It's based on a mobile phone game that shut down five months after this show ended. In its world, Japan's otaku culture is dying. No one buys that stuff any more. (To avoid ambiguity, this bears at best an incomplete relationship with current reality.) Our heroines are the staff of an anime and manga store that's degenerated into being mostly a coffee shop. Yesterday, it had one customer.

There are 12 of these girls. (9 in the episode and 3 more in the end title sequence.) How does the owner pay them all? They also wear bust-framing uniforms and are capable of boob-bounce even when standing still and replying "yes". Also, if you flip through the later episodes, you'll find that everyone has huge boobs in the swimsuit end title sequences.

Anyway, they spend most of this episode looking for some manga. They don't have much personality. One's a cat girl who says "nyan". Another gets excited on finding a maid uniform, saying "the legend was true!" The only mildly interesting bit was a moment where someone seemed to see a ghost. Also, there's manifesto dialogue at about 18min. "I'm looking for a manga series. It's a great remembrance. We just can't find manga, anime and games like we used to, but I feel like people have changed too, just like this town. I'm afraid that if we don't do anything, everything we loved and the memories we cherished will disappear as well."

The bait-and-switch at the end is huge, mind you, and takes the show into a more entertaining genre... but everything until then is so generic and anonymous that that probably won't save it.

It's the second anime adaptation of Sega's Phantasy Star Online 2 series. (It's also got nothing to do with the first anime series, which was set in the real world and made its heroes players of the game.)

It seems okay, but a bit thin. It continued into 2020, so I'll have another "first episode" (ep.13) to watch tomorrow. Maybe I'll change my mind and decide to do the whole show? (Update: I didn't.) Our heroes are space soldiers. They teleport down to a planet with the mission of exterminating native creatures. Uh, hang on. Is that right? Admittedly those creatures are savage and lethal, but so would I be under those circumstances and I wasn't unhappy when almost everyone in the squadron got killed.

Funimation's subtitles make some odd changes. Darkers are apparently "Falspawn". "Hurry up, it's Code F" is Code D if you listen to the voice actors. That was distracting, but I presume it's the game's pre-existing English-language localisation.

There's not much here, really, except violence. Soldiers and monsters kill each other and we're expected to go "cool". I don't mind the episode, though.

Pingu was a cult thing when I was at university thirty years ago. You know how it is. Students love children's shows and Pingu's adorable, with his quack-quack non-verbal dialogue and charming stories. This is more of the same... but it's not actually my favourite Pingu episode. He's going to perform in a music band with two of his friends, in front of TV talent show judges. Their rehearsal is lame, but during the actual performance they go berserk because of a bee.

...and that's it. There isn't a punchline or an ending. That's all that happens. I was waiting to see what would happen next, but they just roll the credits. Maybe we were supposed to think that Grumpy Judge would disapprove or something?

Its simplified art reminds me slightly of Doraemon. Also, that show has a small boy with a talking robot cat, whereas this has a small boy (Eiji Toomatsu) with two talking robot dogs. (I'm guessing on the "robot" thing, but I haven't seen an explanation for the talking yet.)

Episode's 1st half: a robot cabbage with red eyes arrives from Amazon.

Episode's 2nd half: our hero helps some nesting birds.

The end of the episode has live-action presenters talking to camera. I was slightly annoyed by the young man in glasses and a grey wig that's trying to make him look as if he's in his sixties. I don't mind the wig, but I did mind his acting.

I had a choice of watching in English or Russian. Naturally, I chose the latter. I've forgotten almost all my Russian (although I studied it at school for three years), but at least it doesn't hurt my ears and make me want to destroy mankind. American voice actors in anime, no, no, no. Even listening to them as an experiment is something I can only endure for about ten seconds or so. It's not just the accent. It's the level of Saturday morning cartoon energy that seems to be generally expected, especially when it's highlighting second-rate acting.

Anyway, this episode. Our heroes are having a picnic on the beach in Pokeman-Hawaii, aka. Alola. They fly their Pokemon over the sea. It's a relaxed episode. Team Rocket appear as token baddies, but only for three minutes. It looks fine.

I didn't think much of this. Princess Yuuki Soleil is nice, although hardly heavyweight. She talks to statues of her late parents. The rest of the cast is a bit dull, though, and the episode doesn't really have much direction. There's discussion of whether or not the monarchy is necessary and a non-aggression pact with a neighbouring kingdom.

However, there's some last-minute information that changes things. I'd been going to ditch the show anyway, but on reflection I should probably give ep.2 a chance.

Yeah, okay. I'll continue.

I'll avoid spoilers, but that was a lot more violent. Battlefields. Corpses. An amusingly brutal way of breaking bad news to someone. Gundam fans will probably call it sub-Gundam, but I thought it was okay because the mecha were getting shot down like cannon fodder.

I've heard discouraging things about this show as a whole, but what the hell.

It's a manga adaptation, done as one-minute episodes in a mobile phone screen format. Thus, surprisingly, it has a proper story. It's also, though, unpleasant.

Aito Eyama is getting his bloody head pushed into a toilet, which is normal for him. Then, though, he's offered a chance to play the "Captivity Game", in which he can choose any victim he likes, imprison them for a month and do anything he likes to them except murder. Who will he choose? Vladimir Putin? Kim Jong-un? No, I'm afraid he chooses the girl who'd been the leader of the gang who'd been bullying him.

It looks quite good, but ewwww.

Its reputation is sky-high. It's based on a best-selling manga that got a live-action movie in 2020 and has an American live-action series in development with Amazon.

It's about children in an orphanage. They're energetic and well portrayed. We get to know them, especially the three oldest: Emma, Ray and Norman. I liked their scenes of enthusiastic fun. The audience, though, are thinking about the sinister numbers tattooed on their necks and that weird screens-and-headphones test. Eventually, we glimpse the truth and HOLY SHIT.

Yeah, this is strong.

I've watched all of Psycho-Pass so far, starting in 2012, but I never liked it much. The premise was intriguing on first viewing. Second time, less so. Third time... yeah, we've seen that. It's set in the year 2120 and Japan is governed by the Sybil System, under which you'll be arrested and sentenced if it thinks you'll commit a crime in the future.

This appalling system works. Japan is the only peaceful country in the world... but it's also totalitarian and depressing. Lots of urban noir. It's always dark and raining. There's injustice, bigotry and no sense of humour. (Gen Urobuchi helped write the first series.) The sea's so contaminated that falling in would kill you. Surprisingly, this episode includes a happy, easy-going character (Arata), but even so I don't care about these people.

Two girls visit a shrine and make their New Year's wishes... then start discussing whether or not they'll visit a shrine in real life. They're in a game right now, so we're looking at their computer avatars. They love Phantasy Star Online 2 and can't play enough of it! They wish they could have game items in real life. You can change your game character's appearance, so the girls experiment with their boobs and waists.

GIRL #1: "I want to be like this too in real life!"

GIRL #2: "Totally agreed! I, like, totally want to be this busty!"

BOTH GIRLS (THINKING): "She said that, but she's totally an old dude in real life!"

Watch this anime if and only if you play Phantasy Star Online 2. Even the visuals are bad, being super-cheap Flash animation.