"Maesetsu" means the warm-up act, e.g. before a stage act or a TV show. Four 19-year-old girls will want to do this, specifically as manzai comedians. (Manzai is a double act with a "boke" idiot and a "tsukkomi" who gets annoyed at the idiot.)

I'm sure it's nice, but I can see myself struggling with this. Comedy in another language can be difficult and I've never yet seen a manzai that really made me laugh...

I've reviewed this episode twice. I watched it, disliked it and wrote a negative review... which then somehow disappeared in my computer. So here I am again. I started rewatching the episode this morning.

GOOD NEWS: at least I realised I'd seen it before. Some shows are so generic that you could easily forget.

BAD NEWS: zzz, skip, fast-forward.

The main character is a truck driver who doesn't notice that someone's helped him load guns into his truck. Next thing he knows, a guard's found them and he's in prison facing a death sentence. Some gun smugglers hear about this terrible, terrible event and immediately come to rescue... the guns. Soldiers get involved and there's lots of killing. (Their leader's played by Kenjiro Tsuda, though, who's always fun to listen to.)

To be honest, I don't remember the details of why I didn't like it first time. Fast-forwarding through for another brief look, it seems charmless and dull. I have no interest in watching it in real time so that I can elaborate on that.

Once upon a time, there was an industry-changing phenomenon called Puella Magi Madoka Magica. And lo, it made money. Thus spake the franchise owners, saying, "Can we squeeze a sequel out of this?"

Unfortunately, though, it's Madoka Magica. We know what's going on. We know that for its characters, getting involved is like sticking your head in a guillotine. We're talking about a franchise with taglines like, "The price of a wish, is it hope or despair?" Our pink-haired heroine seems sort of nice, in a bland way, but it's only ep.1 and the show's already asking, "Have you ever thought you wanted to be saved from being a magical girl?"

I admire the animation. It's by Gekidan Inu Curry, who draw on Russian and Czech animation styles and even reminded me a bit of Terry Gilliam. Unfortunately, there's a four-minute almost dialogue-free sequence (circa 13-17min) where the animation takes over and I had to go back and rewatch because I'd stopped paying attention.

Happy to skip this.

It's Season 2 of a next-generation sequel to Major, an award-winning 1994-2010 baseball manga. Major's hero is the father of Major 2nd's.

Fortunately, though, you don't need to know all that. I had to check that this really was Major 2nd, because it didn't resemble the 2018 episode I'd previously watched. I think Season 1 characters have graduated and we're now following the younger players.

Anyway, it's the start of the school year and Daigo's trying to recruit new players. Mysteriously, also, the title sequence is full of girls. That's new. We then meet five swaggering arseholes who've come to the school on a sports scholarship and think they own the baseball club. They're from a famously strong school and they sneer at the current baseball club's members. (Daigo's small, polite and the only boy.) The most insufferable of these newbies will get angry if a girl hits one of his fastballs, because she's a girl.

Daigo challenges them to a match. The newbies think skill is all that matters (rather than, say, politeness), but no one's seen anyone else's skill levels yet.

This is great. I don't normally watch sports anime, but I enjoyed this. You'll hate those scumbags, although you'll also admire Daigo for having the intelligence to respect them instead. (He doesn't want hatred. He wants a good baseball club.) I laughed at how the teams had been written on the scoreboard, for instance. "Upperclassmen vs. annoying brats".

If I'd been looking for a sports anime, I'd have watched this. I really enjoyed this episode. (It even has gender balance.)

Theoretically, they're comedy mini-episodes for anyone who likes Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle. (I don't much, although I did watch it all. It's okay.) It does, though, have the twin problems of (a) not being funny, and (b) being basically a throwaway radio scene with sub-minimal animation. You'll enjoy it more if you shut your eyes.

I need to stop watching the first episodes of these chibi comedy spin-offs. There's so little meat on them that they're rarely even worth noticing.

Marulk needs to wake his sadistic, scary and possibly drunken mistress, Ozen. This involves winches and ropes.

(Incidentally, if you're looking at the poster and wondering if I mistyped that personal pronoun... no, I didn't. Marulk is male, but he doesn't come across that way.)

It's cute and fun. Recommended.

It might look like random kiddie nonsense, but it's actually a revival of a 1980s-90s franchise with 151 episodes under its belt. (There's been a 22-year gap since the previous season.) The tone's a bit more serious than you'd expect. It's not just fluff. It's a fantasy adventure (except at the end, when our heroes fall from the sky towards what looks like a modern urban setting) where you fight giant shadow monsters and have weird dreams about beehive mountains.

That said, though, its child heroes appear to be eight and eight (the two boys) and four (the girl). The annoying "ore-sama" boy who needs to learn to talk more politely calls the four-year-old his wife. Also, our hero's beautiful but irresponsible mother gives her son a sword and sends him on an adventure. Uh.

It's a cute magical girl show for little girls. That's an endangered species these days. There's PreCure and that's it, unless you count otaku stuff that airs at 2am where the girls are all killing each other in deathmatches.

I approve. It looks nice. I won't be watching its 48 episodes or its second season, but I have nothing against it whatsoever and I'll still be watching PreCure (which is a very similar show). Distinguishing features include:

(a) modest efforts at gender balance. The title sequence has four girls (expected) but also two boys (not expected).

(b) a surprising amount of screen time for Yume's high-powered mother, although I should have guessed that that's just build-up for making her the baddies' first victim/villain. Yume will have to enter mum's dream and rescue her from the black aura that's coming from her head. (Everything's okay in the end, obviously, and afterwards mum doesn't even seem aware of what happened. Her co-workers even visit her house to apologise for shoving all their work on to her.)

(c) the magical transformation sequence isn't nude, as is sadly normal these days. Tch. Do these people have no sense of tradition?

(d) Yume hates cherry tomatoes. WHAT? I'm sorry, that's a deal-breaker. I can't watch this show. Fairies building intelligent talking soft toys in a city above the clouds? No problem. Completely normal. Hating cherry tomatoes, though? Get away from me, you freaks. I realise that a hated food is a standard Protagonist Quirk in this kind of show and the makers clearly felt they'd run out of sane options, but suspension of disbelief has limits.

That was the silliest thing I've seen all week, so I'll watch the series.

Daisuke Kambe's wealth is unlimited. He flies in a plane that says "KAMBE" on it and arrives at a crime scene by driving down the exact middle of the road, knocking everyone else's cars out of the way. It's okay, he thinks. He'll just pay everyone twice what their cars were worth. He's also capable of driving someone else's car up a bridge that's been elevated about two-thirds of the way towards vertical.

Naturally, he wants to become a detective. What?

Haru Katou is a stickler for truth, justice and proper behaviour. He's not going to like Kambe much.

It's another light novel adaptation with an overpowered hero... except that everyone's a demon and the "hero" (Anos Voldigoad) is actually the reincarnation of some 2000-year-old mega-demon. He can wipe the floor with everyone else and boy, does he know it. He's got a ton of obnoxious attitude. I disliked him a lot.

On the other hand, though, his victims are sneerier-than-thou cocks who saw commoners as mongrels. Conversely, Anos is nice to a modest, polite girl who talked to him like an ordinary person. He invites her home for dinner and we learn that they both have embarrassing parents. It's also indicated that his more swaggering statements were intended as jokes. (He's an idiot.)

Maybe I'm misjudging Anos. I'll try another episode.

Okay, yeah. I'll keep watching.

The pre-credits sequence has Anos accepting death to stop the demon-human war. A hero sticks a sword through his chest. He'll be reincarnated, but not for another 2000 years. That's enough to convince me. Anos definitely isn't that bad.

He's still so overpowered that it's ridiculous, but at least the show's not trying to pretend that there's any drama in it. He also manages not to be obnoxious this time, since his opponent (in a designated school battle) is a girl who's cold towards her homunculus (?) sister, but definitely not evil. I quite enjoyed this episode, so... yes, I'll subject myself to yet another Overpowered Light Novel Protagonist Series.

RESPECTABLE MEDICAL REASON: he's a doctor, investigating her chest pains. Fortunately, the reason why is a happy one. She's pregnant. She and her husband are delighted by the news.

REASON FOR BEING THE FIRST SCENE: it's that kind of anime. And yes, Litbeit does have a female colleague (Saphentite Neikes, a lamia) who's hopelessly in love with him and gets aggressively jealous at any female patients who get over-familiar. Neikes is also a doctor and could surely have performed the examination for him... but that's not what the target audience wants to see.

That said, though, I enjoyed the episode. Litbeit and Neikes are good doctors, providing a valuable service. They help a centaur with hoof problems. I didn't buy the episode's explanation of why Neikes hasn't already jumped Litbeit's bones, but never mind. I like the characters and what they're doing. I expect to enjoy the series.

The episode starts with a boy in New York, 1911, reading Sherlock Holmes. That has an illustration of the traditional old, scary, evil-looking Moriarty.

We then go to Victorian England, reproduced splendidly. It looks great... as does Moriarty himself, plus all his criminal friends. They're blonde pretty boys, because this is anime. (Well, except when he's frowning in the title sequence, which makes him look horse-faced.) This week, Moriarty is hunting a serial killer of little boys.

It's a solid, well-made piece of Victoriana. Moriarty's detective work is also pleasingly logical. Nonetheless, I'll be skipping the show. I love Sherlock Holmes, but I tend to have a low tolerance for alternative takes on him. Even if they're fine in theory, in practice I tend to find them inferior to Conan Doyle's originals.

"Mottainai" is a good, useful Japanese word, meaning "wasteful" or "a waste". (You can also use it metaphorically, e.g. to imply "she's too good for you".) "Baa-san" either means "granny" or any lady of a granny-like age. (Because of this ambiguity, Tomoko never realised for years that her great-grandmother back in Tokushima was related to her.)

Here, a small boy is told, "If you don't eat all your food, Mottainai Baa-san will come for you." He doesn't, so she does. This is quite funny, but the episode avoids the pseudo-horror angle I'd been expecting. Mottainai Baa-san actually has some good ideas on what you can do with discarded paper, mandarin peel and the stubs of colour pencils.

Mottainai Baa-san is kind of cool.

The show's fox hero (Zorori) is a phantom thief (so I definitely won't keep watching), but, in this episode, he's a thief in name only. No theft. No criminal activity of any kind. On the contrary, he helps uncover a not-very-evil scheme by a couple of swindlers.

His best friends are two tiny pigs, each of whom has a special move. One has super-sucking powers with his mouth and nose, while the other farts (and can recharge his fart power by eating sweet potatoes). Hmmm. One emits gas, while the other inhales it. Perfect symmetry. One's tempted to speculate about their special, private way of enjoying long winter evenings.

Anyway, our "heroes" enter a dodgeball tournament where the prize is a million years of sweets. Amazing! Nothing in the world could be better! In a sports context, everyone's special talents are moderately amusing... but one of the players is a superpowered robot belonging to the tournament's organisers. Can our heroes fart, suck and spin (that's Zorori) their way to ultimate pleasure? It's quite an entertaining episode, but also moderately stupid. A cop says he won't be able to get any information from that robot unless Zorori wins at the dodgeball. Then, after the robot's been copying everyone's special moves while saying "I AM COPYING YOUR SPECIAL MOVES", Zorori is astonished to be told that the robot copies special moves.

I'd heard good things about this and I was mildly interested, but no.

Firstly, it's a reverse-harem. I don't dislike the genre and indeed I've watched a few such shows, but the title sequence is screaming "this show is not for you". Brooding pretty boys! Carrying the heroine! Hugging the heroine! Ohhhh, now a tiny smile! Uh-huh.

More importantly, though, I found myself being put off by the title character's activity. She's a TV producer, having inherited it from her late father. She makes programs about mysterious phenomena and she has some integrity about it, unlike the U-tuber they've hired and immediately have to dump. On meeting a charming and (of course) hot celebrity boy, though...

"If I were on Miracle Finger, what would I have to do?"

"Well, let's see. Your fans say it seems like you have a superpower that entrances people. So if we looked into where that power to pull people to you comes from..."

YOU'RE MAKING GARBAGE. GO AWAY.

Incidentally, this show's based on a game that sacked a voice actor for saying on Twitter that "Taiwan is a country".

The episode's quite good, but I disliked what little I watched of Rouji in Season 1 and he hasn't improved enough. He's still obnoxious, albeit less so than before. Here he's acquired two even more unpleasant rivals, Goryo and Ebisu, but that just means I dislike both sides. I also don't buy the Magical Law premise, since these people in no way suggest law enforcement. Do they look like policemen to you? Nana and Muhyo are nice, but that's it.

Otherwise, though, this is juicy, dark stuff. Two schoolgirls play Kokkuri-san and regret it. Goryo and Ebisu are basically rude, sneering gangsters. If you can take Rouji, I'm sure the show's decent.

It starts with a retelling of the Japanese fairy tale, Momotarou. An old woman sees a peach floating down the river... and suddenly the episode turns into a horse race, complete with racing commentary. Old lady races peach. This is because everyone in this show has a horse clamped to their head.

Next episode: Horse Cinderella.

I'd been thinking of dropping this show, even though I like it. It's done nothing wrong whatsoever. I've watched it since the beginning. It is, though, falling down my to-watch list and currently somewhere around the "if I remember" level. Heroes, villains, fight. Heroes, villains, fight. Heroes, villains, fight. 75 episodes of that is probably enough.

This episode, though, is quite good. Overhaul is a very bad person who might be able to kill the entire hero party all on his own (and voiced by Kenjiro Tsuda, so you know he's badass). Deku's arrival is undeniably cool. Sir Nighteye is pretty awesome too. I liked the contrast between Sir Nighteye's issues with his Foresight superpower ("I can't change the future") and Deku's bloody-minded, groundless determination ("I'll change the future"). There's a child in the middle of all this (Eri) and the choices she's been given by Overhaul are horrifying too.

I also liked the ending. I'm not sure what just happened, but surprises are good.

What the hell. I'll keep going.

An eight-year-old bitch princess (Catarina Claes) falls on her head one day and remembers that she's actually a 17-year-old nerd teenager from Japan. Everyone who knows her is shocked when she wakes up and can talk politely.

That's nothing compared to Catarina's reaction, though, when she realises she knows this fantasy world. She's played it. It's one of her computer games, Fortune Lover, where the heroine will have a choice of four handsome, smooth, flawed heroes! The one you choose will be healed by your love and choose to marry you. (Well, if you get it right and don't hit the bad ending.)

Unfortunately, Catarina's been reincarnated as the game's villainess. In the game's "good endings", she dies. The bad endings aren't that much better. Oh, and Catarina's ideas for fixing her future tend to boil down to being nice to people and averting evil. This looks like a lot of fun, with a bit of heartwarming on the side (e.g. destroying that door with an axe).

A gal (or "gyaru") lives with a dinosaur. He's blue, has a dumb expression and can't talk, but he likes ramen and is scared of cats.

That's it. That's the show.

However, this is by the staff of Pop Team Epic. It's not being rude or obnoxious, but it's being similarly experimental with style. There are claymation scenes. The second half of the episode is mostly a replay of the first, but shot in live-action and with a middle-aged man instead of a gal. (There are also story differences and some kind of devil-villain-something character.)

It's sort of nice. It's domestic slice-of-life with relaxed characters. I had a quick look at ep.2 and it looks as if the live-action segments are going somewhere. However there's not much content and I'm not a fan of that "second half repeats the first half" thing. It feels very much like a four-panel gag manga that's not funny, adapted experimentally rather than well.

It's probably the best first episode of 2020, because it's not a first episode. It's ep.29. You won't find many other shows with this much characterisation and depth in the three-way friendship of Hachiman, Yukino and Yui... and it would be almost unimaginable in a first episode. Damn, I love this show.

Then there's Hachiman's sister, Komachi. I love them together too. It's as if they're flirting and going on a date together, except that Komachi's always calling Hachiman creepy and they're cheerfully rude to each other. (That's partly sibling banter and partly just because she's talking to Hachiman. He has no social graces whatsoever, so being overly direct is just speaking his language.)

The episode's really nice, but it's also taking us into psychological territory that might get uncomfortable. Yukino goes home. I'll be astonished if this isn't one of the best shows of 2020.