The episode begins with pretty boys singing and dancing in a live idol concert. The anime's producers have thoughtfully started with their most vapid, pointless material, in a probably successful attempt to drive away screaming everyone who's not a fan of pretty boy idol anime.

We're then introduced somewhat mechanically to an extremely large number of wannabe idols going to Etoile Vio School, i.e. idol school. This anime's based on a mobile phone game, by the way. There's a token female (presumably the game's protagonist) who's a producer recording a video diary. There are lots and lots and lots of boys. A few girls too, admittedly, according to the title sequence... but a bit of googling tells me that those are actually boys too. They just like cross-dressing.

The school's headmaster wears a teddy bear costume. He gives everyone a challenge.

"The new students this year have such variety. Watching them is so exciting. How will they handle the assignment of selling 3000 CDs, or will they be unable to clear it?"

Also (and more importantly), does the audience care? Hint: no. Well, I didn't, anyway.

800 years ago, battle gods called "idaten" sealed away demons. Now, there are still idaten, but most of them are too young to remember the old demon-battling days. They can run like the Flash, punch like the Sensational She-Hulk, survive fatal-looking injuries, etc. They're also liable to batter each other to a gruesome bloody splatter, which is off-putting for the audience even if we know it won't kill them.

Their world has airplanes and nasty dictatorships with soldiers who'll happily shoot a child in the head. (He's a god and it only annoys him, but even so.) There's an old bloke who's trying to revive these world-destroying demons. There are naked boobs in the title sequence. All this is fairly cartoonish and silly, since our divine anti-heroes are indestructible superheroes and the show feels a bit like kiddie shounen battle anime... until the end, when some soldiers gang-rape a nun in a church.

Uh, no.

Apparently, this show is quite good. It started fairly dark and has been getting darker. The characterisation and drama are deeper than you'd expect for an idol show.

It is, though, still an idol show. With pretty boys. One of whom has an annoying accent. They do TV commercials and appear on pointless afternoon talk shows. This week, there's going to be new management staff and... nope, sorry, can't be bothered. That's not a slight on the quality of the show, but simply to say that I didn't care about anything in the episode.

The only question is whether the show has a script. Is it improvised, or was someone actually paid to write this? (If so, the mind boggles.)

Everything else about it is immediately obvious. It's clearly live CGI that was done by voice actors wearing motion capture tech. This is offensively bad. The robotic faces have as much expression as a woodlouse, so for instance the actress's "non-alcoholic???" line before the opening credits is rendered bathetic by her animated face's non-reaction. (In fairness, though, the motion capture renders body language quite well, so the actress can convey things with a tilt of the head.)

To quote the official blurb:

"An idol group, consisting of four young girls, are at loss as the number of guests coming to their concerts is hilariously low. One day, confronted by a talking wooden carving, they take on a challenge to gather a hundred fans in only ten days in order to fill a proper concert venue."

So they're idols. Also, they're idols. Sod off. In addition, only one of the girls is surprised when an ornament starts talking. This show is on a par with VTuber CGI motion-capture anime, i.e. it's a crime against humanity. In fairness, though, there are some mad people out there who got used to the CGI, didn't mind the idol storyline and thought the show was quite nice.

Season 5's actually been less pointless than usual for Cinderella Girls Theater and is occasionally funny, but I still wouldn't recommend it to people who aren't me. This episode has Kako doing some party pieces on stage... and that's it.

The end theme song is "Hatsuyume wo Atana to", sung by Kako's voice actress. It's in this episode only, although I've just listened to the full four-minute version on YouTube. This show has always had an insane number of theme songs.

I knew it was an idol anime. It starts with idols about to put on a concert. I was already writing off the show and wondering if I'd be fast-forwarding... but then we jump back five years and I found myself enjoying the episode. A schoolgirl (Mana) summons a classmate (Makino) to discuss something after school. She wanted to discuss becoming an idol. She's been scouted by a producer. "Why talk to me?" asks Makino, not realising that she quietly likes him, but that's not where the conversation's going.

She takes the job, with Makino as her assistant. (She insisted.) She starts building a career. More time passes than I'd expected, then there's a surprise. And another. I'm not convinced that the show's gimmick will end up as anything but a gimmick, but fair's fair. This episode was charming and unexpected, so I'm willing to check out ep.2.

Okay, I'm aboard. They've convinced me. Two new girls appear: Mana's little sister (whose face would break if she smiled) and an airhead who sings with Mana's voice. This was a good episode and I want to see where this story's going.

Three girls catch our fat hero sniffing panties in the girls' locker room while he masturbates. He can hardly say he didn't ask for whatever might be coming next... but, even so, it seems a bit much to make him their slave and order him to steal 30,000 yen from his parents' wallets or something. One of them's a sadist, which her friends are used to. "She's always loved seeing people's faces in agony."

The girls then order our hero to hypnotise them. They have a textbook. It works. He immediately thinks of revenge... but, for hentai, his ideas are surprisingly vanilla. They just have lots of sex and that's it, although the sadist might be coming to her senses at the cliffhanger.

The episode's not that bad, actually. Brain bleach won't be required. It's still hardcore porn and you'll be fast-forwarding through all the sex scenes, obviously, but you'd expect any hentai with the words "hypnosis" and "revenge" to be terrifying.

Imaizumi (male) and three of his classmates (female) are hanging out in his bedroom, playing computer games. One of them starts nibbling his ear and playing with his penis. "Ahahaha, you died in the game! You lost concentration!"

That first girl wanks him off, then the other two come back from the shops and join in exotically. The episode ends with a triple blow job, which the girls make him film on his phone.

I'm ditching it, but this episode's okay. Had Season 1 been like this, I'd probably have kept watching... but it does look as if the show likes playing on the border of "likeable" vs. "not". This year, the isekai quest gang have a new member. The girls call him trash. He took a hit man job from the yakuza to kill someone, albeit under extreme circumstances. He starts an unnecessary fight with Yuusuke Yotsuya and then gives him an extra kick even after beating him (although again we later learn that he had reasons). He's also a junior high school dropout who brags that he doesn't understand difficult things.

As for Yuusuke Yotsuya, he's capable of saying things like, "Our time is more important than one person's stress."

That said, though, the gang have got a lot more professional about their isekai quest-going. This week, they meet lots of people who are heartwarmingly full of gratitude for Season 1 adventures when our heroes saved them. This could mean one of two things. (a) This is a lovely anime of hugs and warm fuzzies. (b) the show's trying to reassure us that its gang of unpleasant anti-heroes aren't actually that bad.

I'm pretty sure it's (b). Nope, still not watching this.

Four years later, the budgies are back! 7-ish minutes every four years?

Anyway, this very occasional series is nice. This time, the budgies find a baby swallow that's fallen out of its nest and has no parents in sight. Maybe a cat got them? (We even meet the cat. It has no brain at all.) Our heroes return the swallow to its nest and take on the job of being the foster parents to two fledglings who can't even open their eyes yet and eat insects that a budgie can't catch.

Amazingly, this works. I enjoyed it. (It's on YouTube, by the way, as is the 2017 original on which it's a slight improvement.)

I enjoyed the episode and I'll be watching the series. Natsuki and Misaki liked it too and when it finished, Misaki immediately asked me to play ep.2.

It is, though, doing something annoying that I've seen in more than one anime recently. Irina is a vampire... but she doesn't drink blood, she eats ordinary human food, she doesn't react to crosses, she'll have only a mild reaction to sunlight, etc. (If she doesn't drink blood, why does she even have fangs? She sleeps in a coffin, which would protect her from sunlight but is still basically an affectation. Also, she has elf ears.) What the hell? Come off it, you twats. That's not a vampire. What's the point of calling her a vampire? She's a different creature with no significant mythological overlap.

Let's call her a Pissoff.

That aside, though, it's all good. Our heroes are 1950s Russians, obeying the orders of not-Stalin in the not-USSR. (It's called the UZSR.) The party bosses want a glorious triumph in the space race, but they also want to send something into space that's more useful than a dog but more deniable than a human. What's human-like but disposable? Answer: a Pissoff! A nice bloke called Lev is ordered to be her minder and barred from treating her as human or even referring to her by name. Meanwhile, Irina herself doesn't want sympathy and doesn't trust humans. Which is probably wise.

I enjoyed it. Looks good. Might easily be heading for all kinds of dark endings, but didn't feel to me as if that was its plan.

I quite liked it, although the art style's disconcerting. (The cat is realistically drawn in a way that suggests computer-assisted animation, whereas humans are practically blobs.)

And no, it's nothing like Garfield. The cat talks in a deep, commanding voice (and can be understood by humans), but is extremely polite to other cats while being pushy and overbearing when it comes to humans and dinner time. There's quite a lot in these two minutes. You could do worse.

It's mild, but inoffensive. I don't mind it. The heroine, Azusa Aizawa, is a 27-year-old office worker who does so much overtime that she literally works herself to death, so understandably she changes her goals on being reincarnated in another world. She wants the slow life. A goddess gives her immortality (eh?), so she finds a cottage and quietly lives there for 300 years, hunting slimes for the magic stones you get on destroying them. You can sell these. She also makes medicines and becomes the local village's patron witch.

Anyway, you'll gain a lot of experience if you kill things every day for 300 years. Slimes are tiny and harmless, but it all adds up. To her surprise, one day Azusa discovers that she's reached level 99 and is strong enough for adventurers and dragons to show up at her front door asking to test their strength against her.

None of this is particularly dramatic, but it's peaceful and I liked its little lecture about Japanese overwork culture. By the end, Azusa has acquired a devoted dragon in female human form. Now I'm remembering Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid...