The boys have their physical examinations. Shoyo (who's short) gets overexcited about having had a millimetre more growth than a taller boy.

Someone gets invited to the All-Japan Youth Training Camp.

It's volleyball. Our heroes burn with passion for volleyball. This is admirable and I'm happy for them. If you like sports anime, I understand this is one of the better ones.

The pre-credits 150 seconds made me laugh. Our heroes are in front of a packed stadium, playing a volleyball match against another school... and it's incompetent failure time. Total brain fades. Our hero remembers to jump, but forgets to hit the ball. The faces are great, the comic timing is perfect and I'd recommend this show to anyone who's into sports anime.

Seriously, I really liked it. The animation's fluid, playful and entertaining. The whole episode's just schoolboys playing volleyball, though, and obviously the comedy gets toned down after the title sequence.

I quite like Hanakappa. This week, all the animals, mythical creatures and outrageously absurd non-beings are sitting with their pig teacher and reading essays.

Hanakappa reads one about beans. Then, the animation style changes to coloured crayons as TereTereBouzu reads his story about helping the moon return to the sky with a giant catapult.

It's a bit of a mess. We have:

(a) main characters who are introduced to us as glamorous phantom thieves. They're filthy rich and live in a mansion, but they steal things.

(b) two childhood friends (Kana and Makoto) who are being reunited for the first time in ages. Kana had always thought Makoto was a girl, but no. Whoops. On realising her mistake, Kana turns into a man-hating tsundere.

(c) Makoto's been invited to live here by Kana's dad, a world famous magician who's going to raise him as his apprentice... and he immediately disappears for a month. Contrived anime set-up, check. Annoyingly over-theatrical entrance, check.

Makoto's nice, but that's about it for good points. Even the servants rubbed me up the wrong way. The maid is a genre-aware manipulative irritant, while the butler's called Jeeves Wodehouse. (Jeeves was not a butler, although when required he could admittedly buttle with the best of them.)

I've got a good feeling about this, despite recent PreCure history. The franchise's last few seasons are "degenerated", "painful", "good" and "empty" (in that order), but hopefully they're planning to alternate between "good" and "shit". (The more polite description of the latter would be "lighter and less drama-heavy for the younger audience".)

This might sound dumb, but I'm encouraged by this episode's title sequence. It promises menacing baddies and the PreCures' courage and determination facing them. It feels old-school. I approve.

There are also some innovations, though. The fairies try to fight the baddies! They don't stand a chance, but they try. We've never had action fairies before. I like these brave fairies, although Latte reminds me of a fairy from an old PreCure season and I still haven't worked out which one.

The episode felt right to me. Admittedly, it's easy to be more positive about PreCure first episodes than about the full series, but this season's started on the right foot.

For some reason, my copies of these episodes were audio-only. That said, though, what I remember of Season 1 was just two girls sitting and chatting. This looks like more of the same.

It's another light, mostly harmless Higurashi opening episode, lulling you into a false sense of security. Our heroes have boisterous fun. They're as playful and likeable as ever, although Keiichi's sense of humour seems a bit rougher than I remember and Satoko's traps include drawing pins in door handles and (previously) rocks to the head. No one minds. Her victims spot the danger, there are no injuries and it's all laughed off. Similarly, when everyone has lunch together, the food doesn't contain any needles or razor blades. (I was nervous, but needlessly.)

I'm disappointed that they've updated the previously unchanged character designs, even if today those originals do look dated. It's been almost twenty years now. You can tell who everyone is, though, and they've got all their old speech patterns. (They've also brought back everyone's original voice actors.)

There are only a few trademark moments, alongside the sleepy mountain village charm. Someone gets messily beaten to death at the start in what I presume is a flashforward to impending murderous insanity. Rena and Mion don't like being asked about that bloke who got lynched and dismembered. That's normal for Higurashi, though. I'm looking forward to another return to this landmark psychological horror series. (Starring all our favourite characters.)

It looks like garbage. You and I can both draw better than this. You could probably make better animation on your phone.

There's a supervillain who looks a bit like Bison in Street Fighter, a space ship, a purple zombie bloke, some child-sized heroes, etc. It's silly and probably amusing if you're in the mood.

A "VTuber" is a "Virtual YouTuber", i.e. Satan's tool from hell to destroy mankind with self-loathing. I can't see a better explanation for the fact that this series was made and broadcast.

They think they're funny.

It's a semi-animated web series. It's about a zashiki-warashi, which is a Japanese spirit that brings good fortune. (The subtitles wound me up slightly by translating it as "house spirit", which isn't wrong but is a bit like translating "yeti" as "mammal". Why not just leave it as "zashiki-warashi"?)

This zashiki-warashi moves to Tokyo and has a bad-tempered conversation that's meant to be comedic with other supernatural beings in her new boarding house. Charmless.

There was a war, after which women took over the world and banned all weapons. (Do I believe that universal disarmament would be as simple as that? No, I don't.) Badass street gangs yo dude dude chill of anime pretty boys must thus instead hold their battles with MICROPHONES! The best rapper will make all his opponents explode in a blast of blue flames, after which they'll be lying on the ground groaning at the pain of having had to listen to rap.

No, wait, that was me.

If I hadn't seen this with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it existed.