bit full of herself, but her self-introduction falls flat.

It's a bit obscure, but I eventually dredged up this episode on YouTube. If the show were easier to find, I might give it a whirl.

It starts with an anime version of Hanna-Barbera's Wacky Races, but set in America in a vaguely Sherlock Holmes era. The contestants will be racing from Los Angeles to New York, in a wonderfully mad selection of vehicles.

We then jump back in time to see how our two heroes met. Appare Sorano is a brilliant teenage inventor with no social skills. Kosame Isshiki is a samurai under Appare's grumpy dad, who's also the local lord. Kosame gets ordered to keep Appare in line. This starts inauspiciously with Appare escaping from prison after whacking a fellow inmate's foot with a hammer (although he was asking for it) and ends with Appare and Kosame nearly getting themselves killed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

There's a lot in this episode. Plot, comedy, hijinks, etc. Even the theme music's great fun. I've got high hopes for this series.

I eventually stopped watching BanG Dream! and that show was all-girls. These are boys. They're going to play in a band together, but otherwise it's identical.

Curiously, despite being called "ARGONAVIS from BanG Dream!", the creators have announced that it's set in a different universe from the main BanG Dream! franchise and that their characters will never meet. Fans had been unhappy about the parent franchise being polluted by the presence of boys. I'm not going to watch this show, but that seems weird.

My eyes, my eyes!

1. CGI singing and dancing, from four Autons. Uh, sorry, pretty boy idols. Ouch ouch no no no.

2. Lots of voice-overs to the visual accompaniment of cars, backgrounds and static frames with mouth flaps. These really are no-expense-spent visuals, aren't they?

3. Actual hand-drawn animation! Good grief! Unfortunately, it's about those four idols.

4. The post-end-credits sequence is yet another level of pain. It's the main cast doing what I presume is random improvised chat as their CGI characters, in real time, using augmented-reality technology.

ARP stands for Artists Republic Production, so does that mean they support the abolition of Japan's royal family? No, I'm joking. That would have been interesting, so it's impossible. Run away.

Arte is the name of a 14-year-old girl whose mother is pushing her to get married. Dad just died, so they can't afford much of a dowry. Arte likes art, of which mum disapproves because a woman shouldn't have interests or an inner life. Arte's drawings get piled up in the courtyard and burned.

Arte goes out to become an artist's apprentice. Unfortunately, no one will even look at a woman's drawings... until she encounters a gruff artist who doesn't like her, but at least is at least willing to find her objectionable for reasons unrelated to gender. I liked this episode. The story is exactly what you're imagining, but Arte herself is very likeable and I'm keen to see how things turn out for her. The art also feels true to the period. Arte's mother, for instance, has a face that feels more Renaissance than anime. I'm expecting this show to be nice.

I'm terribly fond of this show. Myne's lovely and I'm wholeheartedly behind her goal of manufacturing, writing, reading and generally wallowing in books, books, books. Season 1 ended with her finding a job that gave her access to books, so she's practically drunk with delight. This just means new problems, though, including a slimebag bishop and being landed with problem retainers she doesn't want.

As far as Myne's concerned, though, more of a problem is being told off for being too polite to her social inferiors and being ordered to discipline unruly retainers. What does "discipline" mean? Punishment? What and how? She should have asked about that... but no problem. So far, it's just as fun as Season 1.

It doesn't look anything particularly special, but I watched it happily enough. Girls called "lilies" fight aliens called "HUGE". They seem nice. The closing title sequence is dripping with lesbians. None of this could possibly be called original, but what the hell.

It's another "cute girls doing cute things" anime, with the activity here being amateur astronomy and geology. You might be wondering why those two things belong together. Answer: neither club had enough members, so the school's combined them into an "Earth Sciences Club". Its members get on okay, but our heroines still think it would be better to have some joint activities. They suggest a newsletter.

There's a odd-looking bit of backstory. One of our heroines accidentally said a double entendre one day and was so embarrassed that she rewrote her personality. Uh... really?

There's the lesbian tease that's almost mandatory from a Manga Time Kirara Carat series. One of the girls has a childhood friend who's always tried to drive off any men who tried to be friendly, but is worryingly enthusiastic (with sinister, shining eyes) about a possible female admirer. "Well, that's because Manaka-san's a girl, and she's cute. If it's a girl, I'm totally okay with it!"

The original's a four-panel manga, but never mind. I enjoyed it. I approve of science and the episode has some amusing moments. "Who wants to eat burgers?" So far, the series looks inconsequential, but likeable.