It's been over three years since I last got to go to one of these! But, since Laila is out in the suburbs on a grandparents' weekend and sashagee was using the whole day to just relax and chill out, I spent a bunch of time on Discord watching the first episode of ten shows and, honestly, mostly snarking on them. There were more duds than hits this time.

1. 戦国妖狐 (Sengoku Yōko, "Fox Spirit in the Warring States"): I missed the first five minutes, but when I showed up, some bandits were attacking a foxgirl, her brother, and a kid. The leader revealed himself as a "katawara" (), a kind of spirit, and the foxgirl revealed that her brother was also a foxboy and they beat the bandits. Then they arrived at an inn, where they heard a story about another katawara attacking nearby travelers and a group of spirit-killing warrior monks vowed to kill it. The kid has a flashback about how everyone thought he was weak and he wants to become much stronger. It's all very tell, not show, without much reason to care about the actual characters. I wasn't even interested in the single episode I watched, much less watching any more. The visuals are very good, though, so I'll give it that.


2. ループ7回目の悪役令嬢は、元敵国で自由気ままな花嫁生活を満喫する (Loop 7-kaime no Akuyaku Reijō wa, Moto Tekikoku de Jiyū Kimamana Hanayome Seikatsu o Mankitsu Suru, "7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!"): Despite the title, it begins with a battle scene in a shadowed manor. A swordsman in black easily defeats entire groups of warriors in white. As Lady Rishe, the woman they're defending, dies, she thinks 今度こそ...今度こそ... (kondo koso...kondo koso..., "Next time...next time...") and with the sound of rewinding clocks she's back five years in the past! She's stuck in a time loop that begins with her engagement to the crown prince annulled, exiled from her family, free to choose her life. The first time, she tried being a merchant, but died on the road. The second time, she prepares and brings more money with her and tries to find the merchants, but her preparations meant she missed them and never got the chance to become a merchant. Instead, she sold everything and decided to become a doctor. But again, she died in a war. And so on through her lives, always dying at 20. The anime starts with her 7th life, where she decides to leave through a different exit and bumps directly into the man who killed her in the previous loop, Emperor Arnold Hein! Or, crown prince, as he explains, since his father is still alive. When Arnold Hein hears that the engagement was broken and the MC jumps over a balcony, he leaves with a smile. What is he planning? Well, they kind of gave it away in the title, since the next time they meet about an hour later, he proposes to her. I might watch this, because these kind of "villainess needs to figure out how to avoid their lives being screwed up" is 100% sashagee's thing. I do hope we get more info about the other lives, though.


3. メタリックルージュ (Metarikku Rūju, "Metallic Rouge"): In future bar with a lounge singer, then we cut to some kind of drug deal where the person picks up some cards. It's called "Nectar." They directly reference the Asimov Code, aka the Three Laws of Robotics, and it turns out the main character, who's an assistant to the lounge singer, is actualyl some kind of interplanetary agent. Her partnery is a robot bird, which is killed by the drug dealer. A strange red robot murders someone and tries to kill the lounge singer. Then the actual person who used the bird as a communication device shows up, "Naomi Orthmann," Rouge's partner. The drug dealer shows up to a church and meets a contact. And in the end, it turns out that the lounge singer is actual an anti-human robot. But Rouge is the robot in the red suit, because they all have power armor combat forms? And then it turns into a fightning anime as the choir sings in the background. It's okay, I guess. I think they tried to pack way too much into the first episode, and I was looking for more human vs robot tension and investigative drama, not a mecha fighting show. Especially when the lounge singer's robot battlesuit form started shooting out flames that took up the entire screen I was like, "Meh, I'm out." Soundtrack was very good though.


4. ダンジョン飯 (Danjon Meshi, "Dungeon Food", Eng: "Delicious in Dungeon"): We open with an adventuring party totally wiped out by a dragon except for one man, who is teleported away by the party's priest. It turned out everyone survived except the priest...but two party members quit, the remaining elf, halfling, and human in the party have basically no equipment. But they have a plan--they have no money, and don't want to see their equipment to survive, so the human decides that rather than buying rations they'll eat what they kill in the dungeon--after all, all those monsters have to have some kind of ecology in there, right? Soon after they kill a mushroom monster and decide to ook it and see how it tastes! And then a dwarf shows up like, "Oh, you're cooking monster food! I'm a monster food connoisseur!" It's cute and fun and I've heard a lot of praise for this show. I especially loved the discourse about different kinds of carnivorous plants and how to fight them and prepare the products. I'm definitely watching this one.


5. 望まぬ不死の冒険者 (Nozomanu Fushi no Bōkensha, "The Unwanted Undead Adventurer"): We open on an adventurer being eaten by a monster and then, moments later (from his perspective) he comes back as a skeleton. Flashback to his adventuring days as he enters the 水月の迷宮 (Suigetsu no Meikyū, "Labyrinth of the Moon's Reflection") near the starter town, finds a secret entrance to an unexplored area of the dungeon, and died to a dragon. As a skeleton, he doesn't have the abilities he had in life, but he learns that by killing monsters he can absorb part of their energy, because monsters who absorb enough power can become different and more powerful types of monsters. All of this accompanied by paragraphs and paragraphs of exposition about what a dungeon is, and what an adventurer's guild is, and blah blah blah. So, it's going to be about power scaling. On the one hand, this is just D&D--kill monsters, level up, gain powers. On the other hand, it's another one of those "the protagonist just gets more and more powerful" classic animes, and coming straight after Dungeon Meshi, which did a much better job of worldbuilding, really heightens the contrast. Maybe it works in a book, but there's a reason that internal monologues are rarely if ever translated one-to-one to the screen from a book. Pass.


6. ゆびさきと恋々 (yubisaki to renren, Maybe like "Hearts Joined At the Fingertips", Eng: "A Sign of Affection"): There's a great opening in a train where we hear the sounds of the world and then everything goes totally silent, because Yuki is deaf. A foreigner asks her for directions but she obviously doesn't understand what he's asking, until someone else helps him. She briefly talks to that someone else, since he goes to her same university and knows one of her friends, by typing out her responses on her phone and showing him, until he gets off at the stop before her. Trying to see him again, she asks her friend Rin about him, and they formulate a plan together to both go and see their crushes (since they work at the same place). She learns that her crush speaks three languages and knows a bit of a few more, so maybe he can pick up sign language too? But some other people come in, and Yuki loses her confidence, and doesn't end up getting her crush's details...until Rin arranges for him to walk her home! And everyone has extreme shōjo lips. This was extremely cute and they did a very good job with how quiet most of the scenes are. Worth watching.


7. 魔女と野獣 (majo to yajū, "The Witch and the Beast"): After a brief exposition about witches' curses, a man and a woman get off a train. There's a zeppelin, so we know it's an alternate history. The main characters ask about a witch...and then a four-story-tall shark monster shows up? And a witch arrives to turn the monster back into a human? The two people from the train attack the witch who defeated the monster. They later show up at the witch's house and her apprentice argues with them--there's a party for an anniversary, but no one knows what the anniversary is for. After a bit of research, the two people discover something--but when they try to leave their hotel room, there's like fifty cops waiting for them. Cut back to the party, where all the partygoers are dead, their hands and feet chopped of, and the apprentice is barely alive. So the witch explains her evil plan to destroy the city and take vengeance for her grandmother being burned 417 years ago, blamed for starting a fire. Good setup but...at this point there's a lot of exposition, some oddness, a man in a weird mask climbs out of the coffin that one of the two people had been carrying around. The witch is defeated with a sucker-punch, the partygoers get their hands and feet back and aren't actually dead, and it turns out the two people are from some secret order that regulates magic. But at this point I didn't care.


8. 愚かな天使は悪魔と踊る (oroka-na tenshi wa akuma to odoru, "The Foolish Angel Dances with the Demon"): A transfer student named Akutsu Masatora (Aku*** Ma******) shows up at a new school and...it turns out he's bald at 15? But wait, it's a wig? And then he's sent to sit next to a super cute student that he immediately falls for. He witnesses a confession that Lily shoots down instantly, and some other students tell him that she spent a bunch of time outside of Japan. While trying to figure out how to get closer to her, he runs into her outside of school, and she invites him out to tea. But suddenly, TRUCK-KUN attacks! Akutsu jumps in front of her and...stops the truck with his body, because he's a demon. Lily notices and smiles, and later in the park, Akutsu reveals the truth to her--he's a demon, and in the war of Heaven and Hell, Hell is losing badly. He asks her to be the figurehead that will unite the demons and help motivate them to defend Hell. She demurs, and as she gets close to him, she reveals the truth--she's an angel! Cue the battle scene. But when Akutsu is about to be defeated, Lily changes her mind--she's going to put him to work helping her accomplish her own (secret) goals. And at this point it was one of those "Today's Episode: The Writer's Barely Disguised Fetish" thing with Akutsu being collared and it being framed like a sex scene. No thanks.


9. Solo Leveling: A group of adventurers fight giant ants, and the ants beat them pretty easily, until they are saved by a trio of S-ranked adventurers (adventurers have to have ranks). But, it turns out to actually be a post-apocalyptic anime? Ten years ago gates opened to alternate magic worlds filled with monsters immune to conventional weaponry, but a bunch of humans developed magical powers that worked against them. And this intro ends with the stinger line that once a human's powers are awakened, their rank never ever ever changes. Ever. Ever. Bets that the main character will somehow learn how to get stronger? Anyway, it turns out that nowadays hunters go into the magical gates to farm them for resources because capitalism. It turns out that the energy of dead monsters is collected into stones that form 100% efficient clean energy sources, and also you can make +1 swords and other magical goods out of them. On one raid, Sung, the so-called Weakest Hunter Ever (our main character, obviously) nearly dies but they discover a tunnel leading deeper into the dungeon, and at the end of the path they find a room filled with statues. The door closes, and when one hunter tries to leave a statue chops him in half. Others launch lines of fire across the room, and then...the episode ends? Good cliffhanger, but I don't think I need another endless power escalation series.


10. ぶっちぎり?! (bucchigiri?!, "Winning by a huge margin"): There's a brief intro about what's essentially a wulin martial arts tournament except done by samurai who put down the sword, we cut to a fight happening on school grounds. It's very clearly a delinquent school, as evidenced by the 80s-style colored hair and well-defined faces on the school delinquents--there's even a long-skirted yankī in the back. The main character meets the one non-delinquent in class and offers to walk home with her, but is held up by some delinquents and she's left by the time he arrives, so he just goes back to his job. Later, after being accosted by some delinquents, he takes refuge in a shrine and finds a gun and fires it. It ricochets, hits him in the head, and turns out to be the home of a...genie? Who asks him for a wish? He immediately wishes to lose his virginity and then genie is like "Oh, sure, honestly that makes sense." Next scene, he's on a date at the park with in the non-delinquent things are going well, but right when he's going to make his move, his stomach acts up and he has to run to the bathroom. And then some delinquents show up, one of whom is the older brother of the non-delinquent. AS the beatings commence, the genie merges with the main character and provides him with ultimate strength, and the ending shot is a very Jojo-esque pose of the main character and genie having simultaneously thrown a punch. I am a bit curious about where the series goes, and I do appreciate all the throwback delinquent character designs. I might squeeze it is.

The shows were categorized by another person in the group as follows:

1. Inuyasha At Home (Sengoku Youko)


2. Steins;Geass: You’re Probably Wondering How I Got Swept Up In The War (7th Time Loop: The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!)


3. Let’s Throw Some Cyberpunk Archetypes at the Wall and See What “Sticks” (Metallic Rouge)


4. This Is My Meal, I Call It Dungeon Dinner 🎵Dungeon Dinner🎵 (Delicious in Dungeon)


5. Honda-San’s D&D Wet Dream (The Unwanted Undead Adventurer)


6. She’s Just Another Language To Him (A Sign of Affection)


7. Witches Get Stitches (The Witch and the Beast)


8. This Is Not What God Intended (The Foolish Angel Dances with the Devil)


9. Introducing A Non-Gamer to Dark Souls (Solo Leveling)


10. Aladdin 4: Oh, You’re Approaching Me? (Bucchigiri?!)