It starts with a magical girl battle, which because this is Madoka Magica of course means guns and arrows. I was surprised by one thing, though. Is that Madoka? Like, the actual, original Madoka? I hadn't been expecting this spin-off to be getting that close to the original.

Meanwhile, the mythology's unchanged. Girls get offered a wish in order to become Magical Girls... from which they'll then inevitably decay into evil insane Witches who cause far more damage, pain and death than they'd previously been able to prevent. (I seem to remember some kind of law of physics about this, but involving conservation of despair rather than energy.) In other words, it's a pyramid scheme. A con man (called Kyubey) is still ripping off suckers, except that what he's stealing is lives. Furthermore, no one's murdered him yet and girls are still trusting him, despite the presence of Madoka in the cast.

Sod him. Sod them all. Don't care.

Makoto and Kaoru are adorable teenagers with gender-neutral names. Kaoru asks out Makoto, then flees in nervous terror before she can answer and she has to grab him by the collar to say "yes". Later, when he's escorting her home, they both melt into puddles at the idea of a first kiss.

Unfortunately, someone sinister is watching them from Makoto's house. He's her older brother (no blood relation) and he has a porn stash that she likes secretly watching. The episode then goes in regrettable directions.

Two girls are rubbing themselves against Amano Taichi in the school corridor. No, three girls! Additional girls are also waiting or watching. Taichi explains to us that he lives in a world of monsters and demi-humans and that his body fluids have transformed into an awakening essence! He's the ultimate elixir for female demi-humans!

Translation: they're all queuing up to shag him.

Suddenly, there's an explosion and everyone collapses amid sleeping gas. A few days later, Taichi wakes up to find himself being coddled (and fought over) by the colossally-breasted mothers of those three girls. Apparently there was an accident in the chemistry labs and those demi-human schoolgirls are still asleep. (Why are they also naked? Don't ask.) Apparently, they need to replenish their mana to wake up, which requires "omnipotent sacred milk" from their mothers' boobs, which in turn requires lactation-boosting energy from Taichi's semen. Wow, that's contrived even for hentai.

Taichi's surprisingly timid about all this, objecting because they're all married woman. ("It's to save our daughters! Yes, it's for their sake! To wake them up!") They convince him, though, and the episode becomes, er, less plot-driven. Curiously, the mother with an Ancient Egypt design theme has never had sex and has never seen a penis. (Dragonkind do it differently or something.) "Teach me, sensei!" What's more, she wants to do it in an alleyway... but that'll be in ep.2.

It's a short anime within a nature programme called "Darwin Kita! Kikimono Shin Densetsu" program on NHK1.5. The episode I found on YouTube was mental, being a karaoke performance from a fat cat and some kind of mind-boggling insect. What the hell are those things on her head? The internet tells me that he's a Pallas's cat (Otocolobus manul) and that she's a Brazilian treehopper (Bocydium globulare). Go on, do a Google image search. They're amazing.

Apparently this micro-series is based on a web manga/comic of the same name, but I'm not sure what that means when the only episode I could find was a karaoke song.

It's adapted from a dramatic stage reading, apparently. I can believe that. A beautifully rendered version of 1923 Tokyo has slightly sinister government figures who'd like to set up a vampire military unit. Some bloke goes underground into a secure holding facility and tries to talk to a vampire they captured, but she's got brain damage or something and can only quote speeches from Oscar Wilde. (In her human life, she was an actress.)

It's an artistic, intelligent episode. If you're into art films, give it a shot. Unfortunately, though, I didn't care about much of it. The military men are boring and the vampire is mostly non-sentient.

It's above-average for this sort of thing, because it's not trying to be funny. A boy and a girl have an ordinary, sensible conversation and I can imagine myself watching this more easily than I can the usual bonus mini-show that's just 80 seconds of throwaway gags. If I hadn't dropped the parent show, I might even have kept watching these.

It's a multimedia franchise based on a card game by Takara Tomy. Or according to the anime...

"Mazica Party. The mega-popular card game created by the international conglomerate, the Mazica Corporation. However, they're actually cards that wizars use to summon Mazin monsters! Collect Mazins, get scratching and a heart-pounding party battle awaits!"

(The overexcited narrator is bland compared with other narrators of absurd shounen card game anime, incidentally. He won't make you laugh at all.)

As for the actual episode, there's a child hero (called Kezuru, which means "scratch") who has a dream of a phoenix monster and a grey-haired girl. (Her name's Anya and she's the bit of this episode I was actually interested in. She thinks Kezuru is the hero who might save her world.) Kezuru then wakes up, goes to school and has breathless conversations with his friend about THE LATEST HOT CARD GAME!!!

Someone gives Kezuru a sonic screwdriver. That's what it looked like to me, anyway. It speaks English at us. There's also a talking balloon that contains the soul of a cat, which is less interesting than it sounds. The episode's better than it could have been, but it's still a kiddie adventure about a card game. Naaah.

Megaton Musashi is a Japanese action role-playing video game, released on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in November 2021. In addition, though, it's a multimedia franchise that includes anime!

...and a protagonist (Yamato Ichidaiji) who's described even on the show's wikipedia page as "a hot-blooded and psychopathic teenager". He starts out in official custody. Another teenage boy gets him out of there and they exchange a testosterone hello with a mock kick and a mock punch. When a girl visits his apartment with food, he tells her he's not hungry. (She knows him, so she's not fooled.)

"Stop picking fights like a child."

"For men, you see, there's times you just can't back down."

Another girl tries to assassinate Yamato, because in the future he's going to become a warrior. Unfortunately, she fails.

The episode also includes a second testosterone fuck-off (who's just as bad as Yamato), mecha (oh, bloody hell) and a genuinely interesting revelation about how everything our heroes know is a lie. The episode's lively and busy. It looks quite fun, if you can tolerate the macho idiots and the fact that it's a mecha show. But for me, no.

It's a Christmas episode that aired on 10 January. Well, never mind. This is still mostly an old-fashioned magical girl show, but with a few minor tweaks. Boys are part of the show, albeit a minority among the girls. (A boy tries to bake a cake, whereas the female protagonist just buys one from a patisserie.) The ongoing baddies include a woman in shadow ("he's trying to get back his original heart!") and some small black/grey soft toys. Their temporary victims/villains this week are the children of the couple who run the patisserie, for whom obviously Christmas is busy. "We're going to ruin this stupid holiday!"

The children go on a very brief evil rampage before Yume transforms and brings them back to their senses. (To my surprise, Yume's the only magical girl in this show. She has lots of friends in the title sequence whom you'd assume must surely be her magical girl teammates, but no. Everyone else is a civilian.)

The episode's fine. Happy to recommend it to anyone who's female, under ten and looking for harmless entertainment, although it's not without scope for filthy fan re-interpretations. It's basically a show about family-friendly succubi. "Whose dream will we be visiting today?"

Miko can see scary horrible undead with black smoke swirling around them. They frighten her, unsurprisingly. They stick their disgusting faces right in front of her and say, "Can you see me?"

Miko always pretends that she can't. If they think she's just an oblivious ordinary person, they'll get bored and go away. Do they ever hurt anyone? Are they harmless? Looks like it. I'm already feeling sorry for these ghosts... but Miko herself is good fun, in her wannabe-stoic underreacting way. Her more colourful classmates are a laugh too.

The episode's very well done. Good horror designs and atmospheric direction to set them up. I've heard good things about this series. Happy to continue.

Poppy is a bouncy, cheerful android who loves human things and just had the most wonderful dream about a wolf. The world contains neither wolves nor humans (except maybe for a human called Lux?), but Poppy thinks her wolf looks cool anyway. Her friend, Punkun, is less enthusiastic about stuff but hangs out with her anyway.

The background paintings are lovely, e.g. there's a sky city and whales fly overhead. The animation contains massive short-cuts, e.g. Poppy and Punkun's mouths don't move to match their dialogue. Or maybe that's just how android speech works? The characters come across clearly, but the episode's not really aiming for narrative momentum. I quite liked this, but I don't feel the need to see any more of it.

I loved Season 1, but to be honest the first half of this episode was only okay. Tooru finds a maid cafe and ends up working there. The show does, though, have a funny joke about "I'll cast a spell to make it delicious."

The second half, though, introduces a new dragon (Ilulu) into the cast. She's short, monstrously buxom and even more evil than Tooru (who's mellowed and now usually believes she shouldn't destroy the world). There's quite a good discussion between her and Kobayashi about what it means to live with someone, then a bizarre episode punchline. Happy to keep watching.

(There's also a series of bonus mini-episodes, called Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid S Short Animation Series. I watched the first one. It's fine. If you like the show, watch them. As usual with these bonus mini-episodes, though, you'll get nothing from them if you don't already know the characters and like the show.)

Unlike the episode I watched last year, Moriarty doesn't appear. Sherlock Holmes takes a case (and, yes, of course he's an anime pretty boy). The episode's a straight-ish adaptation of "A Scandal in Bohemia", albeit one that wants to make lots of changes and so it's galloping through the canonical material as fast as it can.

It annoyed me almost immediately by making Mycroft physically superior to Sherlock and the winner of all 673 fights between them. Piss off. That's not Mycroft. The show's well made and I've been told that it's quite clever, but no.

This show has two versions: the edited TV version and the "see-through" unedited one for online streaming. Obviously, I watched the latter. Surprisingly, it's not hentai. It's a tame, happy, likeable show about adults putting a twelve-year-old in sexual situations and showing their nipples a lot (streaming version only).

You'll be amazed to hear that lots of reviewers have been screaming and jumping on chairs. In my opinion, they're being silly. I enjoyed it. There's no actual sex, or even any threatened or implied sex. It's just nudity. It's about as offensive as giving a baby a bath. (So far. It might all go to hell later, but this episode at least is quite nice.) The timid boy (Koushi Nagumo) is horrified by everything and at one point tells the ladies to behave themselves, then is so shocked at himself that he flees. The ladies are university students and surprisingly relaxed about exhibitionism, except for the one who's scared of men. (I'm wondering if that really is fear, mind you. She gets lots of nosebleeds, which in anime tends to be code for something else.)

Anyway, Koushi doesn't appear to have sexual responses yet and is impressively clear-minded about right and wrong. He's also a bit of a pushover, but never mind. I liked the to-and-fro between him and Atena, because on one level it's a formulaic cliche (they take turns quitting the dormitory), but their reasons for doing so are rational and in every case is the correct thing to do. As for the other girls, they're whackos. Mineru does poison gas experiments in her bedroom, which for some reason (she says) requires the sub-minimum of clothes. Frey is a cosplay addict who likes grabbing victims to wear daft clothes against their will.

I liked all these people. The characters are nothing special, but they're nice. I'll watch the show. This episode's heart was in the right place, with none of that horrible old chestnut of "you saw me naked, gyaaaaah, VIOLENCE." The girls might have saved Koushi's life by offering him a job and a place to stay. (His house burned down and his dad did a runner.)

It is, though, shameless naked boob nonsense. I'd recommend it, yes, but only to people like me.

Our hero is a fat 34-year-old virgin and hikikomori who never goes outdoors, the kind of man who bangs on the floor when he wants his mother (?) to bring food. Somehow, he dies by being hit by a truck. How? What was he doing outside? Did I miss the explanation of that? (Later update: we learn that in ep.2.)

Anyway, he gets reborn in another universe... and, for once, that means exactly what it says. He's born. He's a baby called Rubeus. He doesn't even know the local language when he arrives. He's still got his 34-year-old mind and so he's got some short-cuts when it comes to understanding books, but even so it takes him years of secret study to cast a simple water-shooting spell properly. He also calls himself human garbage, so the episode ends with him deciding to try to live this life properly this time.

The episode's quite well done. The animation is lavish and the faces have lots of character acting. Unfortunately, Rubeus is dirty-minded and likes boobs, panty shots and putting women's knickers on his head. A baby admiring his mother's boobs (in that way) is definitely a bit ew. Also, How Not To Summon A Demon Lord was much funnier with the concept of a socially incompetent hikikomori isekai hero.

Some people hated this show. Some people loved it. Personally, so far, I think it's okay.

"Muteking The Dashing Warrior" was a 1980-81 superhero anime from Tatsunoko Productions. This appears to be a 40th anniversary reboot... but with one key difference.

Our blue-haired hero, Muteki, is a nice guy who dances. He goes to Neo San Francisco, which is a city that loves dancing. He meets DJ aka. DJ, who's annoying, although I liked the roller-skating waitress. None of this is particularly interesting, but I laughed my head off at the superhero transformation when the grey blob monster appears. Muteki puts on roller skates and transforms into Muteking the Dancing Hero, with a theme song. He then defeats the grey blob by dancing. No, I'm not kidding. He roller-skates, does a dance routine and makes cool gestures to the camera while his background singers croon. I'm not even sure what happened to the grey blob. Maybe it laughed itself silly and blobbed off?

Don't watch the whole series, for goodness sake, but the Dancing Hero sequence is so bonkers that it's worth a look. It lasts two minutes and starts at the 18-minute mark.

Muv-Luv was originally a trilogy of visual novels. The first (Extra) is a romantic comedy, the second (Unlimited) is an alternate timeline coming-of-age story and the third (Alternative) is an alien invasion war epic. The one that gets all the attention is Alternative. It has two spin-off light novels: Total Eclipse (anime in 2012) and Schwarzesmarken (anime in 2016), but this at last is an anime of the full Alternative.

Also, don't be afraid of the worrying title. There's no mother-son incest. (I think.)

Anyway, the original visual novel is supposedly excellent, but this episode bored me. Aliens invade! (They look like waddling pineapples, giant bugs and generally lots of weird stuff.) It's very serious, mind you. Lots of military. Lots of fighting and death. Civilians in a shelter get eaten. A nice guy meets a horrible acid death. Heads get bitten off. The script, though, is largely devoid of any human dimension and has no interest in being character-driven.

In the end, Japan falls. I wasn't sure where the story planned to go next, so I took a quick look at ep.2. It's still very military, but with the protagonist being a boy at a girls' school. It also mentions parallel worlds, which I'm not generally a fan of. I also glanced at the Total Eclipse anime and saw more fanservice and dodgier skintight uniforms.

I haven't sampled enough to give this franchise a fair shake (and I have actually seen the Schwarzesmarken anime, which is pretty good), but I'll give this a miss.

Once we're past a lengthy recap of the Season 4 finale, it's a lot like the OVA two-parter that were released during the season break. Once again, the UA teachers have set up a training exercise for their students. There's been a disaster! Someone needs rescuing! The main differences are that: (a) this time, other students are play-acting as victims and villains, (b) the show puts much more effort into reintroducing everyone in the show's very large cast, telling us their superpowers and giving them something to do.

It made me laugh a couple of times, which is more than the OVAs managed. Amajiki is amusing (aka. Mr They're All Potatoes) as is the perpetually short-fuse Bakugo. It also has a post-credit sequence of Endeavour in hospital and some new villains. I've watched all the show to date, anyway, so I'll keep going.

I loved Season 1. I'm expecting to love Season 2.

We start with our heroine, Catarina, having won! Hurrah! All problems sorted out in Season 1 and she'll have an easy time of it in Season 2. (Ahem, perhaps.) She celebrates with a pleasant episode of eating lots of food and being amusingly oblivious to her mixed-gender harem competing with each other for her affections. "My women's intuition again!" (...is always wrong. Instead, Catarina is liable to decide that her friends are in love with each other.)

This episode's basically just reintroducing the show's premise and cast, but it's a laugh. Mary's still so dedicated to Catarina that she's practically a yandere. Catarina's still a joy. I'm looking forward to this.

I've enjoyed other shows like this. If I stuck with it, I might well agree with the positive reviews. Likeable cast bounce around their day-to-day office life, do their jobs and somehow keep failing to reach the next level with each other romantically. However...

1. The title is bullshit. Takeda isn't annoying. He's big, friendly, enthusiastic, conscientious, hard-working, protects Futaba and helps sort out her mistakes, etc. He tousles her hair twice because she's tiny and reminds him of a child. (This is fair, since she's been drawn and to some extent characterised as a child who happens to be holding an office job.) In fact, Futaba's unlikely to get a better bloke than Takeda in her sights and she's expressing drunken romantic interest in him as early as this first episode.

2. Frankly, the most annoying thing about this episode is the implication that Takeda is annoying. It gives the impression of a show too lazy to match its own title, or else perhaps that Futaba herself has slappable judgement issues. Ultimately, that's the reason I'm dropping this show.

I lost patience with Futaba for other reasons too, though. She's tiny, with the top of her head barely reaching the bottom of Takeda's rib cage. She tells him not to walk slowly out of consideration for her, then gets knackered trying to keep up when he obeys. She pretends not to want things she actually does want, because she's trying to maintain a grown-up image. She also messes up at work. (She's annoyed at herself for making an idiot mistake, but it was indeed an idiot mistake.)

Naaah. Everyone seems nice, but the episode lost me.