It's a favourite of my anime-watching friend at work. I'd been looking forward to this. So far, it looks like a laugh.

We begin with Angel Graduation in heaven. A class of angels is about to be sent to Earth, to enrol in human schools and make the world better. Our heroine, Gabriel, is an idealist with the best possible intentions. "I'll be a great angel who'll lead everyone to happiness!" Five minutes of screen time later, though, she's got hooked on video games and has become a selfish worthless gamer slob who only cares about herself.

Her flatmate is a devil, obviously. No idea how that came to pass. This devil (Vigne) is the nicest person in the show and super-trustworthy and responsible.

That's half the earthbound supernatural cast. Others include a gloating loudmouth devil who's determined to be the EPITOME OF EEEEEEEEEEEVIL!!!!!, but will be shocked if you put your recycling rubbish in the non-recycling bin. Meanwhile there's another angel (Raphiel) who's a friend of Gabriel's and a smiling sadist.

I'll definitely be watching this. It's not "OH MY GOD IT'S BRILLIANT" or anything, but it looks funny. I enjoyed it.

EPISODE ONE

I honestly couldn't decide whether to continue with this one. My problems were that: (a) it's talking about computer games and (b) most of its cast seem anti-social and easy to dislike.

1. There's a bloke (Tasuki) who loves himself, thinks he's great because he's got a cute girlfriend (who he thinks is stupid) and dismisses the show's protagonist on sight as inferior.

2. Meanwhile that protagonist sometimes makes dilemmas for himself. Should he be rude and ignore the person who's actually standing in front of him and talking, or should he keep ignoring the social game request that's sitting there plaintively on his phone? On the upside, though, at least he's not in denial about being a gaming nerd. His brain will fail if a girl talks to him. "You know, I don't really have many friends?"

3. The gaming club's members are fairly obnoxious too, either ignoring you or forcing you to spend two hours on their beloved first-person shooters. What does it mean to be a world champion at those? Well, that's him. (Nearly.) There's also a girl who keeps her shirt unbuttoned, showing her bra.

I get the impression that the show's planning on being fairly mean to these people. The prettiest girl in the school (Karen Tendou) is introduced with subtitles saying "WILL SOON FAIL" and before the episode's over will have embarrassed herself in the classroom in front of everyone. That said, though, I watched Animegataris and that show I liked. This show has a similar set-up, except with video games, not anime. Personally I'm less interested in games, but that's not the show's fault and this looks as if it might be worth watching. There's a fair amount going on with a lively cast and I like the protagonist's reasoning when invited to join the gaming club. I'm not really a fan of cruel or embarrassing comedy, but I can't deny that it can be strong. I suppose I might as well give this show a whirl.

EPISODE TWO

It's a very good episode, but once again it's harsh and a little uncomfortable to watch. Tasuku is still neglecting his girlfriend (Aguri) and wondering why he ever agreed to go out with her. She doesn't seem surprised on being told this and said, "I don't care. I'm happy as long as we're together." Hang on. Does that mean she knows he doesn't love her and she's accepted it? Yow. Then, later in the episode... good grief.

EPISODE THREE

Well, ep.1 made me completely misjudge what was coming. The gaming club hasn't been involved at all.

Anyway, I paused this episode at 6:51 and ended up never coming back. "I'm absolutely not interested in Tendou-san and I've got nothing to do with her. I came here to see another girl." He says this in Tendou-san's earshot, so we see her turn to dust and blow away. This is comedy exaggeration, obviously, and not literally what happens... but it's still one character thoughtlessly hurting another.

This is a strong show that I'd recommend, if you're tougher than me. Personally, though, I found it hard work to get through. I've been known to have trouble making myself sit through this kind of thing. Fawlty Towers almost gives me physical pain.

That decision was surprisingly easy. I'm not a Garo fan, but I'd previously watched the 2015 series (Garo: The Carved Seal of Flames, set during the Spanish Inquisition, sort of okay) and 2016 series (Garo: Crimson Moon, set in Heian era Japan, boring). I was thus semi-expecting to continue with this too... but I disliked it enough that I was struggling to finish this episode.

Garo is an adult tokusatsu franchise with demon-hunting, violence and nudity. The anime's technically just a spin-off of the live-action original, but it's doing the same things. This series is set in a modern urban setting and it stars a huge blob of grinning muscles. His name's Sword, he has a religious experience when he sees big boobs and he eats steaks so big that they're basically just a dead cow.

The episode's built around its big action set-piece. Sword fights a demon! I don't care! This is the bit that had me reaching for the fast-forward button.

There's also a female character, who's a teenager looking for Eldorado or something. There's a monster motorbike, which is ridden by Sword. There's a waitress with stupid boob jiggle, as if they're spring-loaded. There's also a pre-credits sequence in which Sword fights a demon made of naked boobs.

It's thin gruel. The animation's great, the action scenes are spectacular, etc. but I got bored. I want Sword to walk under a bus and the storyline's meagre too.

I've never got into Gintama, but theoretically it seems more interesting than other long-running Weekly Shounen Jump anime. It's a gag show with serious story arcs. It has lots of peurile jokes, much breaking of the fourth wall and a lazy bum hero who doesn't care and will do odd jobs for cash, but then every so often it'll turn into a serious battle anime. That's fine. I like the sound of that. It's just the actual episodes I've seen haven't really grabbed me, so far.

It's set in Japan's past, with samurai, but then the second half of the episode goes into full-blown Star Wars space battles.

Anyway, the episode begins with Gintama and his friends talking about the fact that they're now being broadcast in a late-night slot. We then get flashbacks, dreams or something about a childhood mentor who talks a lot of gibberish and will in the present day be a villain. I think. Some people are protecting Gintama because he's a terrorist in hiding, but he objects. After that he's looking for odd jobs in Akihabara. There's a good joke here, with a girl having part of her (perfectly normal) name bleeped out to make it sound like censorship of a rude word.

After that, the episode drifts into non-gag territory, with the adventures of a villain. He's the most dangerous being in the universe, he's immortal and he uses a space fleet to kill a bunch of powerful old dudes. The "samurai vs. spaceships" juxtaposition might be jarring if you haven't watched much Gintama recently. It's different, anyway. Feel free to check it out.

Well, that was different. Definitely watching this.

Chito and Yuuri are blob-faced girls. They have light-hearted conversations, albeit also surprisingly intelligent ones. (You might expect anime characters who look like this to be idiots, but in fact they're asking each other sensible questions and suggesting very reasonable hypotheses.) They're quite funny. They wander around, exploring the world and occasionally eating food when they find some. They say things like "I never knew night time was this bright" while looking up at a star-filled sky after being stuck underground for ages and eventually finding their way out.

However civilisation appears to have ended. There's no sign of any other living humans. The girls carry a rifle, drive a teensy-weensy tank and practice shooting a row of tin cans. They ignore things like machine guns and mortar shells, but take some explosives.

This looks interesting.

It's a series of chibi parody spin-offs of Girls' Last Tour. (Both in Japanese are called "Shoujo Shuumatsu [something]", but the "shuumatsu" in each title has the same pronunciation but a different meaning.)

Chito and Yuuri are at school. This puzzles them because they've never been in a school before and they don't even know what it is. Chito suggests a pretty accurate definition. Yuuri says she wouldn't want to study, which is very Yuuri, and suggests that Chito should be the teacher.

That's it. What did you expect in a minute? It's okay, though, since this kind of light, good-natured conversation feels exactly like the parent show. They haven't had to exaggerate the personalities or anything; this is exactly Chito and Yuuri. I'll watch it all, obviously.

Super deformed parody shorts of Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou streamed on Kadokawa's official YouTube channel. They follow Chito and Yuuri in a classroom setting exploring what "school" might have been for people when civilization was still around.

It seems okay. Basically sort of dull and unimaginative, but with bits I liked. It begins with armoured swordsmen fighting a wolfman and his master. Girls in swimsuits appear. "It hasn't even been a minute of game time!" says someone. There's a gun girl and a magical girl with a wand. "I am Instruction, this world's ruling AI," says another girl, who dislikes Obnoxious Bloke's victory because "it wasn't beautiful". What's that supposed to mean? "A victory is a victory," says Obnoxious Bloke, with which I actually agree, but then he pats AI-girl's head against her will and I disliked him all over again.

All that was pretty forgettable, but then we meet this team of players in the real world. Obnoxious Bloke is a pro gamer who accepted an invitation to play with these three amateurs, which I actually liked and made me care about the episode a bit. "This tournament is an opportunity for amateurs to turn pro!"

It's the kind of "okay" that doesn't look particularly inspiring, but could still be watchable. It's a Chinese anime, for what it's worth, based on a real Chinese online game called 300 Da Zuozhan (300 Heroes) that appears to be a fun but shameless multiple copyright violation. It's a blatant cut-and-paste of League of Legends, including characters from anime like Naruto, Fate/Stay Night, One Piece, Sword Art Online, etc.

All other things being equal, I might have kept watching this. It's only ten six-minute episodes. What the hell. It'll probably be a load of dull fighting nonsense, but it had that one invitation moment I liked. However I have two reasons for dropping it... (a) it's a Chinese anime and they're usually bad, (b) I'm not keen on the idea of cheering on anything associated with that 300 Heroes game.

It looks okay. Nothing special, but just about sort of scraping over the "yeah, I'll continue" hurdle. I don't really care, but what the hell.

The storyline's the usual kind of thing. There's a lieutenant helping a girl called Lyria escape from a baddie with a purple jewel. They're in an airship. This is demonstrated when Lyria falls out of it. Fortunately she survives this and meets some ordinary people, which I liked.

The baddie sends out armoured goons to strong-arm the locals and get killed in fights with our heroes. Crossbows are useless in this world because everyone seems to be able to knock crossbow bolts from the air with their swords. A nice person dies! This surprised me, but there's a twist coming. Finally there's a dragon, Bahamut. It's passable fantasy stuff. Nothing much wrong with it, apart from the crossbow bolt silliness.

(Fortunately) has no connection with:

(a) Grand Blue (2018 anime about often-naked scuba divers)

(b) Undefeated Bahamut Chronicle (2016 harem anime about a boy at a girls' battle school)

(c) Rage of Bahamut (2014 anime based on yet another game, which in fairness most people liked more than me... oh, hang on. Apparently there is a link after all. Bloody hell. Well, I'll keep going and hope that no one I hate shows up.)

At first, it looked unpromising. The main character looks silly. He's a "beastfallen", which means he was born from human parents, but he looks like a cartoon animal. To be precise, a white tiger. It made the show look kiddified, which would have have been so bad if we hadn't started with the Church burning witches.

What made me like the episode was how seriously it took this. Humans kill witches and they'll both hunt beastfallen, who have a bounty on their heads. In return, though, a beastfallen might (as here) choose to hunt witches. This might be for money, or it might just be because our hero hates people, witches and basically the whole world. When trying not to get killed by one witch, he falls in another one's soup.

What's this? Another anime odd couple? Well, yes... but it's going to take a while to get there, because our hero really and sincerely hates witches. Twice the soup-witch tries to do a deal with him and twice he turns his back and walks away. They'll eventually reach an agreement, with our hero becoming the witch's bodyguard, but it's going to take a surprisingly deep conversation and some real emotion. We're starting to understand our hero. He sees himself as human (and can feel sexual attraction, which we never see him act upon), but wherever he goes, lowlifes try to kill him for money because he looks like a stuffed toy. He didn't choose his face.

There are some slightly startling elements. "I'm not interested in your name. I'll call you 'mercenary'." I'm quite interested in seeing where this goes.

Gundam is a mega-franchise about piloted giant robot space battles.

Gundam Build Fighters is a spin-off about nerds on Earth who collect Gundam models and use them to play a game called Gunpla. You and your friends have VR battles with your models.

I watched the first Battlogue episode, which was boring because it's another Gundam battle. (This is why I'm not a Gundam fan.) What's different this week is that someone's invented a way of simulating a Gunpla fight with all your favourite characters from old Gundam anime. They choose Char Aznable (even I've heard of him) and a green-haired bloke called Ribbons.

That's it, really. It's the Gundam equivalent of Batman vs. Superman... or maybe Alien vs. Predator since I think those were both baddies. Except with giant robots.

"In the future, war is inevitable for humans." It's a never-ending world war that looks a lot like the Terminator hunter-killer future. The world's gone to hell, basically, except that there are schoolgirls with guns fighting the robots! Serious-looking military men wear sunglasses while sitting in dark rooms in front of monitors and are astonished that the Gun Girls' weapons are a bit on the antiquated side, as if old bullets are less dangerous than new ones.

That's less than half the episode, though. The rest of it is girls sitting around in their apartment. One of them cooks a pie.

It's another Chinese anime, by Tencent, and I think it's based on a game. If you can reach the end credits without quitting or fast-forwarding, you're stronger than me. (And it's only fourteen minutes long...)