Current: The only thing current that I watched last week was May I Ask for One Final Thing, which is still satisfying. The plot twists played out well, and we’re neatly set up for the finale next week. I’ve enjoyed everything about this series.

I had also been watching Gnosia, and I’ll undoubtedly finish it up sometime, but I just didn’t feel any particular urge to watch this latest episode. I’m tired of the complete lack of any sort of overarching plot - the ever-growing pile of mysteries and complications and the increasingly awkward lack of answers. Empty stylishness and an episodic cycle with no meaningful stakes can only carry a series so far by itself (it’d be better if there was at least some comedy or some ecchi or something to break the tedium). As it is, it’s almost as tedious as the Endless Eight arc of Haruhi.

Past:

So first up from the past last week was the rest of Ping Pong the Animation, which I started the previous week. It was… pretty good. I get the concept of sacrificing artistic precision for dynamism, but there were points in that that were too much even for me - points at which the figures looked too much like they were drawn in crayon by a kindergartner. And I found Smile’s character progression a bit unexpectedly shallow - not so much as if he grew from a person with no competitive drive into a person who was willing and able to compete at all costs as he just sort of flipped an internal switch and just went from the former to the latter. That said, I did like it all in all, though I’d rate it at the lower end of Yuasa’s work.

Then I went back to the Gridman universe for SSSS Dynazenon, which was sort of unsettling and frustrating, and in an entirely different way than SSSS.Gridman was. Gridman tended to be mean-spirited and cruel, while Dynazenon tended to be capricious and aloof. I kept wondering (and still wonder) where the urgency was. Kaiju are rampaging through the city, throwing buildings around and destroying entire precincts, so certainly killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, and when Yomogi is asked why he fights, he can’t even manage to come up with an answer. And when they meet the kaiju users, they don’t react to them as if they’re the people responsible for all the death and destruction, but as if they’re just someone they’re sort of inexplicably fated to oppose for some vague reason. In fact, outside of a few scattered scenes, they don’t even really seem to acknowledge, much less be concerned about, all of the death and destruction. Instead, against that mostly unacknowledged backdrop, they play out a fairly standard, though admittedly satisfyingly well written, school/slice of life/awkward romance ensemble dramedy, complete with all the tropes - beach episode (well - swim park, but still), festival complete with fireworks (and Yume beautiful in a yukata), school festival… When I gave in and adopted their lack of urgency and mostly ignored the kaiju, it was a pretty decent story really, with relatively interesting characters who develop well. When it was over though, my first thought was that the movie had damned well better tie together a whole lot of loose ends, because between the two series, there’s a whole boatload of them.

And… the movie, Gridman Universe opened up with the Gridman characters, and immediately went mean-spirited and cruel and crushed Yuta’s heart, and I turned it off. I’m not in the mood for that sort of shit.

So I switched to the second season of Love, Chuunibyou and Other Delusions, and only then realized that both series not only each have a Rikka, but each Rikka is involved with a Yu(u)ta. That can’t be a coincidence.

But anyway - I had been sort of tempted to just leave Chuunibyou alone after the first season, because I was quite satisfied with the way it ended. And in retrospect, I probably should have. The second season was… not good. I didn’t actively dislike it, but I really didn’t like it much either, and the season-ending special was rage-inducing (the pictures weren’t the point - Yuuta made a promise to Rikka, then broke it, and NOTHING excuses that. Asshole.)

I had planned on watching the movie, but after that maddening 13th episode, I lost interest.

So entirely burnt out on tedious sort of vaguely romance-ish entanglements and emotional manipulation, I switched to one that I had actually been sort of saving for just such a situation - when I needed a palette cleanser that was smart, low key and funny - Joshiraku. And when the first episode opened with one character declaring that we should just go read the manga because this is a dialogue-heavy series and it’s a dumb idea to adapt something like that, which led to a warning on-screen that says, “This anime is full of ordinary dialogue so that viewers can fully enjoy how cute the girls are,” I was sure it was a good choice. And it so very much was. The characters are great, the dialogue was witty and amusing and it never lost that meta edge. The only thing that was sort of disappointing about it was that it was one of those series that I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed that much more if I understood Japanese, so I could’ve caught all of the puns and wordplay and dialect shifts. I liked it so much I think it holds a solid third place on my list of favorite CGDCTs, behind only YuruYuri and Gabriel Dropout.

Then, refreshed, I went back to Gridman Universe. It did provide some answers, but not “Ah - I get it now” sort of answers, but more like “Sure - okay - whatever” sort of answers. It was pretty much just the rule of cool expanded to movie length and big screen size, which I guess is sort of appropriate for super robots vs. kaiju. And at least it finally stopped toying with Yuta’s heart, though the pay-off felt more like an addendum than an actual part of the story. It was okay all in all, but could’ve easily been better.

And… I’m not sure what’s next. I’m burnt out on romance, burnt out on action and burnt out on emotional manipulation. I’m sort of craving something that’ll let me just switch off my brain and coast…