Japanese schoolgirls tend to play softball, not baseball... but not here. Our heroines want to start an actual baseball club. "Thirty years ago, there wasn't a single Japanese high school with a girls' baseball team. Nowadays, though, thirty schools across Japan have one."

That's quite cool. It's standing up for equality. There's a tall girl who's not into team sports, a timid shorty who's afraid of being hurt by the ball, etc. They play some baseball. I approve of this show, but it's still a sports anime and so I won't be continuing with it.

It blows my mind that this is on Crunchyroll. It's the kind of four-minute nothing you'd see on NHK children's TV in the mid-morning or so. There's nothing wrong with it, but I can't imagine anyone except a four-year-old wanting to watch all of its episodes.

Pirikarako-chan is a green-haired fairy girl thing with a talking red blob on her head. They live in Hakata, in Fukuoka, and she likes mentai (a kind of fish eggs). She wants to teach us that mentai's delicious, but there's also a boy with wacky hair who sneers at mentai and thinks caviar is superior. This is the kind of cartoon where food items can talk and even take bites out of each other without hurting the light, cheerful tone.

It's a reasonably entertaining, pastel-coloured food advert.

I quite like this show, although I've only seen a few of its episodes. Hanakappa is a kappa with flowers growing out of his head. These might be apple trees, man-eating flytraps, live snakes or that huge, fleshy flower that smells like a rotting corpse. (Amorphophallus titanum.)

The show's even had a movie, which I wouldn't mind seeing. It's obviously a kiddie show, though, with artwork that looks drawn by children.

Nakano is a wage slave who catches the last train home from work and will never have a girlfriend. His world is work. Meeting other people doesn't enter into it. His mental state is represented by a black cloud.

Senko is an 800-year-old fox spirit who moves in without his permission and devotes herself to improving his life.

It's nice, but... (a) Senko's tail is an erogenous zone, which I don't imagine is true with real animals. (b) She has the body of an underage girl, give or take a few animal characteristics. There's enough wacky fantasy deniability that it doesn't feel dirty, but the episode's clearly at least open to attracting a fetishist audience. I'll continue, though.

It's a harem comedy with four girls who may or may not like our bland hero (Keiki). One's his sister. Some of them have a bit of personality, e.g. the lazy club president who can't be bothered with cleaning, but two of the four are still a work in progress. They can also say homilies that are obvious nonsense. They can be distinguished by their hair decorations... large lime green bow, smaller turquoise bow, red ribbon or two discreet little clips.

The episode's fairly nondescript, but there are three signs that it might come alive.

1: the title, which sets up promises.

2: the initial trigger. An anonymous girl leaves Keiki a love letter and a pair of her knickers, which is mildly racy (although the episode itself is tame). Keiki's job in the series will be to identify "Cinderella", as they call her.

3: the episode's punchline, which is starting to suggest the promise of the title.

I'll give this a whirl on the possibly optimistic assumption that it might be a laugh. I'm speculating that some or all of the cast have a hidden sleazy side to their personalities.

There's a girl with little red horns (Oni) and a pink-haired girl with cat ears (Neko). They sit and chat. That's it.

It's less rubbish than what I saw of Season 1, since it doesn't start with an action sequence with no context and nothing to care about. It's still not interesting, though.

James Blood still works for the SCC (Special Service of Crime Police), so they haven't fixed the silly names. There's also a police service called Capital Police. (If that means London, it should be "Metropolitan Police".) It's set in the UK, ostensibly, but it feels unfamiliar with both the country and the language. See also their pronunciation of "Gary".

There's dull police stuff, a schoolgirl who heals injuries and a drug that makes you grow old and die. The episode's sort of okay, but I wasn't gripped.

On one level, my objection to this episode is misjudged. The isekai genre is unrealistic. Ordinary people from our world get sucked into a fantasy dimension where they become mighty heroes!

Even by those standards, though, this one's an eye-roller.

"In Japan, there are seven young men and women of worldwide renown. Their talents are so remarkable that one wouldn't believe that they're in high school. Out of respect and awe for their abilities, people call them 'high school prodigies'. A girl with intelligence several centuries ahead of her time, whom espionage agents around the world constantly have their eye on... Ringo-chan! Despite being in high school, she's the world's top inventor."

#2 is a schoolgirl and samurai who's the world's greatest swordsman. We see her on the battlefield. She charges across open terrain with no cover, using only her sword to knock aside the bullets from two soldiers' sustained machine-gun fire. She then reaches them and kills them.

#3 is a schoolgirl who's the world's best doctor. #4 is a schoolboy who's the world's greatest businessman, with a hand in roughly 30% of all monetary transactions across the globe. #5 is a schoolboy who's the world's top magician. (This one's actually imaginable, but he says "it's showtime!" and hence deserves to die.) #6 is a schoolgirl and ninja (who says "nin nin") who's the world's top journalist. #7 is a schoolboy who's the world's top politician and has just won election for his second term as Japan's prime minister. I repeat, his SECOND term. In real life, candidates for Japan's Diet must be at least 25 or 30 years old, depending on whether they're aiming for the lower or upper house.

Oh, and guess what's the first thing that happens to our main hero on waking up in another world? Answer: an elf with big boobs helps him eat by chewing his food for him and then delivering it by kiss. Intention: sexy. Actual result: disgusting.

Incidentally, I notice that the original light novels ended two months after this anime did. The anime industry isn't a charity. Shows like this are made as publicity for the original work, but this can backfire and get the original cancelled if the anime fares badly enough. Looks like that happened here. Hah hah hah.

Season 1 of this show was good and I enjoyed it. Season 2 was sort of okay, but a bit pointless. This... well, I don't mind it, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to keep watching if I hadn't watched everything so far.

The cast looks unwieldy. Lots and lots of boys. One shot has 27 of them. They do generic "start of a new school term" stuff, have a comedy accident because they're idiots and visit a little stone open-air theatre that's going to be closed soon. The script's fluffy nothing, basically.

The show's always used catchphrases to help us identify certain characters. This works, but it makes them feel one-dimensional. There's a musical number. The show looks nice enough, but it doesn't give the impression that you'd be missing anything by dropping it.

Welcome back to the 1990s! Street Fighter 2, Bobble Bubble (if you look carefully, yay!)... and of course our teenage heroes: Haruo, Akira and Koharu.

They love computer games. They love each other, although the details need sorting out. (Don't put Akira and Koharu in the same room.) Akira has family problems, thanks to her delinquent older sister, her dragon mother and the industrial conglomerate to which she's the heiress. (She also has a type: bears. Look at the characters she chooses to play in fighting games.)

Season 1 was charming. Season 2 looks just as good.

I like this show. I don't watch it, but I definitely would have if I'd been into sports anime. Ep.1 was great in 2018 and this is pretty good too.

Our hero is a small schoolboy who's determined to be a sumo wrestler. (Spot the problem.) He's now found a grouchy old git who used to be a big-shot sumo champion and is willing to train him, on condition that no one ever asks him to justify his eccentric methods. We soon learn why as Old Git gives our hero a ton of housework, cooking and grocery shopping, without even providing enough money. Then, at the end of the day, he'll give him a fifteen minute sumo match against a man-mountain. Our hero's conditions are:

(a) he has to demonstrate his killer move to his opponent. (It's a triple combo.)

(b) he must then beat his opponent with it in a bout. No other finishing move is permitted, even though the opponent now knows what's coming.

This is pretty tough. Our hero's manager thinks that's outrageous, but our hero is determined to keep faith and tough it out. (Determination he has in spades. He's also a bit of an idiot, but a likeable one who always has a big grin and lots of spirit.) That "manager" is a schoolgirl, incidentally, which is surprising but welcome since it means we have a female character in what's otherwise an all-male world.

There's a huge, arrogant wrestler who shows up to demand that Old Git dump our hero and teach him instead. There's a rather nice discussion between Old Git and the manager (who's in the bath at the time) about why it's so exciting to see our pint-sized hero challenging giants. We have our hero at last realising what Old Git had been trying to tell him and then later saying how lucky he is to have this chance to get pounded into the dirt by fighters who are terrifyingly better than him. (He's right, but you admire him for being able to see it that way.)

It's another good episode from a good show. Strongly recommended to sports anime fans.

Hitori Bocchi is a schoolgirl with an eye-rolling name. It doesn't even reach the level of pun. "Hitoribocchi" means "aloneness, loneliness, solitude" and her parents were clearly evil.

Anyway, the episode thinks it's being light, charming, funny, etc. but it's based around the socially crippled Bocchi's headbanging attempts at a conversation. (Literally. Three times, she accidentally headbutts the person she's talking to.) I had a hard time with this, but the end credits suggest that more characters will arrive later. Reluctantly, I'll give ep.2 a go.

Oh, what the hell. I'll stick with it. Bocchi is still agonisingly dense and a disaster area, but the episode's funny. "I'm incredible at night!" It's good there weren't boys around when she yelled that.

I like her furtive squirrel body language in the opening credits. I like the new cast member, Zannen Girl. It's a good series. Mind you, I still think promising to befriend an entire class is a bit much. 29 students. Even normal people without anxiety issues probably wouldn't count every single classmate as a friend...

Here's the official blurb:

"From unraveling the secrets of opening and closing doors to defusing surprise packages more commonly known as bombs, there is never a dull day at the Hololive Production office! Holo no Graffiti follows an eccentric cast of Virtual YouTubers, also known as "VTubers," going about their absurd yet hilarious daily lives, detailing all their cute moments and mishaps."

In other words, it's an abomination. With bad motion-capture CGI.

As before, it's a better-than-expected kiddie show.

This week, the Cat King visits the desert island to take back his son, who to everyone's surprise is one of the show's three protagonists. Our heroes talk him out of it by showing him how hard all the cats have worked to make the island inhabitable, including making a farm.

Kiddie stuff includes:

(a) the king arrives on the island by balloon. No, not a hot air balloon. He and his courtiers are each dangling from five or six ordinary party balloons. To descend, they ask a seagull to pop them. How's he planning to return?

(b) the scene with the mole and the banana skins.

It looks quite good for what it is, but I don't know if I'd watch an episode to the end if it happened to be on TV while I was in the room. Maybe. Dunno. I'd have definitely watched it if I were six years old, though.

The English title is misleading. "Clumsy" is indeed one possible meaning of "bukiyou", but here it's describing a lack of social skills. Ueno-san fancies a boy called Tanaka, but she's also a schoolgirl mad scientist.

NORMAL ACTION: tell him.

OUR HEROINE'S ACTION: shriek and rant while trying to make him: (a) drink her purified urine, (b) look up her skirt while she's going commando. She's invented a machine that generates black holes to block panty shots or something, so she's making him test that.

In Ueno's defence, though, Tanaka is dense.

Good taste? No. Did I laugh? Yes.

For what it is, it looks quite good. I'll still be skipping it, though, because it's about going to the gym and doing lots of physical exercise. If you fancy that, though, it's educational. This week, I learned the correct way to do squats and bench presses.

Hibiki Sakura is a schoolgirl who eats too much and has shallow motivations. When she notices that she's starting to put on the kilos, she runs in a panic to the nearest gym.

Akemi Soryuin is the beautiful, intelligent student council president... with a muscle fetish.

The characters are entertaining enough. The theme songs are great fun. There's absolutely wrong with this series and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in the subject matter.

"Hulaing" isn't Chinese, but instead the English word for hula dancing. "Hula-ing."

The show's visuals are a trip. Flamboyant character designs, art styles, lots of colour, etc. It's psychedelic. At one point, a teacher levitates.

The narrative, on the other hand, is throwaway. A girl wants to do hula dancing and there's a half-Finnish transfer student.