The idea's wacky and the stop-motion animation is distinctive. A purple devil girl wakes up and is horrified to see a giant toothbrush, because she lives inside another girl's mouth.

Every so often she pops out to play. She'll gobble food that the other girl had been going to eat, etc. This is weird and cute, even though Purple gives her host a giant toothache. Tomoki Misato also made Pui Pui Molcar, which was just as original and fun. (My family watched Pui Pui Molcar on the plane back from Japan and loved it.)

I liked it. It made me laugh. It's much, much better than a trading card battle anime needs to be. Admittedly, I liked the opening episode of last year's Cardfight!! Vanguard Gaiden: If so much that I watched the whole series, which was a mistake.

Yu-yu is a 15-year-old boy who can't say "no". His sisters put ketchup on his breakfast (and then have a debate about whether that should have been worcester or soy sauce) and dress him up for laughs in dresses and a bra. Yu-yu runs out of the house in a panic. While still wearing that dress. This boy needs to learn how to stay out of trouble.

A Flash Harry tries to pick him up repeatedly. A girl called Megumi rescues him and kicks Harry in the groin. Yu-yu finds himself incapable of confessing to his true gender, even when Megumi starts saying things like "a true female friendship". (Fortunately, Megumi will turn out to be an understanding person.) She also has a strong, possibly stupid big brother who's not really her brother and has a comedy confrontation of his own with Flash Harry. That night, they invite Yu-yu to an abandoned theme park.

The episode's second half has a cardfight, which obviously you'll fast-forward through. But that was still quite good.

It's about vampires that don't drink blood. They're forbidden from attacking humans, the urge is easily suppressed, etc. What's the point of turning this into a vampire story, then? That's a pet peeve of mine.

Otherwise, though, this looks great. The steampunk Paris looks gorgeous, from the costumes, paintings and architecture to that amazing skyship. Our heroes are goofballs, or perhaps clever idiots. One dresses in white and the other in black. They're quite funny. I loved the music choices in a vampire superhero fight between them.

The episode has surprises, including the last-minute info-drop. I like the cast. This was fun. I'll stick around to see what's happening with the vampires-who-aren't (who are apparently at risk of going extinct), plus their cat.

This show is great. (The new theme songs aren't as good as Season 1's, though.)

Our heroes are back: plucky oxygen-delivering Red Blood Cell AE3803 (a bit), stoic defender of the body's health White Blood Cell U-1146 (a good deal more) and above all the adorable kiddie platelets. We even meet their mum. The host body takes a bump to the head, so they have to stem internal bleeding.

This show exists in a sweet spot between silly-but-charming anthropomorphisation and biology textbook medical facts. It's weird, but entertaining. The platelets' reaction to gold medals made me laugh, as did the smug germ that thought it was indestructible because it was too cute to be killed. (Cute Germ, meet White Blood Cell.)

The English title is a fudge. In Japanese, "Black Company" means a company that treats its employees as slaves, gives them tons of unpaid overtime and occasionally makes them die of overwork. (Yes, there's a Japanese word for "death from overwork".)

In English, though, appending "Black" might suggest ethnicity and hence possible racist connotations... so the English title also has a meaningless extra word ("Code").

Anyway, it's just like the parent series but with some gender-flipping and a whole lot more stress. Red Blood Cells are male, while White Blood Cells are female (and have huge boobs and no interest in buttoning up their shirts). Also, more importantly, these microscopic guys' lives are terrible. They snap at each other, newbies get shoved in at the deep end and even the platelets are obnoxious. Furthermore, the episode's built around scary medical stuff that you wouldn't get in the parent show, because these guys are closer to self-inflicted death.

The metaphor for real Japanese "black companies" is brutal and I like it... but I'm not sure it holds water. Your body's cells have nowhere else to go. They can bemoan their fate, but they're imprisoned in a way that real people aren't. It's in their biology. Their work environment's horrible, yeah, but the only alternative to work would be to let the body die, along with everyone in it.

It's quite good, though. Its existence improves the parent show, by offering another perspective on its ideas. Happy to keep watching.

I'm not sure why this isn't a Netflix anime. You'd expect them to be all over it. Bad and very CGI animation of men fighting a lot. It's boring.

It's mildly educational. It shows us what boxing was like in the year 54 AD. (Hint: boxing gloves were scarier back then.) It's refreshing to see how nasty a slave's life and abrupt death could be in those days, compared with the happy fetish fantasy versions of slavery that have become their own isekai sub-genre. Theoretically, I also like the idea of a gladiator series with a milksop hero who doesn't want to hurt anyone. (In practice, he just seems a bit wet and uninteresting, but hey.)

To be honest, I was unlikely to be interested in this material. I like historicals in general and ancient Rome in particular, but I'm expecting this to be pretty boring. Fight, fight, another fight. More fights. Plus, of course, Cestvs himself is dull. But writing this review gave me fifteen minutes of interesting reading after I googled "boxing in Ancient Rome".

It's based on the bestselling autobiographical manga by Sakura Momoko, which she drew from the age of about 20 until her death of breast cancer in 2018. The anime's been broadcast in more than 60 countries. Observations on this randomly chosen episode include:

1. Grandad's head is an egg. (Neighbours are allowed to look more human than Maruko's family, who of course must resemble their manga originals.)

2. The main character, Maruko, is nine years old... but it's not hard to notice that her voice actress is sixty. Instead of sounding like a troublemaking child, she sounds like a badly behaved and perhaps slightly senile old granny.

It's a fun, good-natured show, though. Don't expect too much, but it's quite nice.

The cast are all food items, so we start with a toffee apple telling an impossibly round chicken drumstick to stop dancing. Chicken Drumstick then makes a springboard out of a ruler and jumps through a window to where a possibly hungry frog is waiting for him. (The frog's actually quite fun.)

I actually quite liked it. The art's ridiculously crude, but the show's mildly surreal (e.g. the drumstick pulling out two smaller drumsticks and saying they're his younger brothers) and the characters are amusing.

There's also a 2020 anime about the same bloke, from the same production team and of similar length. I think I might have watched that instead of this, but what the hell.

The title character was a real 12th century samurai, also known as Minamoto no Tametomo. The episode's effectively a music video. "I quite like the theme music," was my first reaction... but then the music didn't stop. It kept going all the way through.

As portrayed here, Tametomo was a bit of a bad boy with very watchable facial expressions. He's far more engaging and watchable than most samurai. He rescued a girl, had a child with her, defeated a baddie, went off to battle, etc. Does he die at the end? Maybe. He sees a flashback of all the people he's ever known. (If my hypothesis is correct, incidentally, I'd note that the historical Tametomo killed himself by seppuku.)

Anyway, it's quite fun.

My God, it's revolting. The heroic protagonist is a diligent, virtuous schoolgirl called Chizuru. The villainous second protagonist (Tamura-sensei) is an old, ugly bastard who's a teacher at her school and does the following:

1. Can't be bothered telling off two students for a minor infringement and then is about to hit Chizuru when she (rightly) points out that he's not doing his job.

2. Has taken money from the fund for the school trip. "I only borrowed it a bit for an investment and planned to put it back after I made a profit." He can't pay it back, so he decides to frame one of his colleagues (Tsukino-sensei) for the crime instead.

3. When Chizuru finds out about this and tries to protect Tsukino (whom she admires), Tamura blackmails Chizuru into having hateful sex with him for six episodes.

This is a lot like Chii-chan Kaihatsu Nikki, a similar 2020 hentai from the same studio. Avoid both shows.

It's the latest anime from Natsume Akatsuki, the mangaka behind KonoSuba and Kemono Michi. The former made me laugh my head off and I like the latter too, although I can see why others don't. (Borderline bestiality, helloooo.)

Unsurprisingly, I loved this. The main character, Combat Agent 6, made me laugh right from the start. He's a combat agent for an evil secret world-conquering organisation, but he's also ready to tell his bosses that they're dressed like cosplayers and saying nothing that makes any sense. He also knows what he thinks of that android sidekick with no combat ability and no clever hardware except a self-destruct device that's basically a nuke. (The android thinks he's a moron, incidentally, and says so repeatedly to his face. I'm not saying she's wrong in her judgement of him, but nor is Combat Agent 6 in his of her.)

"Hey, where'd that crazy backstory come from?"

"Listen, Six. You're an idiot. You'd screw up any story I came up with. But with this backstory, nobody will wonder about even the dumbest questions you ask."

Naturally, they're about to be dropped in the middle of a local war. There's a scumbag with big boobs (Snow) and a worrying princess (Tillis). This looks great. (There are people who disagree with me there, but that's fine.)

Melodramatic trailer music! Deep-voiced narrator! ...about condoms! Which is quite funny.

The style's superficially more realistic than the original Condom Battler Gorou, but that's because it's a parody of a certain kind of classic battle anime. The protagonist struggles with his feelings! While his girlfriend tells him to use a condom!

Also, villains fly through cities in a purple magic haze of evil and blast passers-by with energy beams. There's a man with a hysterically extreme quiff. It's all very macho, intense and straight-faced in a way that's quite amusing, given the Public Safety Announcement subject matter.

Our heroes are going to cook with tofu for a cooking contest. There's a goof along the way, involving inawara. I've now summarised all the significant content in this episode's 24 minutes.

For what it's worth, this show is even less interesting than average for its genre. It's not just a cooking anime, but also a children's anime. It's shounen.

If you remember 1970s BBC children's programmes, it's like a porn version of Mr Benn.

A girl's just quit her beloved anime research society. The boys all stare at her breasts and the girls say she's too tall to cosplay as anyone. She finds a mysterious anime costume store, though, and is so taken with their outfits that she tries one on! (Each episode has the same introduction, but a different outfit and a different genre being parodied. Incidentally, our heroine's favourite anime is Hyakkiya Tantei Jimusho, which in real life is another hentai from the same studio as this.)

The shop also has a fat shop assistant who's left his just-used fleshlight on the floor. You've now met the comedy couple who'll appear in all of these episodes. They're pulled into an anime world (with the trigger being an accidental hand job) and...

"All right, for next week's Hikari-chan, the creamy white cannon she tries to take shoots a light beam with an aphrodisiac! Hikari's body heats up and becomes flushed. She'll stroke the Creamy White Warrior's penis and make it big..."

"The Creamy White Warrior is a MAN???"

"You're picking on that part?"

"More importantly, an 8am Sunday children's show can't have that kind of naughty content!"

"You fool! After trespassing in the store and damaging the costume mannequin, you're the one who'll get arrested if we call the police!"

"All right. To avoid ruining the children's dreams! A heroine should never get arrested!"

The show's mildly amusing, actually. Especially episode four. "Ding-ding-ding! Welcome! Our rice balls are 3.7% off right now. We're currently running a half-arsed discount promotion!"

I enjoyed that less than my previous episode of Crayon Shin-chan, actually. I think I have trouble with Shin-chan's scenes with his mother. Obviously, he's rude in Japanese and it's easy to see why he's unpopular with some of my Japanese friends, but personally I don't blame Shin-chan himself. He's four. It's his mother's job to help him sort himself out and she's doing a disgraceful job. (Some things he does are out of anyone's control, obviously, but there are things she could and should be correcting.) Personally, I don't find her scenes funny.

The school scenes I like, but the over-competitive rival teachers are the same joke as last time, etc. Also, Shin-chan's voice is creepy. (Mind you, it's amazing that an actress is producing it.)

I still like the franchise, though. The movies are great. I was just out of luck this time, with two of the three sub-episodes being Mum taking Shin-chan to the library, grrrr.

I don't understand the title sequence, but never mind.

This week, our five-year-old heroine (Najimu) draws a picture on an important contract. One of her employees (Mayu Warito) comes in looking for it. Okay so far. The "comedy" begins when Najimu refuses to return it and has a tug-of-war with Warito as they both pull at the contract. Predictably, it ends up torn in half.

I don't mind the show's comedy premise, but that scene is too stupid to live.