I avoided this show's first season in 2018, which I'd seen called "hilariously terrible". Its first episode struck me as okay, though, as did this. The cast are fun, especially that mischievous blonde who tells everyone what to do and teases her boss. (They're staking out a wedding.) There are also superpowered morphing people who plan to create a world where they can live in harmony with people. (This will, though, apparently involve "destroying in order to create", which sounds ominous. It will also involve kidnapping that Hairy Detective Bloke I remember from last time.)

There are action scenes where I didn't have a clue what was going on and didn't care, but that'll be my fault for not watching Season 1. It's quite well made and definitely above Netflix-average. I don't mind it.

It's not animated. The camera looks at static black-and-white manga pages, while actors say the dialogue in voice-over. That said, though, it's quite amusing and I wonder if this deadpan visual format might even have improved some of the jokes.

It's funny because it's not trying to be cute. Takeda is a middle-aged bloke with a gruff voice whose mind is unchanged and fully intends to go on working as the boss of his company... but he's liable to fall on his face when bowing and he can't even walk around. He doesn't like baby food and wants to eat katsu curry, which makes his subordinates yell at him.

"How old is your son?"

"One and a half."

"Ah, I'll have to make a social call and pay my respects."

It looks lots of fun. It's also full of cool visual design, with an SF world that's got Chinese, stripper Wild West and Heidi of the Alps rubbing shoulders with each other. It's also full of cool-but-dumb ideas:

Our heroes live in the land of Lingalind, which is surrounded by a wall. No one wonders what's outside it. If a stranger says, "I'm from beyond the wall", everyone falls about laughing and tells him that's impossible, even though super-valuable artefacts of unknown technology regularly come over this wall. The Lingalinders worship the wall as a god and believe that the wall itself gives them these gifts. There are two important nations in Lingalind: (a) Lutoh (who esteem intelligence and seem villainous) and (b) Rekka (who esteem valour). Could I sign up for Lutoh, please?

There are also mecha that are powered by conviction. No, really. If you put on a special arm bracelet, you'll suddenly be controlling a building-sized robot whose strength depends on how strongly you believe in table tennis, or porn, or whatever. If a girl puts on an arm bracelet, her robot will be cute and pink.

These mecha tend to be piloted by testosterone-crazed macho men who need dropping into a volcano. My level of interest in their fights was at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. I liked the girls, though. There's also a naked man who talked obnoxiously at first, but became funny when he said, "That lady risked her life to give me pants!" (Which he doesn't put on.)

If you like mecha anime, this looks like a must-watch. It's totally mental and has enough energy to blow up the world. Seriously, there's a ton of cool stuff and enthusiasm in this episode. Whoever created this show is someone to watch. For me, though... naaah.

It's an noitaminA show, so I expect it to be more grown-up than most anime. I've just been reading an article saying "Why You Should Watch Backflip!!" It's impressively animated. It got a film the following July. If you like sports anime, it looks as if this 100% belongs on your list.

I started watching. Pretty boys pose in a spotlight, then later do some even weirder posing in the park. Are they acrobats? Circus performers? No, they're doing rhythmic gymnastics. The show then does a three-minute animation showcase of the boys performing and I fast-forward. Having started, I don't stop. Nope. I'm not the target audience here.

I'm not sure which was its first episode of 2021, so I just watched a random one. Child Hero is repairing his house's roof after it was his fault that it got destroyed. "You only did it because you were being controlled by Havoc."

"I still can't believe it! Havoc turned out to be an alien!"

That's actually far more story than I'd expected from this merchandise-based anime. The show's better than I'd expected. It's not just "Boys fight with Bakugans", although the English dub I watched was no easier on the ears than the one I inflicted on myself in 2020.

You may or may not regard this as anime. It's a co-production, airing in Canada and the US before it aired in Japan. You can tell from, for instance, the careful ethnic balance (all five kiddie heroes have a different skin colour). I'm surprised that they're four-fifths male, but never mind.

The title sequence and its slightly silly faces tell you immediately that this is a children's show. A mobile gate disappears, then some comedy baddies in death metal costumes summon a robo-octopus to have a FIGHT!!!! with a dragon that's about to fall through a gate in the sky. I've seen worse and I'm sure I'd think it was quite good if I were eight years old, but I didn't bother watching the second half.

I normally don't watch things like this. It's yet another series of bonus bite-sized extras, spun off a parent anime... but this one's actually quite good. It's not just Flash-animated talking heads delivering forgettable banter to camera. Instead...

The era of warring states! Macho historical samurai drama! Except starring cute schoolgirl idols! This was, in fairness, mildly amusing.

The title sequence suggests that the desired tone is "relaxing and nice". The hero (Gideon Ragnason, aka. Red) got booted from his high-level adventuring party for not being strong enough and now just lives in some random village, gathering medicinal herbs and saving up small amounts of money so that he can buy a shop and become an apothecary. By local standards, he's secretly badass, but he tries to avoid fights.

This seemed pretty bland, to be honest. I've seen anime like this before. The protagonist doesn't do anything, everyone likes him, there's no drama, etc. This one doesn't even start with Red as an adventurer, which would have let us experience the booting in real time. He's already living in that village and we only see the key event as a three-minute flashback. (Mind you, apparently he has a sister who's still in the party and he's dropped out by asking his comrades to cover it up with polite lies, so I'm expecting the show to return to that.) There's also some dialogue that's trying too hard to paint Red as a saint, in the usual eye-rolling way of light novel protagonists.

"So this Red fellow gathered herbs amid a wildfire and brought them back to town?"

"That's right. He claims he gathered them before the guild put the mountains off-limits. I'm not buying it, though. But the guild has no proof and he got the much-needed blood needles, so they left it at that. I'm shocked he'd risk his life to gather herbs for someone. I mean, who does that, right?"

On that day, he'd been invited to join some adventurers who were hunting an owlbear. That's risking your life too. In fact, if I had to choose between fire and a gigantic flesh-eating monster, I think I'd usually decide that the fire was the lesser threat. The episode was okay, but it hadn't looked like anything special and I was on the point of ditching it when I came across some surprisingly positive reviews. Apparently it gets better. What the hell. I'll give it a whirl.

The original Battle Athletes had 26 TV episodes and 6 OVA episodes in 1997-98. A reboot manga was released in 2020-21, which in turn got this TV anime. It's hilariously bad.

A girl falls out of the sky, crashes near a potato farmer and asks one last favour. "Enter the Grand Games in my place and become the Cosmo Beauty!"

This is the greatest athletics event in the solar system, right? She's asking a random farmer. The standard can't be high.

Later, the farmer (Kanata) is doing surprisingly well in the qualifying events. She's mountain-climbing when the other girl slips and falls what looks like the equivalent of several stories. She makes the worst possible landing (hitting with her entire back) on rock... but she's okay. Kanata jumps down (eh?), picks up the girl and then resumes her mountain-climbing with an injured girl on her back.

1. Isn't it better not to move someone after a fall like that?

2. If you must move them, surely you'd go down the mountain towards medical help? Not upwards?

3. Getting a piggy-back up a mountain might not be the best treatment for spinal injuries.

"Why are you helping your enemy?" asks the other girl, because this is an anime cliche. (Instead, for instance, "OW OW I'VE BROKEN MY BACK YOU'RE KILLING ME!")

There's an evil organisation that's manipulating the sports event for their own purposes and thinks it's all pointless. Welcome to the first signs of intelligence in this episode. That said, though, the girls seem nice and it looks as if the show's going to be about them being supportive and befriending each other. I approve. The show might well end up being lovely... but this episode was extremely stupid and it's ultimately a sports tournament anime.

It's yet another Battle Royale death game! Anime does about 100000000000 of these, so why should we watch this latest version? Answer: you don't have to, but this first episode looked okay to me.

The protagonist (Shiroyanagi Akira) is a hardcore gamer who thinks real life is boring. Hurm. However, he's also clever and is planning to think his way through his battles, which sounds encouraging. He's also given a superpower that will make things unpredictable. (All the "ability testing focus group" contestants get superpowers, although high-tech handcuffs stop you from using them except in battle.)

Also, Akira has a goal. He doesn't want to have lots of fights. Good man. He wants to survive and make the organisers of this game regret giving him this ability. Even better.

Also, the fights aren't necessarily to the death. They have three permitted endings: surrender, knockout or death, although the organisers emphasise that it's completely okay to injure and kill. There will be no punishment for this. (Everyone's officially dead, after all, since the game's organisers have terminated all official records of the victims they've kidnapped.) Akira and his first official opponent are nonetheless both keen to give each other chances to surrender. That I liked too.

My expectations aren't high. It's a Battle Royale anime. But what the hell.

It's on YouTube. I have absolutely no idea what it is.

We start with a crashing plane... but one of the passengers has a TRADING CARD!!! We then go to a snowbound wilderness as someone says "in this current era, I am all about rage." Someone wakes up in bed with a bandage. (He's too old to be a typical trading card anime protagonist, being well past puberty.) I think this is a fantasy dimension. He's cared for by weird white robots and a White King in a Silver Castle in a White World.

There's a war and the palace collapses. A girl (princess?) is injured and the White King dies. I think. Suddenly we're in a red void. "The king lost to his ideals," says a baddie. Weak or incomplete ideals are a common accusation from baddies in this episode. There's discussion of war. "Your methods will only cause more bloodshed. You're no different from the humans you hate."

We then see more trading cards. Our hero gets a magical transformation sequence into battle armour, then he starts a TRADING CARD BATTLE... only for us to be snatched away again to, yet again, something completely different. "Show me how you'd change the world." We see people and aliens (or at least people with non-human skin colours) at what appears to be university. Their lecturer gets a videophone call to be accused of thought crimes. "Robespierre taught us how to negotiate with the adults," says someone. Does this anime thinks Robespierre was a heroic figure with ideals we should aspire to? Oddly, this fits what those people were saying. You certainly couldn't accuse the architect of the French Revolution of having timid or half-cooked ideals (although there are many, many other things you could accuse him of instead).

We now meet the small child protagonists you'd expect from a trading card battle anime. "Without these three cards, it's impossible to open the battle field!" The trading card battle continues and...

What the hell? I admit defeat. I can't even guess at the intentions of the people who made this anime.

I didn't particularly like it. It would have been merely the usual nonsense if it hadn't been for the little girl who's really 18 and has a driving licence, but nonetheless offers to show her pubic hair and drops her knickers. (She also provides explosives.)

There's a car chase, James Bond gadgets, bulletproof glass, a girl who claims to be a prostitute but (whoops) the man she names as her client is gay, a driver who appears to be the Terminator, etc. Someone vomits on a car windscreen. I wouldn't recommend watching this episode, but be aware that there's a very small additional plot beat after the end credits if you do.

Season 1 was one of the best shows of 2019 and I'm confident that this will be one of the best shows of 2021. Not disappointed so far. Our heroes are Legoshi (a gray wolf) and Haru (a white dwarf rabbit). They're sort of boyfriend and girlfriend, but Haru doesn't want to go public with it and is only meeting Legoshi on fire escapes at quiet times when no one can see them. The small herbivore community can be difficult. People used to say things about Haru even before she met Legoshi, which in fairness wasn't without cause.

This episode has one hell of a surprise if you've seen Season 1. There's also a Lovecraftian thing with six eyes. What on Earth is that? Along with all the other genres in this show, this week it's dabbling in horror. The cliffhanger (if you can call it that) made me want to watch ep.2 immediately.

Oh, and I love Juno. I don't want her to succeed in her goal of getting between Haru and Legoshi, but she's still awesome.

I got a bit confused by that lecture hall, though. Is everyone at university now? How much time's passed since Season 1? Answer: no, the school's just like that. (We never hear about anyone's parents and they all seem to live in what look like university dormitories, but maybe that's just how school's like in the Beastars universe.) It's only been two months since we last saw everyone and Legoshi's still 17 years old.

I love this show. It's one of my favourites.

"Beyblade! The dreams of boys everywhere, filled with battles, friendship and victory! They move to challenge the legends! Surpass the legends! Let your emotions run wild like fire! Break through your limits!"

I admire the tireless narrator. You can IMAGINE!!! him!! pouring... MILK; on; his; BREAKFAST!!!! CEREAL!!!! Again, the duellers are all-male. Unlike ep.1 last year, this episode is almost entirely spinning top battles, with only brief breaks for human conversation between the BATTLES!

"World Spriggan and Mirage Fafnir are in the middle of a slugfest!"

A high-powered professional finds her little brother's porn stash and watches it. This opens her eyes to anal. "Something I don't know! I have to try it!" She then enjoys herself solo for the episode's first eight minutes, with the help of fingers and the thickest sausage you can buy.

She's in her brother's room throughout all this, by the way. She didn't go anywhere more private. She's in a spectacularly revealing posture when her brother Takashi walks in. With a girl (who immediately excuses herself and departs at speed). This made me laugh.

It's hentai, so I think you know what's coming next. Yes, even though they're siblings.

There's a war on. The Heart Kingdom (the heroes) is fighting the Spade Kingdom (the villains who say things like, "We're going to wipe everything from this world. All life is in the palm of our hand.") I don't think anyone's considered the alternative meaning of "spade" as a racial slur, but fortunately all the villains are caucasian. There's also a Diamond Kingdom, to confirm the theme naming.

The episode's first half has Asta defeating some utter bastards. They're using some low-ranked people as magical energy for a mobile fortress. The extraction process is fatal, obviously. When a mother among their captives asks them to spare her child, they just tear the mother's clothing in a way that's as near as you'll get to an explicit rape threat in a kiddie adventure show. "You'll be useful to me after all!"

Naturally, Asta flattens them. They have magic and he doesn't, but he's so strong that he beats them up anyway.

It's quite good, actually, and a huge improvement on the show's earliest episodes back in 2017. Asta isn't annoying! Instead, he's just an idiot (and also not very tall). This week: fight some villains! Next week: fight some different villains! (They're sinister mages called the Dark Triad and they have Dark Disciples. Why don't villains ever call themselves the Flower-Patterned Pastel Triad or anything like that?) There's absolutely no chance of me watching the rest of this show, but as a one-off I quite enjoyed this episode.

It's plastic CGI. Not even cel-shaded in an attempt to look hand-drawn, but the full rubber doll. Do you like video game cut scenes? Do you want to watch thirteen half-hour episodes-worth of them? I knew immediately that I had no interest in this. Also, I quite like the original Ridley Scott movie, but my feelings are no stronger than that and I've paid very little attention to the attempts to turn it into a franchise.

Anyway, we visit Los Angeles in 2032. It looks like Blade Runner, yes. It's also populated by charmless idiots who try to steal things, get beaten up, killed with swords, etc. Doesn't anyone know how to behave nicely in this kind of cyberpunk? It's predictable and doesn't have much to say beyond "waaaah, Blade Runner", but it's sort of okay, I suppose.

At least the dialogue's in Japanese, though.

I knew about this, actually, having seen Blue Archive internet fan art. It's a schoolgirl combat game with guns, tanks, helicopters, etc. (They also all have odd target/halos above their heads. Some of them have devil horns and wings.) Here, they shoot each other, run around and seem to be having fun.

If this had been a full anime series, I'd have probably watched it.

Yatora Yaguchi hangs out with friends who smoke, talk about boobs, stay out all night and are astonished when he gets good grades because he sometimes goes home to study. He's not as annoying as them, but he still hangs out with them. He has a utilitarian view of life and his future. His family can't afford to send him to a private university and he intends to study something that will set up a career. He says things like "Why does everything feel meaningless?" and "People who are true to themselves can't survive in this society."

The show's about art. Yaguchi can draw. He thinks art's a waste of time, but part of him wants to choose it as his future. He also has a cool old lady art teacher who's laid-back but knowledgeable and says interesting things.

You can see where this is going. Yaguchi's going to make the choice he believes to be wrong, because it's what he really wants to do. That said, though, I didn't really like him. He'll obviously grow and improve, yes, but even so. That said, though, the episode's subtle, intelligent and far more interesting than you'd expect from a Netflix anime. I'm sure the show will be good. It's worth a tentative recommendation, if only just to try ep.1 and see what you think.

I like magical girl shows, but this episode doesn't know what it's doing. "What am I watching?" I asked myself. I kept not seeing the point of scenes. The episode didn't feel as if it had a direction. It lacks clarity of narrative, character, purpose, etc.

The episode opens jarringly, with a super-intricate CGI monster fighting a girl who's been drawn in the show's fairly crude art style. It looks so retro that I assumed it was a revival of a 1990s manga or something, but no. It's a video game adaptation.

There's a magic ring, a sword fight, fairy transformations, etc. but the main thing I remember is interminable school scenes.

I was watching a random YouTube episode, so it probably wasn't from 2021. It was quite funny. Bonobono finds some alarming red mushrooms, so he asks his friends Racoon and Squirrel if they've ever seen them before. Racoon is a macho dick, so he pretends he has and claims with no basis that they're delicious and completely safe to eat. Bonobono eats them, has a head-distorting personality change and turns into a gangster-like thug who kicks Racoon's arse.

Racoon has a despair breakdown. Squirrel learns that they can reverse the change with some blue mushrooms.

It's a sequel to Naruto (which ran for 720 episodes) with the children of the Naturo cast. I never watched either show regularly, but the few Boruto episodes I've seen have always been okay (and less filler-ridden than what I've seen of Naruto).

This one starts with a cyberspace meeting of people who look like villains, wear hooded robes and say things like "the loss of the Vessel is an unacceptable threat to our plans". One of them is deemed to be responsible and gets murdered.

That was okay. After that, though, Boruto has a "shinobi sparring" match with his father, Naruto. In other words, it's just another fight. Fast-forward time, although there is an unfortunate bit of amusement with Naruto's voice. In the parent series, he was a boy and so was voiced by an actress, Junko Takeuchi. Here, he's a grown man who's presumably not far off middle age... but he's still audibly female, with the same voice actress that he had on his first appearance as a pre-teen. Whoops.

Fumiya Tomozaki is Japan's top player at an online game called Attack Families, but he's a dull nobody with no friends. He thinks Attack Families is a godly game, whereas real life is a trash game where he's been dealt a bad hand by genetics and the deck's been stacked against him since birth. He can't win. He's not even interested in trying.

The episode then demolishes this in detail, using arguments that he himself had been using against a popular pretty boy who'd been sneering about Attack Families. It's actually quite interesting. It's very, very obviously targeted at a large section of the audience... and I say "good". They need it. Tomozaki gets a teacher who gives him some big, medium and small goals. (His reactions are funny.)

This looks pretty good.

It's a trading card game anime, but it's not kiddified at all. I like the tone. It felt worth watching... for the first five minutes.

After that, Sakura starts teaching Teruto how to play Build-Divide, in a practice card battle lasts until the closing credits.

If I still watched Bungou Stray Dogs, I'd definitely be watching this. It's the same characters, although sometimes they're actual dogs. (There are jokes about this, e.g. dog behaviour like arse-sniffing or being unable to use their superpowers because dogs can't write). Other versions of the characters are their normal human selves, but drawn to look more cute.

It's fine. Seems amusing, if you remember Dazai, Nakajima and the others. Personally, though, I've dropped the parent show and so I'm not the target audience for this comedy spin-off.

If you don't know kabaddi, it's from the Indian subcontinent and this isn't the first time I've seen it mentioned in anime. It has novelty value, anyway, and I was more likely to watch this than, say, another sports anime about volleyball, soccer, cycling, etc.

Unfortunately, the main chararacter's a cock. It's okay that he hates sport. Unfortunately, though, he's also rude to anyone who tries to talk to him about it (despite being famous and gifted) and instead lives for internet live streaming. Also, the title sequence promises lots of pretty boys and at best only homeopathic glimpses of any female characters.

And, of course, it's a sports anime. I'm sure it has its fans, but I'll give it a miss.