I love Machikado Mazoku, aka. The Demon Girl Next Door. I'll probably watch this series, but what can you do in 25 seconds? Answer: not a lot. Yuuko talks to the camera and... whoops, no, time's up.

I'm on the fence about this one. I'll keep watching, but not because of my fondness for the ostensible genre. This is a magical girl show in name only. It starts by ticking all the boxes, but then goes to a bloody war flashback, missing forearms, the magical girl body count, etc. Asuka's got PTSD. Very Bad Things happened to her parents. She's sworn off magical girl exploits (i.e. she's a schoolgirl who's also an ex-military war veteran), but don't think that means magic wands. Annoy these girls and you'll explode in a shower of your own guts.

That said, though, I liked her two friendly-but-oblivious classmates. Asuka's starting to thaw, somewhat. The story might go somewhere interesting. The episode definitely kept me watching, so I'll keep going.

Not sure about this one. There's no plot, nor any real point to the episode. I'd have dropped it if the whole series looked like being like this, but the title sequence promises more characters, so I'll keep going.

Tejina keeps trying to do magic tricks. She always fails, partly because of stage fright but mostly because she's useless. This sometimes ends in panty shots and she's got big boobs. That's about all there is to the episode, although fortunately it's split into mini-episodes for bite-sized silliness.

Well, it's a short-form series. It won't take long to watch it all. It even came recommended by a friend, as "trashy but you'll like it".

The director's Tsutomu Mizushima, who also did Girls und Panzer. That show I liked. This one I'm fleeing from at top speed. Its elements, in order of importance, are:

1. Fighter planes. Half of the episode is a big CGI dogfight, with very little character involvement. I fast-forwarded through it.

2. A dodo flies. (They were flightless.)

3. Lots of CGI, including some (but not all) of the cast. That was distracting.

4. The main character loves pancakes, in a way that probably gets tiresome almost immediately.

5. ...zzzz.

6. ...must be something else.

7. oh yeah, there's a cast. They talk in a bar.

Right before the end credits, the last minute or two is somewhat interesting-ish. Too little, too late. Nope.

It's based on Bandai and Takara Tomy toy brands. "The Compact Doll House is available for 380 yen and the LumiTear Stick for 360 yen, from Bandai!"

It's exceedingly pink. You'll be pastel-coloured to death, or else sold magic wands, brooches, pendants, etc. Three cheap CGI heroines are star girls who live in heaven, or at least somewhere above the clouds. A star is stolen by a mischievous rabbit fairy and an easy-going My Little Unicorn.

If you're over four, this isn't for you. Even five-year-olds might not go for it.

This show had a famously troubled production. It was announced in 2015, delayed indefinitely in 2016 and then finally broadcast in 2019. It's short. It's also a spin-off of Rage of Bahamut, which I disliked and dropped.

That said, this looks okay. It's mostly about two princesses having lunch. Anne's a nice, outgoing girl who gets dragged away to fix a magical problem in the library. Grea's a timid half-dragon with horns, wings and a big tail. When Anne eventually gets back, it's sunset but Grea's still waiting there to finish their lunch together.

There's also a post-credits bit about a bloke called Owen.

Beautiful art and sunset lighting. Anne and Grea are likeable. I didn't understand what happened in the library, though, beyond "it's magic" and "I guess someone goofed?" The show seems nice.

It's the show where the schedule went out of the window, along with the animation quality. Eps.1-10 aired in Jan-March 2018, but eps.11-12 aired in April 2019. I'd watched ep.1 as usual, but I'd then dropped the show. This year I watched ep.11 since it's technically the first episode of 2019, but without expecting to get much from it. I was right.

Schoolgirls have magic battles. The Japanese school is going to fight the German school. There's season finale stuff, including a grey blob. I quite liked the useless girl who insists that she's the ace, but otherwise my viewing experience was pretty much what you'd expect for someone jumping in at ep.11 of twelve.

Oh, bloody hell. It's directed by Akitarou Daichi.

Damn, damn, damn. I'm going to have to watch this now, aren't I? Akitarou Daichi... oh, sod it. I won't say "yes" immediately, but I need to give at least this episode another chance.

I enjoyed the theme song and title sequence. They're fun. However...

(a) the lonely heroine can talk to ghosts/spirits, so she creeps out all her classmates and doesn't associate with them. No problem so far. What I object to is the headphones she wears to stop herself from hearing the spirits' voices either! WHAT? You're shutting them out too? What kind of freak are you?

(b) it's based on an otome game, i.e. a female protagonist and a cast of pretty boys. I've watched such shows before, but this one's pushing the female fantasy angle more strongly than most. I feel as I'm watching from outside. I can see what it's doing and I can see that it could work well for certain people who aren't me. Is this how women feel when they see blatantly male-pandering fanservice anime?

But what the hell. It's by Daichi. I'll give it another go.

The boys can still be shallow and mildly annoying, e.g. Mr "Korisu-chan" and the germophobe. This is very much an otome game adaptation, with absolutely no attempt to duck or subvert the genre. I get the impression that Daichi doesn't mess around much with the properties he's adapting these days. (That would be a shame and I hope he wasn't burned by the mangaka's mistaken hostility towards his 2001 Fruits Basket anime, but never mind.)

That said, though, the music adds a lot. There's an explanation of the apparent idiocy of our heroine only realising belatedly that she doesn't know where she is. (She doesn't remember her own name either, or what's happened to her. Being sent through time seems to have an amnesiac effect.)

The ending's almost sinister. On rewatching, our heroine shutting out the spirits' voices struck me as sad. I'll watch it, I'll watch it...

Miyako Arata has just been reassigned to a different government office. His new colleagues are a bit odd. They take him out late at night, claiming it's for work.

What happens next is a laugh.

There's amusing kerfuffle. I like the juxtaposition of angels and tengu, since in Japanese their names share a kanji. (Angel is "tenshi", with the "ten" meaning "sky" or "heaven".) I like the fact that our heroes are trying to resolve disputes peacefully, which helps differentiate this episode from, say, Special 7: Special Crime Investigation Unit. I'm happy to keep watching.

I quite enjoyed this episode, which is ep.11. Admittedly last year I hated ep.1, but it looks as if the show would have improved if I'd stuck with it.

Danchou's still a sleazebag, mind you. She dreams of naked girls and appears to be a lesbian molester. She also has big boobs and an inconsistently drawn top. However she's quite likeable as her group's leader, even though they've all abandoned her after the fiasco of Season 1's finale. They even write farewell letters, to rub salt in the wound. "Our fight the other day was atrocious. I've finally had enough of you. I don't want to see your face. You're a failure as leader. By Kakka."

After some comedy shock, she goes off to bring them back. This week's two are a bloke with super-strength who's convinced he's weak and a little girl scholar. (Banchou dozily smacks the strongman off a cliff.) Next week, alas, it looks as if we'll be getting two smug, overweening blokes with a gun.

I still won't be continuing with it, but this episode was fun. It's a shounen adventure, with baddies, fights and colourful characters. Banchou's sleaze is a bit odd, but at least she's less annoying than sex-crazed male protagonists tend to be. That was far better than I'd expected.

The characters seem fine. Three schoolgirls. They seem normal enough. The plot is... well, it's less than you'd expect even from four-minute episodes, but never mind. (Ren was unhappy about getting caught in the rain, but Homi deliberately went out and jumped in every puddle she could see. Homi seems quite fun.)

Unfortunately, the actual episode is about 80% close-up leg shots. The show's title means "look at tights" and boy, they're not joking. I'd have quite liked to watch this show... but actually watching one of these episodes plays out as follows. TIGHTS TIGHTS LEGS LEGS LEGS LEGS TIGHTS TIGHTS she said something LEGS LEGS LEGS LEGS LEGS TIGHTS TIGHTS oh come on. I sort of mildly like the cast, but not enough to make myself sit through all this.

I watched ep.2 too, just in case, but it's even worse. One of the girls takes cosplay photos of herself to upload to the internet. Maid outfit, bunny girl and nurse.

It's a "thirty years later" continuation of Touch, the 1980s mega-hit manga. Touch was huge. The manga sold over 100 million copies, while the anime was one of the highest-rated anime TV shows ever, with parts of its run where it regularly topped a 30% audience share.

So far, this new version is trying hard to remind us of the old days. It's got a 1980s retro art style and a similar core cast: twin brothers (Toma and Soichiro) and a girl (Otomi). What's different, though, is that the twins aren't twins (hopefully to be explained in ep.2) and Otomi's their sister (whereas Touch was also a romance). The boys are a bit silly. They argue about who was born first, even questioning the accuracy of their birth certificates. They argue about summer holidays being too short. They whinge about how long it takes to walk to school, which even annoys the show's narrator. Otomi's sensible, though.

I quite enjoyed the episode, although that's partly because no one plays baseball in it. The cast are fun, once you've stopped wanting to slap Toma and Soichiro. It's the start of a new school year and the baseball club coach is a snake-eyed guy with an inscrutable attitude to choosing pitchers. There's something odd going on there. Well, it's still ep.1. I won't be continuing because it's a sports anime, but this was a strong start.

There's a manga called Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. It got six movie-length OVA episodes in 2015-18 and this sequel OVA series.

I'm not interested in Gundam. It doesn't tend to be very character-driven, instead being more interested in interplanetary politics, war and cool-looking giant robot battles. I like the mildly retro art style of these episodes, but otherwise I wasn't grabbed.

Season 1 had a strong reputation, but I dropped it. I didn't have a strong reason for doing so and the show's not bad, but I had no interest in Reigen Arataka the con man. (No one's a psycho, though. It should be "Mob Psychic".) Anyway, Arataka's still here in Season 2 and still seems unsavoury, but Mob's still impassively obeying his orders. There's a schoolgirl who's deceiving the members of her religious cult and a girl who goes on a date with Mob. (I liked the conversation between them.)

It's by ONE, the creator of One-Punch Man. Both series are superhero comedies with a crude art style (from ONE) that's been given stellar animation from Studio Bones. So far, it looks as if ONE's stuff doesn't particularly chime with me.

It's a spin-off of Kira Kira Happy Hirake! Cocotama, discarding the best thing about that show (Haruka Hoshinogawa) and keeping the worst (all those little Cocotama). That's in my opinion, obviously. I'm so not the target audience.

A Cocotama is a roughly spherical little monster, a lot like a PreCure fairy. The voice acting is Trying Very Hard To Be Cute. In this episode, they befriend the silent camera protagonist. (The camera can blink and nod.) The Cocotama talk some nonsense and tell you to think about your favourite things so that their magic can create them. (I'd have laughed if this had yielded beer, football and pornography, but again that's not the target audience. Mind you, there is a challenge for you to try to guess whose Cocotama pants we're looking at.)

The closing title sequence is live-action dancing, with a girl between two people in head-to-foot Cocotama costumes. I wouldn't want to be wearing those under studio lights.

I liked Season 1, which is warm and nice. However, I was slightly put off by the sour main character (Abeno), who barely pays his assistant (Ashiya). The latter's nice enough, but he keeps lying to friends and family who can't see the cute fuzzy youkai on his shoulder.

This week, our heroes persuade something big and furry to go to the Underworld, then... oh, what the hell. I've seen fourteen episodes of this show. That'll do. I'm sure this season's as enjoyable as the last one, but the world won't end if I drop the show here.

This episode also has almost no female characters.

The title sequence makes this show look cool, but then the art style drops off a cliff for comedy effect. The show's cheap and chibified. Black Clover fans will enjoy this... but I was reminded of how annoying I find Asta. "I'm going to be the Wizard King! I'm going to be the Wizard King!" His stupidity is mocked. A cat is imitated. Someone takes a dump on a goose toilet.

It's random and goofy. If you like the characters, you'll laugh. If you don't follow this series, you'll be asking "is this funny?"

It's hard to find information about this one. I think I watched ep.1 of the 2018 series, which was called Mu Wang Zhi Wang: Qi Lin Jue... no, wait. That aired in 2016. Did I watch the wrong thing? Mu Wang Zhi Wang: Han Tie Dou aired in 2017, followed by Mu Wang Zhi Wang: Xuan Guan Si in 2018 and then I think, probably, this in 2019. But I'm probably wrong.

Anyway, the CGI's still beautiful. Characters sometimes look doll-like, but at least their CGI faces can act. Mind you, the near-realism can make boob-enhancing costumes look more exploitative. We see snake monsters, mystical powers and enough sword fights to suggest that that's the show's point. My copy of the episode only had Chinese subtitles, but I didn't get the impression that I was missing much.

It's fine, if you like historicals and swords.

I've been watching this show since the beginning, so I was almost certain to continue here. The episode's nice. Nothing wrong with it. A new term has started at U.A. High School and a journalist wants to write an article about the students. This lets the episode do a helpful recap of all the characters and their powers. (Even I found this useful, since this show has a big cast and I hadn't remembered everyone.)

As it happens, though, the journalist has a hidden agenda. He's got a sniff of All Might's successor!

The episode has no villains or major story arcs being kicked off. It's a quiet reintroduction to the series, but pleasant.

The episode's first two-thirds are about an anti-social novelist who gets all his ideas from other people's books. That sounds to me like a formula for bad writing, but he's successful. He nearly kills himself by forgetting to eat and sleep while he's writing.

Also, a cat with evil eyes keeps leaving rubbish outside his room.

The last third is a retelling of what we saw from the cat's viewpoint. She understands almost nothing, but she knows that this weird human is even more clueless than she is. She's trying to feed him.

This looks great.