Your family of randos wasn't a family until your aunt kidnapped you? What? Impressions: Like High Card, this also ended with an announcement that it'd be continuing after a season break, though lord knows why when it was even further on the low side of mediocre. The dumb testing of his mettle ended with a single punch and then began the recitation of backstories yet again. That plus a weird non-training bit where Hyouma disappeared, but he had just gone across the block for a few days to practice and was apparently bad about answering his text messages. That gag might've worked had it n ..read more

  Pretty sure your plan would've been fine if you hadn't wanted to do it at the top of a ferris wheel. Impressions: First things first. It does end with an announcement of season 2, which I'll probably continue with, but I won't exactly be eagerly waiting for it. The (non) ending here was just a return right back to the status quo with very half-assed handwaving over Chris's whole plan. Oh, it got interrupted, so it half worked, not killing him, not fully healing his sister. Only that one antagonist woman got slashed and then gutted without the overall antagonists actually accom ..read more

  You and me both, Jiro. Reminder: Nier's back on indefinite hiatus, so nothing tomorrow. I extremely doubt I'll have the season preview done by Sunday. Impressions: Soooooo… Let's recap here. The old lady from the first episode was secretly a teleporting super witch carrying around senzu beans? And the plague of worms was all being spilled forth from some giant golem? Which they defeat by the cat person teleporting them to the shadow realm, taking her true teenager form, and explaining that Kumi is the Chosen One who had the power inside her all along? And then everybody lives ..read more

  …No, really. Who on earth was this woman? Impressions: You know you're in for a good time when it's two minutes into the episode and already in utter disbelief and questioning your sanity. Who exactly is this new white haired shapeshifting woman? Did I have a stroke and completely miss an episode? She just comes out of nowhere, banishes the supposed main villain of this arc to the shadow realm. Then she goes into the shadow realm herself, where he powers up, but he forgot about her magical eyes! Forgot? Lady, I didn't even know you existed two minutes ago. I still have no idea who you a ..read more

  Way to make the sex weird, dads. Impressions: What's incredible about this arc is that it's resolved by everybody abrubtly deciding they wouldn't care after all. So… right back to the status quo from before this arc, having never actually established any reason why they should care. About all the things. Becoming an autocratic tyrant, becoming an immortal demigod… oh, right. Those are the only two things. I was a child of the Buffy age. None of the things we're mewling about are actual issues, at no point have they stopped these characters, nor any characters in this show or any show, f ..read more

  One of my favorite thing in anime after flashbacks. Impressions: This arc has just been so bizarre to me. They're still introducing new characters even in the eleventh hour, the actual antagonists are skulking around in tunnels or popping up out of nowhere to inscrutably help the protagonists against the other antagonists, most of the protagonist team has been exiled to Serbia for some completely different plot thread that doesn't even really kick off until a couple minutes from the end of the episode, and speaking of which, it takes 15 minutes for anybody to realize that Chris's p ..read more

  Eat the fish and end it all. Impressions: That A-1 animation budget collapse really is in full force, huh? Another barely animated episode that seemed more designed around fitting in some insert song. Let's splash in the water for a minute. …Okay. *BLASTS MELODRAMATIC INSERT SONG AT MAXIMUM VOLUME* Not sure you set this one up in any way whatsoever, guys, not to mention that it came at around eight minutes into the episode, so certainly wasn't the capstone to an episode or any kind of story. But even in the year of 2023, we have CDs to sell, apparently. The end of the episode was the on ..read more

  Why does every culture in this world play the flute? Impressions: Uh, so, the last boss is going to be… some dragon worms and Facade just randomly going berserk, looking for the already dead scientist dude? Wasn't there some doomsday cult or invading aliens that we were supposed to be dealing with? No, not the weird-ass cult of pseudo elves living in their giant empty mausoleum, where they have a giant pulsating rock that steals the power from girls in a ritual. They're the good guys… apparently. Though I am certainly still giving them one hell of a side-eye. But honestly ..read more

  Oh, I guess we're just redeeming this dude? Impressions: It really speaks to how pointless the last couple episodes have been to just have Lavi end up right back in the throne room with the big medium bad to continue the discussion from a couple episodes ago. You'd also think that there'd be a bit more of a commotion over the robots randomly shooting at people and town water supplies being war crime poisoned, but sure. We can have this dude sitting in his giant room, all alone, completely unaware of anything happening outside his window… but also everybody's listening in to their conver ..read more

  Please shoot somebody in the face. Impressions: Not that I have high expectations for this show, but the whole squad shows up to save the day, shows that they're ready to fight by all whipping swords out of nowhere, and then all the swords but two vanish into thin air. Nor do I fully understand the plan from daddy dearest. You, and apparently everybody, knew that your bloodline was cursed, hooked up with the evil cult, handed her over, waited until the last second, and then called a meeting to ask for help? Seems like there probably should've been some kind of betrayal from the cult or ..read more