In the woods, in the middle of a snowstorm, some bloke stumbles across the house of a predatory mother, daughter and housekeeper. (Oh, and our anti-hero is on the run from the police after embezzling money from his employers.) The mother milks their guest dry, then orders him to deflower her daughter. After he's done his best to obey, the daughter orders him to get mum pregnant. It's fairly sinister.

The episode's better than it looked at first, but I don't love where the show seems to be going.

It starts with two colleagues gossiping about a girl at work (Rena Yukuhashi). "You see? She's obviously not interested in men. She's always shaggy and she never cares about her clothes." "I don't think there's a man anywhere who's interested in getting close to her." Unfortunately, the judgemental one who's doing all the talking is a departmental head and the other person is his junior, Ryouhei Hachiya.

Result: Hachiya says "okay" when his boss orders him to ask out Yukahashi and see if she's a virgin. Eurgh.

I was pleasantly surprised by the Hachiya-Yukuhashi date, though. She's dressed up for the occasion and really impresses him, but she's smelled a rat. "May I ask why you invited me? You don't usually talk to me."

"To tell the truth, the boss asked me to find out if you're a virgin or not!" says Hachiya.

I laughed. Ten out of ten for honesty, zero for social awareness. And, yes, she immediately walks out on him.

He follows her, though, because he genuinely does like her now. He proposes starting afresh and properly getting to know each other... and they happen to be standing in front of a love hotel. This is a hentai, so guess what. She's insecure, but she goes for it. "It's my first time and I don't know if I'll be able to do it right."

I like them as a couple. Hachiya gets big points from me for not lying to her... but unfortunately it looks as if he's about to start lying to his department head. He's wondering what he can say. An online summary of this series said "complications arise when Ryouhei later tries to act cool around his Department Head".

Conclusion: he can piss off, as can the show. If you like someone and you're in a relationship with them, don't hide them and don't lie about it.

Our hero visits Prostitution Academy (during what appears to be its school festival) and is given five super-special tickets. It's all happy and good-natured, but the girls never seemed business-oriented. I didn't believe for a moment that they were studying sex for professional reasons.

The girls love sex and quite like him too, so they cheerfully collect his sperm donations. There's a mildly disturbing bit at the end where a girl on a train asks if he'd like some schoolgirl molestation role-play.

It's the nearest I've come to finding JoJo watchable. I can't sit through an episode of its huge, macho, deliberately overblown muscleman protagonists. This, though, has the first JoJo heroine. Her name's Jolyne and we first meet her in a women's prison. (Apparently, the manga's editor had asked Araki to change the character to be male, to appeal more to Weekly Shounen Jump readers. Araki refused. He thought this perception of reader resistance to a female protagonist was exactly why Jolyne was necessary.)

That said, though, this is still JoJo. The art's still ugly. I don't like the characters. (Being female is a step in the right direction, but not enough.) Jolyne swears never to masturbate again and throws away a mysterious magic artefact because it came from her dad, whom she dislikes. Idiot. I gave it ten minutes, then gave up... but it's not impossible that I might have kept watching this series if it hadn't had the "JoJo" name to warn me off it.

It's full of style and pseudo-historical atmosphere. It's wholehearted. It's set in a version of 1931 where the Tokugawa Shogunate is still in power and using death squads against its political opponents. Our heroes are those very assassins. Uh-huh. Why I should care?

There's an emotionless girl called Sawa who wants revenge and has a little sister who provides the humanity that she lacks. (Sawa also has the ability to turn into a magical skull-faced swordswoman.) Another of the regime's assassins has sex on the brain, works as a prostitute and complains when her colleagues interrupt her fun. (She then stabs her client in the throat for no particularly obvious reason.) There's also a third assassin with no personality that I've noticed so far.

Nude women transform into monsters. There are cool-looking fight scenes that might have been worth watching if I'd cared about the combatants. Maybe teenagers might enjoy this show?

I liked ep.1 in 2020 and I've been watching the series, but lately it's gone all shounen. It's based on a Weekly Shounen Jump manga, after all. The last few episodes had been lots of fights and I'd been bored.

This episode's okay, though. There's a school training battle, called a Wacky Cursed Spirit Exorcism Race. The twist is that the headmaster of the opposing school is ordering his students to kill Yuuji Itadori. Yes, kill. He's got a demon called Sukuna inside him. Meanwhile, Yuuji's attempted resurrection reveal is a comedy flop and his goofball teacher Gojou is extremely unpopular.

It's okay. I'm expecting the show to return to lots of fights, but there are worse things. The cast are moderately amusing. If the worst comes to the worst, I can start fast-forwarding through the episodes.