Short comments on episodes of spring 2017 anime

>Action Heroine Cheer Fruits 12

My anime of the season. Let's start with the negatives, the little things that stop it from being a masterpiece. First of all, some characters are too rough. Green is just greedy, Pink is muh gozen-sama and explosions. Pink was needed to explain the special effects, but she could have been used better. Green was pointless.
Another issue is that they never explored Roko being crazy, and she was genuinely crazy with hallucinations.

The first big positive is Muramura. I've already wrote about her being a oujo-sama but going behind it, and it was great. She was perfect for comedy relief, she was perfect when competitive spirit was needed, and her being a constant loser (who, once, managed to win) was plot relevant.
I liked hot they were second, they didn't manage to win everything. It was a good way to avoid an ending that could have been too nice and perfect.
The biggest reason why I like this though is another. It's all in the last episode, when the Captain is away and they change their show to tell a story about themselves and her. It's a perfect way to end the anime (despite the hook here, on the left, and how much I liked this anime, I hope we don't get another season) and to end the evolution of the show.

They started doing this for fun or because they had to, and they ended up doing a show to tell another story. It captured the essence of why you should be writing something, or be an artist in general.
It was amazing how I was cheering for the girls despite knowing it was just a show inside the show, and despite the anime showing you elements to remind you that nothing was "real", like in pic on the right above.

>Princess Principal 12

A fun anime, but nothing more. I feel that the stakes were way too big for what we saw in the first episodes. It should have been 12 episodes of episodic spy SoL with the revolution being its own movie, in this way the status quo would have had a much different impact and value.

If we do get a S2, it's clear that Princess will not be part of the team.

>Precure Kirakira 33

This episode made me like the sweets theme. It was perfect to explain to little girls the weight behind humanity and humans creating something.

>Msonic

A good way to statpad your MAL. It wasn't that bad, it did what it was supposed to do. The only awful thing was the dance at the end. I liked Lucy being part of the "hell" band after leaving the "heaven" band, it was funny.

>Konbini Kareshi

I don't think the ending was bad, but it was not satisfying. Ok, he confessed, but it was interruped by the camion so we couldn't hear it because... and we should have seen her being better and healthy. The biggest issue with Kareshi is that, fundamentally, it had no reason to be an anime, it could have been a live action and it might have been better looking.
This episode had some nice touches though (and some bad ones).

The dream scene was good in theory, but bad timed. I would have removed the black screen and go straight from door closing to her waking up. The book part was ok, but it was inevitable for me to compare it with the page flipping in Natsuyuki rendez vou where it was much much better.

Here I liked the use of the wall to separate the two characters, almost as if she was falling inside the hospital. The use of the feet/shadows to show us that Mishima was not there was nice. I don't think it served any purpose but I did like it. Lastly, the movement to follow Mishima continuing in a fluid panning of Mashiki was a nice touch but it could have been more fluid.

>Made in Abyss

Heavy and powerful episode, but I would have avoided the whole air baloon reaching the surface like that. It felt too positive and happy compared to what had happened. I liked how Nanachi's house looks like Mitty, I didn't notice it before.

The dream scene, with its reference to Bonedrew, was nice but a bit too in your face. I don't think we needed to be told that Mitty was trapped in her body.

Overall I liked the the head and the tail of the anime, while the parts with Ozen were a bit boring. It did a good job to make me care to find out more about the abyss, but that S2/please read our manga bait with Bonedrew in the last minute ruined a decent ending imho. I am not exactly sure why but the abyss creatures felt a bit meh.

>Centaur Worries and New Game

I am writing just a couple of quick thoughts on these.
Centaur Worries had an awful ending. It didn't feel like an ending at all, the rpg parody was boring and lazy, the fanservice was presented like they had to. The arm wrestle tournament was pointless. I couldn't expect Over the Top with centaurs but damn they could have tried.
New Game ending was better. It had a conclusion, it told us the story isn't over, and all around did what it had to do. The part were Aoba thought Kou was still there was well done imho, I almost expected this to end with a mad Aoba.

>Kakegurui

She got goat eyes, Yumeko won and corrupted her. Momobami had similar eyes later on.
I think that Kakegurui was mostly about women being able to decide how to live their lives. This make the use of the gambling elements almost ironic. The scene that perfectly capture this is when Meari rejects the life plan. She describes a happy life, but throws it away because that's society's definition of happiness for a woman, not what she wants. Other elements are the males: out of 3 relevant males, one is the mc, who is the positive figure and accept Yumeko's crazy gambling way. He's also the one that makes Yumeko very happy when he tells them he will be the one that decides the risk he's going to take.

The other two are a money obsessed guy who, to me, represent the workaholic husband with all the negative sides, and a gorilla who looks like the husband in an abusive relationship with a weak willed girl. It should be noted that a male is in the wrong when he accepts everything the girl does, the fans were portrayed as fundamentally good people but not as someone you should like.
In this contex we see the three girls: Meari is a feminist who wans freedom, to be able to decide her path, Momobami is the post feminist, a classic japanese strong woman who uses the "being" of a woman for her own power/success, and Yumeko. Yumeko is the goddess, as in the superior being mortals can't understand, with her own moral compass. She can give you the power to be free, but it comes with a price. Meari and Momobami are opposite because one wants to change things and the other uses male belief to be the one in control, but both are opposite to Yumeko, because they play by the rules of society, Yumeko doesn't. Then, Yumeko and Momobami are opposed to Meari because they enjoy what they are doing, while Meari is doing what she has to.
I think it's important to note that this is not a feminist anime in the sense of telling you that men are mongs that shouldn't have the right to vote like Idol Jihen did, but it does tell you that Meari is right and the most normal one.

I liked Kakegurui. The characters were fun, the gambles werea bit dumb but watching them fall against Yumeko was amazing, and it did say something. The ending was castrated by it being an adaption, that's the only problem for me.

>Action heroine cheer fruits 11

So many nice things in this episode. God I love episodes where the forces of evil join the good guys against the bigger evil.

Here we see how, despite the special effects, this is still theatre. It wouldn't have been hard to forget this.

Simple but nice. Not only we immediately notice Cap missing, the composition is off balance and wrong.

Neat transition thanks to the shape and colours.

Captain trapped inside the lines walking to her fate. Then, a nice frame inside a frame. Before this, there were a couple of other scenes with unbalanced composition, showing us something was missing.

>Fate Apocrypha 12

A ruined cross, like Shirou's faith and ideals.

>Hina Logi 12

There were some neat visuals here. I liked the use of the star globe to let us know when the scene was happening (at night), instead of directly showing the starry sky. I also liked the use of the photos, it had both a meta value (at least for me, they looked a lot like screenshot I would have taken), and a crystallization of the fleeting moment.

This, if this was a live actiong with a decent budget, would have been simply stunning.

All things considered, I'd say that Hina Logi used well the fact that it was an ad for something and not an adaption or an original. It had some issues that stopped it from being my AotS, namely episode 7 (I didn't like how it introduced some plot points about Mizuki that were never recalled), and episode 10 (dumb drama imho). There were some good ideas, and whoever worked on this was thinking well about what they were doing, but the budget was not enough. Another issue was that, after episode 25 of precure, Mizuki x Yuko left a bad taste in my mouth.

>Isekai Shokudou END

There are more things I disliked than I liked here. The positives were some characters, like the half elf cake, and that's it.

The biggest problem is that the whole anime felt like a masturbation for wannabe amateur cooks, not even amateur cooks. It was all about how our mundane food is amazing for medieval people, which is ok, it's not a bad idea in itself, but it was so shallow in its presentation. This connects with another issue, or the fact that the recipes are boring. I admit this is my problem, because I expected adventurers cooking with recipes like in Dragon Crown or even WoW. But then, things like Wakakozake or Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san managed to make mundane recipes a lot more interesting than Isekai managed to. Just the skin peeling of the salmon in the first episode of Wakako blows Isekai out of the water.
Another issue is the cast. Too many characters, which made it hard for me to care about them with the few minutes they had, and they never interacted with each other. The narration was quite boring as well. I liked only the lizard man episode, it sounded like a documentary.
I also found the world hard to believe. Elves that don't know about dried mushrooms? they should know everything about forest products and how to process them. The dwarves knew about "whiskey" (or whatever their version of whiskey was), which is distilled "beer", but they were so surprised by beer? I assume a lot of things were cut from the books to be made in the anime, but still.

>Action heroine cheer fruits 10

Nothing much to say here. I wanted the drama to be about Green trying to monetize the group and the girls not liking it, but what we got was good enough. Most importantly, it was believable, and it made sense with all the doubts among the girls we saw so far.

The only girl who doesn't give a shit is Shimamura. If she did, she wouldn't have been able to handle all the defeats at the hands of Akagi Ann. She truly is a master at not being the best but not giving up. She is the only one who is genuinely competitive among the group, while the others simply want to have fun or make money. Update - Talking about this on 4chan, I realized that Kamidaio felt old, like old as old stones are old.

>Kakegurui 11

Nice episode. I've wrote about the transition with the eye and moon. Here there is Yumeko, with hair that look tentacles, dragging the girl to the depths of the abyss.

This phrase reinforce my idea that at its core Kakeguri is about women. Here, it's like the "abusive relationship" in the 310 milion debt game, in my opinion. And, in good Japanese tradition, the man is fucked because he gets played by the woman who is aware of her own charms, and knows how to push the male. His world is shattered, he feels fucked over by the council president.

It's worth noting how the three male men so far are the mc, and how weak he is, an asshole that bullies the pets, and someone who only cares about money. When Sumeragi bites off her fingers to remove the pretty, the fashion, that men created to chain the female, she wants to reaffirm her freedom. The colour of the bandages recall the fingernails she used to have. This is important because Sumeragi doesn't completely reject what he said, only the fact that he didn't look at her like an equal.

Meanwhile, Yumeko doesn't care. She's like Benten, the goddess that we can't understand. She's a force of nature, with the moral compass of a snowslide.

>Shoukoku no Altair 10

I liked the transitions here

here

and here

Another good one was in Kakegurui.

>Action heroine cheer fruits 09

Hype episode, I found myself cheering for the fictional characters inside a show. Also, the use of the fireworks was a nice understanding of the magic of theatre, whatever that is. There were also some nice images, like this one for Roko.

And, of course, my girl Kanon "Muramura" Shimamura.

>Princess Principal 09

Fuck me what an episode.

It started all fun and happy go lucky, then it slowly walked up to a serious episode. Every thing presented was compared between the two countries, like the disgusting food, the swords.
Kicking the butterfly was a cheap way to introduce the lad as a villain, but this is what you can do with the time you have. Butterflies are not only pretty, they have a meaning. According to wikipedia, in Japan they are a personification of the soul. I am more interested in the western concept, where the metamorphosis is related to the "renata" of the mysteries. In the end, Chise couldn't become a butterfly, she couldn't change. She remained the eastern girl who doesn't understand duels and is not part of the team.

I think this is the point of the episode.
It was done out of fun and Chise wasn't offended, but ALL the Albionese are racist fucks, it wasn't only the bad guys. They are grey, there is no white.
Princess used Chise for the duel so the rest of the team could do their job. Chise is useful only when she isn't aware that she's being used, this is lower than Beato tier.

Chise is fundamentally alone, and she will always be only a Japanese in Lizardshire.

>Centaur no nayami 09

I liked how we were show the handshake on two different sides depending on who was "telling" the story.

>Acion Cheer Fruits episode 8

Probably my favourite episode, but I'd have to rewatch them to be sure.

Nice mindfuckery.
I like what the translator is doing, but here he missed an easy reference to Gozilla and the oxygen destroyer. Maybe he thought it was too obvious.

How the captain fall was beautiful. I am not into animation in itself/sakuga, but I liked it.
Calling the hip attack, and then showing a frame within a fram with the butts was nice. I think this is how you should fanservice. In general, I like the fanservice in this show, It gives me what I want in a natural way without silly exaggerations, and it doesn't treat me like a pig with no self respect. There was a similar scene when Ann said something about being fired up (moe, burning in japanese) and the frame was burned by a flame.
Cheeky cunts making fun of the watchers, they also made a similar point when the presence of the idol increased the amount of big friends among the watchers.

An anon pointed this out, I had missed it: This is a cloud associated with storms.

>Hina Logi episode 10

Why oh why did this have to be the cheap outsourced episode, they were amazing ideas for the visuals.

>Vatican kiseki chousakam episode 9

Beautiful images, but the main point is that they resemble glass mosaics. A bit liek the sky and paint brushes in the earlier episode.

>Isekai Shokudou 9

How to not do world building: if you tell me that whiskey is similar to what the brewer does, you can't expect me to believe they have no idea what beer is.

>Princess Principal 8

Here we saw Chise and Princess talking. Chise was established on the left and below (showing us she's inferior to Princess), and she kept on the left for the whole time. This is the opposite of what they did before with Ange and Princess, when they suddenly crossed the line to confuse us. I wish they did that more often, to make us confused and to remind us the girls were switching places.

Frame within a frame with Dorothy's ass and wine bottles. I found it somewhat cruel how Ange immediately told as story about a princess when the little girl said that there was no royalty in the blacxk lizard planet.

>Kirakira precure 29

I love Akira and Yukari episodes. It wasn't as amazing as episode 25, but there was this airship traveling while the girls were stuck talking, not even the mouths moving, and it made the whole thing more dynamic. It was kinda in your face, when they were reading the book, all the talking about macarons (touch of bitter plus sweetness etc.) but I liked it.

>Action heroine cheer fruits episode 7

To quote, "using vertical lines of any kind can be read as an imprisonment for your character" and "If the frame within a frame is tight and restrictive, this may indicate claustrophobia". Here they took almost every possible way to avoid this, especially noticeable in the free space right above the door.

Also, Muramura is one of my favourite oujo-sama. Of all the stock characters, the oujo-sama is usually the least thought about, and fundamentally she does two things: say desu wa and be rich. The money is used to solve problems and the comedy comes from WHAT they are instead of developing from WHO they are. This is not so bad for the other stock characters, because they are still someone and not a fat wallet.

>Sakura quest 21

In the car scene at the start there was a "crossing of the line", where the camera abruptly went from being on the left (Maki on the left) to the right (Maki to the right), with the line being Maki to Shiori. I think it was on purpose to highlight how Ririko was in her own world, and to make us confused. I had a discussion about this, the other guy didn't agree, but I still think I am right.

>Vatican kiseki chousakan 8

The case was solved and now the sky is normal again, and it doesn't look like brushes anymore.

>Hina Logi 9

I love this show. It's not the best anime of all times, but it tries.
For example, the use of shadows, or taking full advantage of the characters being drawings. I mean, compare Lion being straight lines to how Hinako Note turned Hinako into a scarecrow. Hinako being a scarecrow was much more important for her character and it was real, in the sense that the other characters actually noticed it and even used her as scarecrow. Lion instead was done to show us the emotional state of the girl. The two are then not exactly comparable, I just want to say that Hinako being a scarecrow could have worked in a live action while Lion couldn't, and I think this difference makes Hinako's less interesting to watch.

>New Game 7

Oh man. This scene with Kou was so weird. It was like something from a live action or a simpson episode with a celebrity guest where they go "hey everyone look, it's Yagami Kou" and then there is a laugh track.

>Guru guru 7

Guru guru has a serious issue with pacing in my opinion. Now, I know that some times it is used for comedic purposes, like the fairies that appears out of nowhere soon after the scene on the left. The problem is, it's used so often (always) that I feel like I am watching Teekyu, just not on purpose.

This comes in three shapes. The first is how fast they talk, which I can not translate into images. It's so bad that I feel like I should slow down the audio.
The second is how each scene is compressed. They use very few frames, basically the minimum they need, to convey the message, like how the fairy turns around in the image on the left. There a lot of characters popping up in a scene, lot of things that happen. It makes the anime feel almost like an america tv ad, where you are bombarded with informations and exciting things to keep you paying attention.
The third is how the anime leaps from a scene to another. I saw it's adapting how things went in the manga, but I think it's a good example of a bad adaption, because it doesn't realize the differences between a video and a sequence of still images. You can see this on the image on the left, where the anime goes from A to B with only some frames of the sky to tell us it's night to separate the two events. Something we actually didn't need. In the manga, you flipped the page so it felt different. You can (kinda) see it in the last two images, in a real book it would feel even more separated because of you physically turned a new page.

>Hina Logi 8

I noticed a couple of interesting shots. On the left, we see how they built depth in this shot. There is no sense of scale/size, all the girls are the same height. There is almost no overlapping objects (Karen, and a girl's ankle). All the depth is built using the position on the y axis, ie the higher the object, the more far in the back. In this case, to avoid the sense of "abstract" this system brings, they used an elevated platform. This way, we don't register that there is something not realistic about the drawing.

The image on the right is simple, but smart. Not only we see all the three girls talking, we also see a piace of the floor. This suggest we are sneaking around, and we are listening on something we should not be listening to.

>Made in abyss 7

Shapes have a meaning. This is especially true for animation, where you can draw objects and people like you want them. Ozen is too spheric, too round, to be a serious threat. She isn't, she helped Riko and Reg, and she helped the protagonist, so it made sense. But it also made all her actions (like the meat "resurrection") not scary or creepy at all. Same thing with her eyes. She reminds me of a bat, or a vampire, so it's not completely horrible, but she could have been done betteri imho.

>Sakura Quest 20

There were some good things in this episode, finally we had a tight story with no wasted scenes and time.

We also had some negatives. For example here (right) we don't actually feel how alone the girls are. It's not bad, but boring. It also wastes a chance when, later, they are in the restaurant with Angelica and her family. Show some empty chairs, make me feel no one else is there, those things.
Instead here (middle) we see Sanae being upset and not feeling confortable for some reason. Was she traumatized by tke kids slapping her ass?
Lastly, there were some rought cuts not because of what happens but because of the music. It's really noticeable how the bgm seems to be growing growing and then it drops suddenly.

>Princess Principal 6

What a coincidence, I watched a video about Kurosawa's use of elements moving in the background to make a scene interesting even when your characters are still (Akira Kurosawa - Composing Movement), and I see the same thing in Princess Principal.

>Vatican Kiseki Chousakan episode 6

This episode used a lot of painting visuals, it was very nice too look at.

We also saw Josef lose his hand, melting like wax. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out Josef was the one that will die or be in serious danger.

>Sakura Quest 19

Let's continue to shit on Sakura Quest.

There are scenes that (I think) are supposed to be fun but instead should be deadly serious, like when they talk about Maki quitting college. It's basically a broken family with a daughter that doesn't want to see her father and we get this weird comedy song? Maki leaves her house and close the gate. This is supposed to be serious, but it looks like a parody because there is a huge side with no wall, it's stupid.
There are scenes that seem to be there for no real reason. What was with Ririko's song? Did they have no better way to let Ririko do something? was it about the words of the song? The gaijin's puppet show, her meeting her father, it feels so empty. Things have to happen for a reason, either to let us know something or to let the characters know something, or to play with what we know/don't know. So why was Maki there?
There seems to be a huge "be happy when you are young by doing what you like" theme in this episode. The problem is, it doesn't work. I wish they were amateurish mistakes, at least they would be made out of love and not "we don't know what we are doing and we don't really care".

>Hina Logi episode 7

There are some things I didn't like and understand about this episode.
I didn't like how the president didn't get her date. I know what I wanted (the 25th episode of kira kira again) wouldn't have fit the anime, but still, something less joke-y was deserved. I didn't like the crow/medal plot at all, was a bit dumb and pointless. I mean, I know it served to introduce some elements (the foreigner signal) but come on.
I am confused by the foreigner signal and by what the president was doing, who the "ninja" running was, and why everything happened, basically. I pray it won't be another joke character turned evil plot.

The good things now. I did like this, we get to hear Yuko's problems and then we enter the tunnel. Nothing fancy, but it wasn't the first time this anime used lightining for narrative purposes.

Here there is a simple sequence with hands, nothing special but I liked it.

(left) Nina timidly holds Lion's finger with an excuse.

(center)Few seconds later, Lion grabs Nina's hand.

(right)One minute later (in our time), Nina now has the courage to go for it, even if she didn't fundamentally change.

>Centaur worries episode 5

I think people are misunderstading this anime. It's not exactly a parody, it's closer to pushing it to its logical limits but in a serious way. I never get the impression that the author is criticizing the situation, he's merely narrating it objectively. The only time the author made a joke about this sort of forced multi-culti was when Nozomi slapped Quetzalcoatl, but that was more a parody of foreign important person being protected than of the forced multiculturalism.

This anime/manga is about race and not culture is crucial, because it completely remove any sort of parallel with the real world.
There is no immigration issue here. The races have always lived together. The removal of racism is completely based on the asian idea of the individual being less important than society. This is completely different from the western* situation where it's mostly about individual's feelings. Also, here the government is damn clear to the people. There is no secret police, no internet activism, no anti-fa thugs. The whole population knows and understand that removing racism is not easy, but they took that road.
Again, this manga is not a parody of western sjw (oh, what kind of arrogance do people have to believe this), the author is describing the limits of what a government for the sake of harmony can do. In fact, this is probably more about how Japanese people eliminate themselves for their society than immigration in europe.

>Sakura quest episode 18

(left) Here we see him perfectly fine. The bottle in the frame tells the bottle is important. The music seems out of place. A small problem is that he seems to be looking at the left side, but then he moves to the right. This is not a huge mistake, but I would have avoided it.

(center) We see the source of the music. He falls like a sack of potatoes.

(right) The first thing you'll see here again is the bottle, even before his feet. Then we leave the house and things go on.

The intent was evidently to leave you wondering "what the fuck", while at the same time justifying his death. The characters themselves say it was sudden and doesn't feel real.

So, why did it not work (in my opinion)?

First of all, I do not care about him. I didn't have time to, and frankly he never was likeable. Second, the death didn't feel pointless, nature is cruel and all. It felt like a reason to let the girls find the mcguffin. The girls hearing the name sugita also felt a bit too much of a coincidence for me. What was going to happen if he didn't die? Third, the death itself was, well, bland. Not realistic, bland. He simply drops down. Maybe it would have been better to have him get up to get ice, cut to pink Aoi answering the phone, I don't know desu. The cut to his feet though is utterly pointless, that's for sure. It doesn't add much to what we saw right before, and the new information (the other room's floor appears to be lower) is meaningless. In fact, it would have made more sense to see him trip coming back from that room.

On a more positive note, I did like how this reminded me of very old (pre-war) anime about tanuki, see the pics of the dance here. An anon talked about Pon Poko, but I never saw it.

>Precure kirakira episode 25

Oh man. I admit that I forgot about 99% of the precure episode I've watched, but I don't remember another episode this well done. Same goes for anime in general. I am not a expert on anime directors, and I don't claim to have watched or remember every episode, but something this well done, I haven't ever seen ever except in Dezaki's anime. This is going to be very long and maybe deserved his own page. Anyway, let's start.

(left) You can tell this episode is going to be something special just from how it starts. Here we are immediately shown the two characters, a rich lady who is lonely and with no friends, and a young boy with plenty of female friends. The shopping bag tells immediately he's a nice and mature guy, even if he might look a bit rough.

(center) At 03.47, roughly, the depth is given how it happens in the traditional japanese art, ie bottom to top, top is further back. This is used also in some Kurosawa movies, according to a book I read. Here instead we see a simple but effective reaction that starts the plot. Interestingly, the prince is from Confetto, the italian word for drageé, a sweet deeply associated with marriage. Chocolate covered almonds, and macarons use almond meal.

(right)This was a deliberate use of a sudden, surprising, cut to make use feel what Akira is feeling. I thought it was a mistake at first, it took me a bit to understand why it was done like this.

(left) The dance is what Ballroom e... wants to be. The petals scene was a bit in your face, the rest was brilliant. We simply have the characters be off-balance to the center of the screen until Akira gets more confident, learns how to dance, and bam, the characters are now in the centre of the frame.

(centre) If you don't include three angles in your frame in a cartoon, it will look very flat and, well, 2d. Almost like a theatre background. This is reinforced by how, again, the boat on the right looks like a prop. At 08.39 you can see a similar style. You could probably use this frame as an example on the use of lighting Notice how oh so coincidentally the part of the episode ends with the lights going down. Ichika and the other girls almost take the roles of spectators more than characters here.

(right) Akira looks at Yukari, she looks at the bowl, and only after the camera, or Akira's eyes, are focused on the bowl, she react. This took me by surprised, had to rewatch a couple of times to understand it. I don't know enough about animation to comment on this, but I am pretty sure Akira has been animated to look like a boy more than usual.

(left) You can compare this scene to the "theatre" one. The difference is, now there is a huge light coming in, showing us the difference. It should be noted how the window looked a lot like a church.

(right) I don't know. I assume it's a combination of a flower, recalled by the fact they were fighting a lily (ah ah, so subtle) monster, and to recall the words of Gao about how you need to be a real couple to do a lift, or something like that. Then it ends with a joke about Akira's gender, to give some relief to an emotionally heavy episode.

>Ballroom ep 4

Dropped, the mc dodging the ban made me too angry to continue.

>Kakegurui ep 5

Nothing will convince me this game was not about an abusive relationship. The anime is shaping up to be about feminism (Mary) and post-feminism (the council).

>Action Heroine Cheer Fruit ep 4

I want to believe it will talk about what theatre IS sooner or late. There seem to be something bigger than each episode but I don't see what it is.

>Hina Logi ep 6

I was really confused by why -ssu was in the shadow and Lion and Belle were in the light. I still am not sure if I get it right, I assume it was meant to show me that Belle knew if/how humans can go to another world.

>Sakura Quest 17

I am getting tired of criticizing this anime, so I'll keep it short. This scene showed another problem with this anime, and this is the amount of scenes that are meaningless. For example here we saw the old man say he likes big butts, which is a nice thing because it calls back to the kids slapping Sanae's ass. The problem is what she says after. She knows he did it and we know he did it, so it adds nothing. It's visually boring. All it does is pad the anime, and makes it boring for the viewers.

>Konbini Kareshi ep 4

This scene was a lot funnier than I expected, I don't know why. It could how the characters are good at "acting", because I could hear iinchou's "oh fuck", her realizing what was going to happen, and the inevitability of what was going to happen. A couple of scenes with Mashiki being alone together surrounded by people did their job but were, maybe, too in your face.

>Kakegurui ep 3

I think it's very interesting how Mary does not focus on the loss of dignity as human as a whole, but on a very specific part. When she sarcastically describes her future life, what she's describing is the traditional idea of happiness as a woman: kids and a important husband.

I think this is an mportant and conscious decision by the author, it's the feminist idea of the woman deciding what makes her happy more than a general man must be free to decide his future position. It serves as opposite to the council, a matriarchy, but one that follows the rules of the society of men (for their own good) and doesn't fight them. It's feminist vs post-feminist comparison.

>Ballroom e youkoso ep 3

It's not bad, but it's every shounen spokon cliché with one of the most plastic and fake "sport" ever. Like, the bathroom room scene was almost surprising. It's also too scared of sex. The bodies are good looking but they are never hot, the scene here with coach undressing the girl is (supposed to be) funny but it shouldn't, it should be hot, it should make me feel bad because I am falling for what the coach is saying. The mc feeling bad because the girl is dancing with another boy was not sexualized enough.

And the gorilla throwing Red down the stairs? he doesn't care, not because he is like that, but because the author simply wanted a reason for the mc to dance and this was the best he could think of.

>Konibini kareshi ep 3

Very subtle.

>Sakura quest ep 16

Lucia and her "Liliko" are some of the cutest 2d things ever. >band made of students >in the 60s And yet it was a completely neutered flashback, it could have been the 50s like the 90s. All we got was the struggle of a local band with no sense of when we were. I mean shit, look at what happened in 1964

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_in_Japan
>April 1: Japanese citizens are permitted to freely travel overseas.

This in particular should be crucial with the talk of the 3 wanting to leave the town. It doesn't have to be political, but it needs to show that there is something in this anime, some meat. Instead the flashback was exactly like the whole anime, a complete flat experience. Whenever they tried to be more "deep", like the image of the tourist stomping on the town's flyer, it was almost offensively simple. And fuck, do we want to talk about the three kids laughing at the fish out of water dying horribly The director asked for it, and/or who drew that scene drew the fish. Why? was it supposed to be fun?

>Touken ranbu ep 2

This was a very romantic presentation of both what being a "sword" is, and it shed some good light on people who are against open borders. I don't believe in those conservative positions, but still, it was nice to finally see them not being full blown villains.

>Konibini kareshi ep 2

The timed this perfectly with me laughing. I appreciate how they are showing the fact that the iinchou doesn't like having her personal space invaded and how this is a completely foreign idea for the lad, he's like a huge pup who doesn't know that what he's doing is wrong. I mean, it sounds cute but it's only thanks to the 2d magic.

>Senki Zesshou Symphogear AXZ

It was a smart move to show the lad saving the girl thanks to a football, it made the impact of him losing the leg even worse.