This show gets a lot of love. It was in critics' lists of Best Anime of the Year, but it wound me up something chronic and I couldn't even reach the end of the episode.

Kaguya and Miyuki are on the student council at a school for overprivileged rich brats and are seen as untouchable even by their peers. "Do you think they're dating?" "It would be presumptuous even to get close to them, let alone ask such a question!" In fact, they're both smug little idiots who might, possibly, be willing to consider lowering themselves to the extent of dating each other... but only if the other person asks first.

The episode involves the pair's mind games to try to trick the other into asking them out. I wanted to drop them into lava.

In fairness, I liked the pink-haired ordinary secretary.

These kaijuu don't look as funny as the live-action originals. Do a google image search for Pigmon or Dada. This is just a kiddie anime with chibi-fied versions of all the kaijuu, talking and behaving the same as the target audience (i.e. five years old).

Pig-chan (i.e. Pigmon): "Mummy baked some cookies for me to give to everyone!"

Pig-chan accidentally destroys the other kaijuus' festival, but Dada-chan steps on Pig-chan's cookies. Pig-chan runs off, but Dada-chan finds him and persuades him to apologise to everyone. It's okay. Nothing wrong with the episode.

This show is unbelievable. It's lurid, crazy, bonkers, etc. This makes it splendid anime and has earned it lots of fans, not to mention two anime series, a live-action TV series and a live-action movie.

Unfortunately, I find it unbelievable in a show-breaking way. I dropped Season 1. It's set at Hyakkaou Private Academy, a high school where the students are ranked by their gambling winnings. This week, a schoolgirl gets out her finger-chopping guillotine and challenges our heroes to a game of Finger Chicken.

Naturally, our insane heroine finds this exciting and arousing. (Great facial expressions.) I, meanwhile, went looking for characters with more than one brain cell each.

It's actually quite fun. It's a sleaze show with big boobs, but it doesn't feel that sleazy. The camera angles don't feel like someone's about to be arrested. There are uncensored versions of the episodes, with nipples, but the camera doesn't linger.

Premise: there's a sport where two-girl teams race each other on jet skis along Tokyo's Kanda river. (That's what "kandagawa" means.) Each team has a jetter and a shooter. Being hit by a gun makes clothes fall off.

The sport's taken reasonably seriously, though, and it plays like a normal, fun episode of anime. Our heroine is Rin Namiki, who's short, childish, super-enthusiastic and happy. She's an island near Nagasaki, so she used to have to go to school by jet ski and she's got a yokel accent. She's also persistent. Her victim is about to be Misa Aoi, who just wants to be left alone to be tall, brooding and miserable and so can't really handle someone who's determined to be nice to her and won't go away.

We're introduced to various racing rivals-to-be. The only one with a significant role in this episode, though, is Princess Amazing Hair Curls (not her real name) who goes to a school for rich girls and expects the world to grovel to her.

It's a laugh. I enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to the series.

It's about a battle. Some baddies fight some goodies. Someone does something clever with a puppet called Lady Francine. The goodie puppets all revere the Hero (Narumi).

The puppets are somewhat surreal. It's imaginative. It's taking itself very seriously. I'm clearly missing a lot of context by jumping into the series halfway through. I'm prepared to accept that this might well be a good show, but only if you accept the common shounen premise that "storytelling equals fight scenes".

I skipped the 2018 parent show, Toji no Miko. This is a silly spin-off with chibified characters. Ep.0 is just summarising the stuff you don't remember because you had better things to watch. Ep.1 is light-hearted and pointless. Recommended only to fans of the source material.

It's loud and has silly comedy reactions. People bounce off the walls, etc. I got tired of it quickly, although I'm sure it would make its target audience laugh. It also has gags about farts, bottoms, etc.

Makoto is ten or eleven years old. One day, he gets up and finds that he has a metre-tall beehive hairstyle. After yelling in disbelief, he squashes it under a baseball cap and goes downstairs for breakfast. Comedy Antics Ensue, with his parents oblivious to the problem even though he's yelling at the top of his voice while trying to pretend nothing's unusual. I hated the episode already.

The hair turns out to be sentient. It looks like a talking poo and has a face like a golliwog, if anyone remembers those. It sticks fingers up Makoto's nose and anus. It farts a lot. It sticks itself out of his trousers like a metre-long penis. It has a naked red bottom and no interest in wearing clothes.

I sort of respect this anime, which knows exactly what kind of comedy it's going for and is doing it at the top of its voice. If a random episode came on television, I might even leave it on out of curiosity. There's absolutely no chance of me watching it regularly, though.

The entire world hated this.

Kemono Friends used to be a flopped media franchise, with a mobile phone game that got discontinued before the anime even aired. That anime then became a massive sleeper hit. (In other words, it's one of those slightly mysterious hits that defy analysis, but it's charming.) The franchise's saviour and the anime's director, TATSUKI, released an unofficial online short called "Episode 12.1"... which got him sacked by the parent company in a fit of control freakery.

The anime's entire staff resigned in protest, social media exploded and the company's stock dropped by 33% in a day. Long story short: Season 2 happened, but with a different director and production staff.

Conclusion: the fans wanted this new season to fail. (To see what TATSUKI did next, watch Kemurikusa.)

Putting all that aside, though... the episode's okay. It's basically the same as before, ambling through a safari wildlife park inhabited by animal girls. There's a new human instead of Kaban-chan, though. Its name and gender is unknown, but it uses male pronouns (although this doesn't prove anything) and the animal girls nickname it Kyururu. The show's still done in endearingly super-cheap stiff CGI animation. There are huge camera monsters called Ceruleans and a self-important but helpful duck.

It's fine. I liked Season 1, so I'll see what happens in Season 2.

It's another isekai anime. A beautiful, kind princess summons a hero to kill the beasts that threaten her kingdom! Unfortunately:

(a) he's an animal lover. "I am not a pervert! I simply love all animals regardless of gender!" He cuddles animals and beastmen, even against their will. One such scene is played as a pseudo-rape, for attempted black comedy. (That wolfman had been going to abduct our hero and sell him into slavery.)

(b) he's a pro wrestler. For once, an isekai show has a hero who can fight! He gives the princess a German suplex, leaving her upside-down, unconscious and showing her knickers.

You'll have spotted that the show goes close to the line. (Shigure's also appalling. "I'm the one who suggested forcing me to pay with my body.") However, it's funny. Besides, sword-and-sorcery fantasy tends to be a bit glib with its killing and I like this subversion with a hero who won't kill animals.

It's the follow-up show from Tatsuki after he got booted off Kemono Friends. They're very similar, but this one's a whole lot darker and weirder.

Both have an amnesiac nice human in a post-apocalypse world where big, mysterious monsters might attack you at any moment. Kemono Friends, though, was gentle and relaxing. This is kind of disorientating and I might need a rewatch to get my head around it properly. We have girls who eat inedible flotsam and discuss dismembering, killing and/or eating this strange creature they've found. (It's a boy.)

The CGI is deliberately simple, but expressive. The episode has charm, but it's also both threatening and intriguing. Happy to keep going and (hopefully) learn what the hell's going on.

Two men are about to have a FIGHT!!! in a back alley. One of them's a man-monster. The other one is being told by Mr Enormous that he must have been insane to pick a FIGHT!!! with someone bigger, stronger and meaner. (In other words, we already know that the smaller one's going to win.)

There's also an old bloke in his fifties who was hiding and witnessed the FIGHT!!! Seeing the violence gives him some kind of sexual/religious awakening. "The highest respect for a stronger male clearly arose in his heart." Uh, mate, I think you're confusing that with wanting to avoid a knuckle-dragging twat who inflicts violence on strangers for no reason. Smaller Bloke went looking for that fight. There are words for such people. Sadist, bully, mentally enfeebled, etc.

Incidentally, this is a cel-shaded cheapo CGI Netflix anime. Old Bloke has a fun face, though.

I have almost no information on this. I found something on YouTube, but it was just twenty seconds of a stuffed toy cat in a crane game. I think it's a kiddie show.

It's a spin-off series about the male characters from Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live, making this the first time Pretty Rhythm's been about boys. What's more, this episode's so bad that I've decided it's self-parody. There's taking the piss, and then there's this.

We start with CGI pretty boys doing a live idol show for all their screaming fans. This looks so cheap that it's shocking to think that it got broadcast. It's probably about 2014 or 2015 terrible, which is saying a lot given how much CGI dance sequences in anime have moved on since then.

We then get a massive info-dump. This goes on and on, mercilessly introducing the cast.

4 MINUTES = just when you think the episode's started at last, now it's a recreation of first-person romantic simulation computer games. A pretty boy talks to camera (i.e. to you) and invites up to his apartment. "Your" replies are inaudible, instead appearing as on-screen text.

7 MINUTES = it turns into normal anime! Briefly. We then return to the info-dump sequences, this time about the school, its staff and its dormitories. Surprisingly we glimpse some female characters, but they're often ridiculous. There's a nun who's just got engaged and a girl with insane drill hair.

10 MINUTES = back to normal anime, after which it stays that way! I don't mean drama, by the way, or anything that could be mistaken for meaningful content. It's just that the episode's at last advanced to the level of having both characters and dialogue! The boys get naked in the bath. Then they do it again. Hotel! Restaurant! Clothes! Yet another bath!

There are two sequences with pseudo-drama, both lurching out of nowhere so suddenly as to be non-sequiturs. The first is just a montage of cliches from various different genres, as if you'd been channel-hopping. Are those clips from the films and TV dramas that our heroes are filming? After that, the second pseudo-drama lasts for two minutes towards the end of the episode. Suddenly everyone's handing in resignation letters, declaring "we'll fight for you!" and agreeing in heartfelt unison to stay in a particular dormitory.

None of this had previously been in question. It's like shoving a lump of raw steak into candyfloss. This is the scene that I could only think was parody.

The episode ends on an announcement of a competition between Schwarz Rose and Edel Rose. It's school vs. school! PRETTY BOY IDOL BATTLES!!!! There will be a huge prize! "Guys, go perform your hearts out!"

Unbelievable. Bearing in mind the genre, though, i.e. pretty boy idol anime aimed at an older female audience, I'm getting quite confident about my "parody" diagnosis. Anyone who watches this genre on a regular basis must have a pretty big sense of humour.

I quite enjoyed the Cocotama episode I watched last year, but this less so. The first half is just Cute Infant Blob Things, as if the PreCure fairies had been given their own show of 100% filler episodes. There's no plot. Baby Cocotamas go on a slide, have a bath, sleep and play with a teddy bear.

It's also obviously a merchandise-flogging anime. It looks ugly, plastic and very very Available In Shops Right Now, Kids!

The second half grows some story. A small girl at nursery is waiting for her mother to come and pick her up, but mum's busy at work. Our heroes give the girl the teddy bear.

The show's human regular (Haruka Hoshinogawa) gets almost no involvement this week. It's a shame. I'd liked her...

Exciting and Thrilling! The Jewel Auditions have started!

Mirai's completed her song for the Pri Chan video! On reaching the "Prism Stone" dance & music store, Mirai and her friends find that all of its customers have been stolen by the Dear Crown dance & music store that's opened right next door. Naturally, they go and check it out.

It's like a totem to the religion that is glittery pink fashion, clothes, make-up, studios and Pri Chan idols.

The episode continues a lot like this. The most amusing bit is the dress that looks like a circus tent.

Claymation caterpillars wriggle around in micro-stories, ranging from "eh?" to "actually quite amusing". A face flannel falls on the hero, who crawls around underneath it. I'm not sure what the point of that micro-episode was, but next comes a caterpillar love story. The girl's unimpressed with our hero. He offers her hearts of increasing size, then a flower. She eats it.

Finally, our hero crawls along a road. Cars are roaring past. He nearly gets squashed under their wheels, repeatedly... until a human treads on him. What? The caterpillar's ghost gets up from the splattered corpse and crawls off undaunted.

I enjoyed it. I'd definitely watch more if it came on TV while I was present.

It starts in 1560 with a pre-battle speech, then lots of samurai fight. (Unfortunately, some will survive.) That's just a teaser, though. Next, a girl's voice tells us that's not the Nobunaga she knew.

We jump back to 1545, when he was eleven or twelve. (The episode had suggested to me that he was older.) This young Nobunaga (aka. Kipponshi) is excited about muskets and all things foreign. He hangs out with a gang and steals imported goods. He calls himself a "gentleman thief" who's just sharing his father's treasure with everyone. Later, when his secret's found out, there will be a dramatic scene where Nobunaga defends his gang from execution at the hands of his father.

All this is quite well done, with good historical detail, and it's a lot more engaging than I'd expected. Nobunaga's fun. There's also the potential for heavy drama later, if the show goes that far. (Nobunaga's little brother Nobuyuki/Kanjuurou idolises him, but Nobunaga had him killed in 1557.)

There's also manservice, incidentally. I've read that the show will later introduce gay tease for the fangirls, but that would fit Nobunaga too.

Unfortunately, though... it's going to be a samurai show. Nobunaga won't stay 11 years old forever. He'll grow up and have battles. Naaah.

Food items have little faces and make speech-surrogate sounds. "Yay!" It's cute.

It looks quite good, but the content doesn't excite me personally.

(a) it's about a school music club.

(b) they're playing a traditional Japanese instrument called the koto. Imagine mildly boring music in 17th century Kyoto, to which you're listening while wearing a kimono and slowly drinking green tea. (I'm sure there's lots of good koto music, but that's the stereotypical image.)

(c) the main characters are all male. The title sequence suggests that this will change in later episodes, but the boys will still outnumber the girls.

The drama's good, though. It's well written and does a lot in its running time. I'd recommend it, if you're happy to spend 26 episodes watching schoolboys play the koto.