I groaned on learning that there was more Ace Attorney. (I have nothing against the original game, by the way, which is an international hit. My objection is to the anime.)

I was then distraught on discovering that this was a double-length episode... but then I remembered that I hadn't lasted ten minutes in my last attempt to watch this show, so maybe I'd have the same reaction here? Hurrah! Less Ace Attorney! This is the show with a defence lawyer protagonist and an eight-year-old's idea of legal procedure. Also the English language version changes everyone's names.

We begin with Naruhodou explaining that this is a story from five years ago, before he became a lawyer. Sounds promising so far. He's accused of murder! He has a lawyer with big boobs who keeps grabbing people threateningly by the lapels, even if they're her client or her boss. Her name's Chihiro and this is only her second time in court. The first time was two years ago and it traumatised her, but despite that she begged her boss (Mr Grossberg) for the chance to take this case. Firstly, why? Secondly, can I assume that she'll commit seppuku if this farce gets an innocent man convicted of murder?

The courtroom scene begins as follows.

JUDGE - "I was under the impression that Mr Grossberg was to be leading the defence."

CHIHIRO - "Well, you see, Mr Grossberg had something urgent to do."

In other words, the defence council is lying in court to the judge. Pointlessly. Someone kill her, please, now.

JUDGE - "Something urgent? But isn't that him standing next to you?"

CHIHIRO (sounding surprised) - "Yes, well..."

MR GROSSBERG - "Watching this trial was what I had to do!"

I'd sooner watch a hundred sleazy, offensive harem anime than Ace Attorney. I'd sooner watch the dumbest show ever made. I'd sooner watch another season of Is The Order A Rabbit?. Hell, I might even watch Lupin III, although I'd have to think about it. This show makes me scream and flee.

Koushien Stadium is holy to the few baseball teams that are allowed to play there. Once, in a key game in the past, our heroes snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and missed their chance to play at the Koushien Stadium. Now they're going to show their passion and testosterone! "I will become this team's ace!"

It's a sports anime, obviously, and the episode's following a baseball match. I reached for the fast-forward button. There's a bit at the 15-minute mark where a grumpy coach shows up and starts talking to his players, but then we return to the baseball. That said, though, the show's been running for ages and I presume it's pretty good at what it does. By all means, watch it if you like baseball.

The premise is pretty cool. "In this world, there are white shadows to watch over and protect us." Sometimes these seem to be other characters' hallucinations, but later the protagonist sees some mist-blobs with eyes. They're just standing there, alongside him, and watching.

There's also a white wall surrounding this... um, small town? It also grows. It's bigger than it was ten years ago. Everything seems normal and it's otherwise a real-world setting, but I'd laugh if Titans climbed over the wall and ate people.

That was intriguing. However the show's part of the Vocaloid franchise, based on a series of musical CDs of popular voice actors singing Vocaloid songs. It's about lots of cute boys and their talent for singing and playing musical instruments. (I counted at least eight boys in the title sequence. One of them apparently plays the piano without taking his hands out of his overlong, floppy sleeves.)

It's a schoolboy idol show. An unusual idol show, given the white wall and shadows, but still very firmly targeted at fans of pretty boys singing.

Ye Jiayao is a nice lady who loves cooking, as does the camera. It's practically drooling over the close-ups of kitchen cooking utensils, preparation, ingredients, etc. Then our heroine finds herself transported back in time!

...and she cooks there too.

It actually looks quite good. Visually, it's attractive. The historical era and its characters seem well portrayed. There's a faintly sinister bloke who I presume will become a love interest... but it's about cooking. One assumes that everything will be subordinate to that. Nope, not for me.

Our heroes are a lion, a toucan and a lizard. They work in suits in an office. That's not uncommon in anime right now, e.g. Aggretsuko, BEASTARS, but this one distinguishes itself by being deeply unpleasant. Toucan's meant to be a jerk, yes, but this is someone who talks about "the ugly one" in a scene about schoolgirls getting groped on the train. He also goes to group dates and buys the services of prostitutes.

No, no, no. Get away from me, Toucan. The animation's also extremely cheap and often (but not always) CGI.

On the upside, though, Lizard is played by Kenjiro Tsuda. So I enjoyed listening to him.

It's the kind of thing you're surprised isn't on Netflix. It has motorbike chases, helicopters, machine-guns, jumps into a speeding van, interesting SF ideas and no characterisation that I noticed.

The main character, Takuya, is a courier we're supposed to think is interesting because of action scenes. He's such a macho cliche that even his voice actor sounds boring. He's the kind of mercenary who'll take any job for the money and describes a girl he's escorting (Yuki) as "luggage". (She's in earshot and runs off. D'oh.) He doesn't care about anything, except completing any job he accepts.

After getting Yuki to his client, Takuya asks for and gets a complicated, detailed explanation of what's going on and the world's backstory. I don't get it. Why did he bother asking? He doesn't care. I don't quite believe that he even bothered listening. His next line is to say, "My job is done. I don't want to get involved in any trouble" as he's about to leave, making all that information he just learned completely pointless.

Nonetheless, the episode's also trying to make his determination look heroic. "I know you're not the type to get blinded by money, Takuya!" (Really? Could have fooled me.) "Is there a need to go so far for that girl? She's just a stranger!" (So Takuya's friend is also a psychopath, then?)

There's potentially interesting backstory. Yuki's the last survivor of a city that disappeared, yet just she's been sent a message by her father (who was in that city). There are lots of cool SF ideas in this (grim, po-faced) show.

This is the kind of episode that opens with a six-minute action scene that means nothing and stars no one we've been given a chance to care about. 25 minutes later, that hasn't been rectified. There's also bad CGI. Takuya gets shot at the end of the episode. I was delighted, but unfortunately I suspect he's not dead.

Miki is a timid Kyoto girl with an accent. She's a bit of a crybaby and stays apart from others. Her boisterous classmate Aya assumed Miki must have just moved to the area and was being shy because she didn't know anyone.

Midori is the rulebook-waving class representative who shows no mercy to rule-breakers. She has a part-time job at a store that sells board games, but that's okay at their school if you get permission.

Most of the episode is just helping us get to know the girls. Aya decides that it would be fun to get lost in Kyoto with Miki. They do, though, end up playing Marrakech... which is a real game. The board, pieces, gameplay and tactics are all portrayed accurately. (The shop sells European board games, mostly German ones. Marrakech has won a bunch of game awards, incidentally, including being a 2009 Japan Boardgame Prize U-more Award nominee.)

That's pretty cool. I like the cast and I want to see if they play any of the games I own...

Not that much office comedy this week, though. It's more about Retsuko's mother. She's not that bad, actually. She's not an Outrageous Anime Monster. That said, though, you can completely understand why Retsuko would prefer to avoid the old bat and at one point asks a policeman to arrest her.

At work, Retsuko's chauvinist pig boss (literally a pig) tells everyone that a new employee is coming. One of Retsuko's colleagues is escaping via marriage. The newbie is a graduate, which doesn't please Director Ton. "Graduates are just freeloaders with a bloated sense of pride!"

The episode's less savage than a lot of Aggretsuko. Retsuko's scenes with her friends are quite nice. Mum is... mum. Looks like another promising instalment of what's always been a very good show.

It's still a good show, mind you. It's just that something in me just wants to avoid it. It's the low-level pain of watching bad decisions being made in a bad situation by people who will never escape. They'll solve these problems, then sleepwalk into other problems. It feels like the TV equivalent of watching someone set insects on fire. Retsuko's mum sets up a date with a nice bloke Retsuko likes... so she walks away from it. Her new colleague, Anai, is a passive-aggressive nightmare who challenges Retsuko menacingly on everything she says... but all Retsuko needed to do was be straightforward and not back down, because there's nothing wrong with what she's saying and indeed it needed to be said.

Gyaaaaaaaaah.

I won't be continuing because it's a sports anime, but I really enjoyed this episode. It's about basketball. Its protagonist adores basketball. If I kept watching, I'd be undergoing lots of basketball.

That said, though, I've watched (or attempted to watch) quite a few random sports anime episodes. This is one of the best. The characters are fun, I enjoyed the whole thing from start to finish and I certainly wasn't fast-forwarding.

Our hero is a big-hearted shrimp called Sora Kurumatani. (He's in love with the wrong sport.) He's just transferring into Kuzu High School (i.e. Scumbag High School) and the opening scene has him being threatened by bullies. He's brave! He's cocky! He loses pathetically and they steal all his money! This is funny and you've got to respect Kurumatani's enthusiasm and never-say-die attitude, even if he's also a figure of fun. "By the way, that last fight put my losing streak at 200 in a row!"

He meets a lazy, good-natured lout called Chiaki Hanazono. Imagine a gorilla with a toad's mouth and an afro. He's almost as pathetic a loser as Kurumatani (again, funny), but he's also dodgier. He spies on the girls' locker room and he's liable to kick down doors he doesn't like.

Then we have the school basketball club, compared with whom Hanazono is a saint. They're more bullies, basically, except bigger and more threatening than the first lot.

I really enjoyed this episode. The cast made me laugh. There's a female presence (the girls' basketball team and particularly Madoka). Kurumatani doesn't merely have to play basketball, but he's also got to deal with scary teammates who actively dislike the sport and are only here because after-school clubs are mandatory. There's emotional content (Kurumatani's mother's shoes). I'm sure the format will settle down later, i.e. more basketball, but it's based on an extremely successful manga that started in 2003 and is on fifty volumes and counting.

It's a thumbs-up from me. If you're into sports anime, try this.

Aikatsu is charming. The episodes I've seen have always had lovable characters, good music and lots of over-designed dresses. Admittedly the show's about girls studying to be idols and there's a CGI idol stage performance at the end of every episode, but never mind.

This one's a bit different, though. Everything seems normal at first, as we meet our two heroines and their rather gorgeous two-colour hair. Similarly, the stage magician manager and the hedgehog under his hat are normal for anime.

Then, though, we meet the tall, glamorous Hibiki Tenshou, who's introduced coming down to Earth in her rocket re-entry module. She walks away from the landing in a Dark Phoenix flame explosion. "Are you idols on Earth?" she says on meeting our heroines, then zooms off on roller boots. Later, she finds a speedboat. She also has three Lovely Friends who pose like Charlie's Angels and a best friend rival with whom she has a battle. Yes, a fight scene. That seems to be how those two say "hello".

She's human, though. She's a "space idol" who went into space, although this seems like a self-defeating exercise if two massive idol fans like our heroines haven't heard of her. I suspect the Aikatsu writing staff just wanted to create someone awesomely cool and hope that the audience didn't think about it too hard. (They succeeded.)

This is still a show about idol school, though. The episode ends with a CGI stage show that you can fast-forward through.

Next week: zero gravity.

Welcome to the latest Aikatsu! Using this anime, you too can brainwash small children into wanting to become media vermin! Be a singing, dancing idol! Wear pretty dresses! Turn into a CGI version of yourself for the idol stage show at the end of each episode!

That said, though, I'm fond of the franchise and the day may come when my resistance crumbles and I watch an Aikatsu series... but that day hasn't arrived yet.

Anyway, our heroine this time is Raki Kiseki. Her head is air and her passion is dresses. She wants to be a dress designer, although obviously she wants to be an idol too. (Um. Did I mention the "airhead" bit?) She's quite funny, though, especially when spotted on a boat when she's theoretically trying to get to school. (Incidentally, her name translates as "Miracle Lucky", give or take some vowel length, and "lucky" is her favourite exclamation.)

Things get interesting when she meets the heroines of Aikatsu Friends! (recognisable from their two-colour hair), then enters a magical dimension to other Aikatsu universes. The latter was particularly surprising in what had been a realistic episode. Welcome to the franchise crossover series!

It's a nice episode. A bit bonkers, but lovable. However it's trumping the usual Aikatsu obsession (idols) by being about IDOLS AND DRESSES!!! I'll leave this, but I'll be happy to touch base again with a First Aikatsu Episode of 2020.

It's a tourism promotional anime for the Akita prefecture. Two friends stand in front of their school and talk about Akita food, actors, landmarks, etc.

Satoshi is a red oni and Hachirou is an akita (a kind of dog).

It's the kind of minimal animation that was probably done by someone on their computer over a weekend. There's no point in watching the screen, but there's no point in listening to the conversation either.

Nouna is a space explorer in a space bikini. (However she's also all-CGI and has normal proportions, so this isn't a sleazefest.) She visits an alien world of giants and is told that she'd be too stimulating for the locals, so the Giant Carver will have to make a model of her!

Next thing we know, it's the real world and Nouna's an anime figurine on a table. She's the property of Haruto, a good-natured but Proud To Be A Loser otaku who's introduced ranting down the phone about his lack of interest in 3D girls. "A present to me from me for moving out and living on my own! It is absolutely not because being suddenly on my own makes me feel lonely."

Haruto's amazed by the quality of his purchase, but he's about to be even more surprised. There's a comedy sequence about Nouna's bikini being detachable, but this isn't about fanservice so much as Nouna having built-in machine-guns and missiles. The episode's most interesting (and questionable) bit involves Haruto recognising Nouna's backstory from his favourite anime, so her memories are fake and she really is just merchandise. I'm happy with his logic. What I disagree with is his decision to hide this from her. He means well, but... well, yeah.

It looks fun, though. It reminds me of Hand Maid May (which I enjoyed). I'm looking forward to it.

I don't mind this show. The episodes I've seen of it have always been okay. There's an idiot boy (Shi Fen) and his long-suffering sister (Shi Mao). This week he buries his friends in sand up to their necks and gives them blindfolds to prevent them from seeing his sister's swimsuit at the beach.

The art style's quite fun. The pacing, comic timing, etc. are fine. Unfortunately, though, this episode's story idea is kind of tiresome and it's never explained how you bury people in sand so that they can't get out. (Until they do.) It's just sand at a beach! Did he mix it with concrete? Did he chain the poor sods down?

It's a spin-off OVA from Hello World, which I quite enjoyed without being entirely convinced by. This felt like a recap episode, to be honest, but I might as well keep going.

It stars the film's main characters, Katagaki Naomi and Ichigyou Ruri. They're at school. They help at the library. Ruri never smiles and has scary eyes when someone dumps books unceremoniously on the counter, but she's not a bad person.

There's no reference to the original's alternate universes, except briefly at the end. It's okay. I quite like our two heroes.

Ao hates boys, those filthy, disgusting creatures. She just wants to study, graduate from high school and go to a university as far away as possible. "I hate men and I don't need friends. I don't care about my youth."

This is entirely understandable given her father, who lives down to all of her prejudices. He's an erotic novelist. If you had that father, you'd be swearing yourself to a life of celibacy too.

This could be amusing.

Four girls are shipwrecked. (The Japanese title made me laugh, but with wordplay that doesn't translate.) There are four of them: (a) the weirdo who knows everything about wilderness survival and has been shipwrecked many times before, (b) the clever one who can calculate stuff, (c) the fit, sporty one, (d) the rich, childish one.

The episode's driven by Weirdo and her survival techniques, which are awesome, often disgusting and of course freak out the other three girls. The shark also amused me. "What is it?" "Nothing. Just start swimming."

All those breaks make it feel like a four-panel gag manga, mind you. But it's a laugh.

Hajime Nagumo meets monsters in a labyrinth and talks to himself. There's action. There's no discernable characterisation or dramatic point. All that's happening is dumb dungeon-bashing stuff and a self-pitying Hajime saying things like: "Why do I have to suffer like this? What did I do? Why is this happening to me?" He whinges about classmates and monsters. After that... "What do I want in this hopeless pit of despair?"

He concludes that everything in his way is his enemy and that he's going to kill them all. He thus eats a monster (as you do), which turns his hair white and gives him "I'm So Awesome" superpowers. He makes a gun.

It's empty. There's nothing here. The nearest we get to content are two female characters. One visits Hajime's room in a flashback sequence and promises to protect him, while the other (unfortunately) is a small, nude girl at the end. Even the original light novels' author hated this anime, for what it's worth. The readers did too. (Apparently the producers skipped three episodes' worth of set-up.) You'll struggle to reach the end credits, let alone subsequent episodes.

This one was a hit. There will be at least three seasons. The opening made me wonder if I'd accidentally started with Season 2, or something, but no. It's just that there's a framing story and the main episode is a big flashback.

Myne is a little girl in a fantasy world who wakes up one day with the mind of a Japanese student, Urano Mototsu. What happened to the real Myne's mind, then? Did Urano overwrite it? Has Myne been erased? This is quite a disturbing question, albeit one that this warm, domestic episode doesn't spend any time on. Given Myne's sickness, though, it could well be that both Myne and Urano died.

Anyway, Myne/Urano just wants to read. She loves books... but this is a pre-industrial world that hasn't even invented the printing press. She also learns that being small is inconvenient.

I'm expecting to enjoy this.

The worldbuilding's weird and not entirely clear. You've got characters called Vampir, Angel and Nietzsche in a world of lycanthropes, killer clowns and assassins who can parry bullets with their swords. "Mana" gives you superpowers and is a genetic gift that's been granted to only the chosen noble classes. What? How? Our heroes live in mankind's last city-state, although I'm not sure if this means we're close to extinction or whether that's simply an outdated mode of government.

The main character is Kufa Vampir, who has two jobs. His cover identity is to spend three years as the tutor of Melida Angel, a girl from a noble family who attends an elite academy. Secretly, though, he's been ordered to find out if she's really her father's daughter. If her biological father was a commoner, he'll assassinate her.

She can't use mana, which is suspicious. He thinks she's a bad joke. The premise sounded off-putting when I first heard about this series, but I liked this episode. I want to see where this goes.

Eight high school students are going off on camp! This is the year 2063, though, so they'll be visiting the planet McPa. (It's nine light-years away, so that's four hours' travel.) Something extreme will go wrong.

Looks fine so far. The gang have their share of prickly members, having been selected at random (why?), but they're going to have to learn about friendship and working together. (And about not being dicks.) There's a pink-haired girl who seems to be an idiot, but probably has something diagnosable about muddling up words and names. There's a hero who declares himself captain, but is indeed the best fit for the position. There's a ten-year-old girl because it's always popular to have one of those in an anime cast, regardless of plausibility. (She's very polite, except when talking through a rude glove puppet.)

I quite enjoyed it. Looks like a good launchpoint for a series.

Does this series need introducing? It was the biggest international anime hit of the 2010s. Mankind's been almost wiped out by creepy non-sentient man-eating Titans. (Well, mostly non-sentient.) The original mangaka is a bad artist, which just makes them all the weirder.

Recent episodes hadn't had much Titan action. Humans were killing each other instead. Now, though, the Titans are back and there's going to be a battlefield.

A boy called Meisaku Matsuda wants to be a literary masterpiece. He's transferred into a new school. His teacher's an oni and most of his classmates are famous literary characters: Momotaro, Pinocchio, a kappa and an onigiri with little rice limbs.

They're all grating idiots.

It's an anime adaptation of a Chinese video game that rips off KanColle (Kantai Collection). I skipped KanColle and I'll be doing the same here.

Aliens are attacking the world and the great naval powers of World War Two have united against the invaders! Eagle (US), Royal (UK), Iron Blood (Germany) and Sakura (Japan). Obviously none of these countries would ever invade anyone. "War never changes, no matter what the era," is the episode's motto. Well, that's bollocks, for a start.

The episode's first half is about girls doing nothing. There's no sense of plot or purpose, except introducing lots of girls with big boobs and inadequate clothing. One of them puts her hand inside another's top. After that... FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! Planes! Explosions! Ships! I don't care! There are no dramatic stakes and the episode's just doing it because battles look cool.

It's a Netflix anime, so can be assumed to be rubbish. So far, it is. Unconvincing characters on a desert island are such dicks that it's unbelievable. It just feels like bad writing. (There are other characters too, but the best developed of them is a girl so passive and meek that she's incapable of crying because it would call too much attention to herself.)

DICK #1: tries to commit sexual assault by threatening a woman with a knife (and fails). Tells women what he thinks of their buttocks. Says things like, "Whatever, I don't give a damn. I know I'm a total arsehole."

DICK #2: punches people for disagreeing with him or suggesting that his orders might be dangerous. Sometimes he also kicks them in the stomach, or tries to use them as bait to distract monsters. He sends everyone out to sea on rafts, even though they have no maps, they don't know where they are and he's been warned that a storm is coming. "I'm the leader of this group. My orders must be obeyed."

A sick child falls overboard. "Leave her. She was as good as dead anyway."

Someone saves that child anyway and the raft gets smashed up. They end up back on the island anyway and get threatened by giant killer insects. This leader falls off a cliff... which triggers a guilt attack in the otherwise sensible girl he'd been about to rape/mutilate/kill on the raft. "We have to save him!" No, dear. You really don't.

I don't object to these people being evil. Stories need baddies. I object to them being so stupidly, one-dimensionally evil that I'm not interested in watching them. They're boring. (What's more, I've heard that later episodes get worse.)