This first episode would have been sinister and terrifying if it hadn't been for the protagonist's choices. She likes what she's chosen. She thinks orgies, group sex, etc. look good. (Mind you, the episode had started out with "I had nothing, no house, parents, food, not even a name," so it's hard to say that her choices were unbiased.)

Anyway, she's invited to join a "travelling gallery" that's basically a public group sex circus. Our heroine joins in and is soon married to one of the rich, privileged audience members. "I ended up getting married into the Salvadore family." Eh? Was that really where he went looking for a life partner?

All is explained, though, when we learn that the Salvadores believe in "training for childbirth". This involves tits out for afternoon tea, a ban on sex that doesn't prohibit anal, etc. It's all a bit kinky. Our heroine's introduction to her new role involves extreme bondage, then later she has an orgasm from riding a horse.

This show was a surprise hit. Lots of people loved it. They said it was the first show since Free! in 2013 to capture the joy of that show, which makes sense since they have the same director (Hiroko Utsumi, who used to work with Kyoto Animation). It's colourful, energetic and full of fun.

It is, though, a sports anime about skateboarding. Our hero, Reki, defines happiness for him as being on a skateboard. He sneaks off to some kind of Mad Max skating circuit and has overblown macho conversations with someone who's clearly been taking all his style tips from Death Metal bands. "I'm gonna have you take back the fact that you dissed my skating, Shadow!"

...but then come the opening credits and things calm down a bit. Reki goes to school. There's a transfer student. People do part time jobs. It's more ordinary. But you know the skateboards will return.

Incidentally, the title's correct spelling is "SK" and an eight on its side, i.e. infinity.

Watch this if you think you'd enjoy twelve episodes of skateboard races and macho idiots. If you can clear that hurdle, apparently this show is a laugh.

Unfortunately, my copy of this had only an English dub, so I had to watch it on mute.

It's a sports anime about figure skating. Our child hero starts out shouting, "If I lose to you today, I'll quit figure skating!"

Years later and now in high school, it looks as if he lived up to his dipshit word, but he's about to get lured back. If you enjoyed Yuri on Ice... well, go rewatch that show. It's quite good.

Theoretically, it might be a step forward for this franchise. It's always been good-natured fantasy power wank with only token gestures at drama, so it's arguably more honest to dispense with even the gestures. Character-based slice-of-life. Fair enough. Rimuru is a slime monster who can do anything and is loved by everyone. (That's barely even an exaggeration.) He owns a city that's inhabited by 10,000+ monsters who all think he's wonderful.

Here, he decides to write a diary and then gives up. Shion thinks he's praising her when he's trying to be critical. Dragonewts do a song-and-dance rehearsal. That's as near as you'll get to a plot. It is, though, gently amusing. If I were still following the franchise, I'd definitely be watching this.

There's a brief opening scene in an ordinary Japanese classroom... then suddenly our heroine is a spider. She doesn't know how she got there. The last thing she remembers is classical literature. Now, thought, she's got a huge mummy, a huge daddy and hundreds of siblings, all of whom are happy to eat their kin.

I'm happy to watch this. I like the odd isekai and this one looks quite interesting. Kumoko's fun (e.g. her dance of triumph on defeating that frog) and her predicament is distinctive (and I note that she shows absolutely no angst about killing and eating). We'll also discover later that she's not the only Japanese person in this isekai world. I had, though, a couple of early hurdles to swallow:

(a) the spiders are very CGI. That's an unremarkable production decision and the humans we meet later are reassuringly hand-drawn, but it is fairly glaring.

(b) Aoi Yuuki delivers the odd word in an American accent. "Jesus", "mother" and "father". Fortunately, those were just a few moments and I don't think this is meant to be a bilingual performance.

Anyway, yeah. I'll keep watching. Aoi Yuuki was great as Tanya the Evil and here she's going full-throttle.

36 high school students are stuck at school. Outside is a black void. If they draw a circle on their hand with a felt tip pen, then putting their hand in the void will erase the circle. They don't know if the world's been destroyed or if they've been kidnapped.

Oh, and some of them now have superpowers. Not all. Some.

Nagara likes lying on his back on the floor in empty classrooms. Nozomi likes declining people's increasingly forceful requests for social conformity. (She also likes talking to Nagara while he's lying on the floor, so it's a good thing this school's school uniform has relatively long skirts.) There's a manipulative boy who believes that people are sheep who need rules (created in consultation with him) and a big lad who tells everyone what to do and has a baseball bat.

It's odd, esoteric SF. The superpowers are weird rather than the usual juvenile fantasies, e.g. the ability to fold space into Escheresque impossibilities. The art style kept me wondering how much of this was CGI. It's definitely one of the most unique anime of the year.

I enjoyed it, despite not normally following golf. It's likeable and friendly.

Minami's a beginner and her two friends Haruka and Ayaka are pretty good at the game. The three of them play together... and you feel bad for them. Haruka and Ayaka are always having to wait for Minami. She'll take twice as many strokes as them to get the ball in the hole. She'll slice into the trees and can't reliably sink a putt even when it's practically in the hole already.

But her friends are patient and nice. They try to help Minami get into the right mindset... which leads her ultimately to hitting one perfect shot. (She messes up the shot after, but it's still huge progress.) I enjoyed it.

The 2020 season looked sort of okay, but didn't enthuse me enough to continue. This is pretty similar. I'm sure the show has fans, though, and it's basically fine.

Our three heroes are sitting around bickering over who gets the last piece of meat. We also learn that the girl is a lethally bad cook. This lasts almost ten minutes and I ended up fast-forwarding through it.

We then meet some man-eating bat-winged devil dogs. There's some action and our heroes go to rescue someone who's trapped in a church. This is more serious than the earlier bickering... but the shitheads appear. (They have names, but I always think of them as "the shitheads". They're Volkan and Dortin.)

There's nothing egregiously wrong with it, but I didn't notice anything good either.

To my utter amazement, it's actually sort of... good.

It starts appallingly. A meek, mild-mannered teacher (sensei) can't handle the flashy, obnoxious girl in his class (Kanna). This is hentai, so you know where this is going. It's true that Kanna's a troublemaker. She flashes her knickers and can't be bothered to remove her headphones even when her teacher's right standing in front of her. On being told to participate in the lesson, she replies "no". (Interestingly, her best friend Mei advises her to drop the bad girl act and return to being the quiet, well-behaved student she apparently used to be.)

As a result, her teacher rapes her.

Anyone sensible would run a mile from such a hentai... but what makes this one interesting is Kanna herself. She doesn't even seem upset. No trauma, no distress. She just goes on badmouthing sensei, except even more implacably. A golf ball falls on his penis and she sticks a sharp pen in his tip. (I laughed.) In ep.3, she tells him off for arriving late to class. Her torrents of verbal abuse are capable of being funny.

There are other jokes too. When the teacher shoves his penis in Kanna's mouth during an exam, I was gobsmacked that we were being expected to believe in this scene. They're in the middle of class! Surely everyone can see! (And indeed hear, since Kanna's hardly silent while she sucks.) Later, though, hilariously, Mei congratulates her on her boldness.

Oh, and Kanna believes sensei when he says being able to give a boob-and-blow job is an important life skill.

Ths show's still appalling, of course. Sensei's a criminal who belongs in prison, even before the sinister punchline to ep.2. Bloody hell. That was terrifying. Kanna, though, is an extremely tough customer and makes the series surprisingly dynamic.

A lion prime minister declares that the Animal Kingdom will explore space. Our hero, Kotetsu-kun, goes to Astronaut School and pursues his dreams with his friends. (I'm going to guess that he's a cat, but the simplified art style doesn't make it very clear.) There's nothing wrong with the show, especially if you're five years old.