imitation rain

I finished 8 shows this season, which is a new record for me.

Jaadugar stayed brilliant. Right now it's a shoo-in for the best thing I've watched this year. It inspired me to dig out my copy of The Secret History of the Mongol Queens for a reread since we have no word on when or if there will be a season 2.

I said there was too much good stuff already to keep watching Dara-san of the Reiwa Era, but somehow I failed to stop watching it. It continued to have the feel of an isolated retiree learning to re-engage with her community. Well, except for the flashback segments which evolved into a proper traditional Japanese horror story. I really enjoyed it, except for that one bit at the end of episode 2 where the author lets us into the mind of the neighbor lady and really didn't need to.

Speaking of bad writing decisions, The World is Dancing was disappointingly full of them. Two different characters exist just to die so that the protagonist can learn important life lessons, except by the next episode it seems like the lesson is forgotten. His first patron is portrayed as a comic pedophile. Almost every dance sequence is accompanied by the audience constantly describing what's happening in awed tones, which is understandable given this originated as a manga but those lines should have been cut for the TV version. And you don't wind up really learning anything about Noh; there's a lot of speechifying about how the performing arts need to keep evolving, but little about what's being changed or the process of deciding how.

The Ghost in the Shell was a blast from start to finish. The transhumanist elements and the stuff about the evolution of machine intelligence are old hat for an experienced science fiction fan, but it was such fun to watch that I didn't. Strip away the layer of goth trenchcoat cool that Oshii Mamoru added for the movie adaptation, and it turns out the aesthetic of the original manga is '80s action movie cool. As a child of the '80s, this worked very well for me.

Welcome to Demon School, Iruma-kun! had a terrific climax to the Music Festival arc and then, after catching its breath, suddenly decided to try unapologetic queerness on for size. It fit! And then the season concluded with the start of the class's second year, and the realization that they're now the popular and successful kids. Hoping the next season does not devolve into competence porn.

Goodbye, Lara had a nice conclusion about ( okay, cut because I'm mostly spoiling the ending here )

Mebius Dust was a fairly tepid show about kids with with superpowers having parkour battles, until about halfway through when it developed a sideline in examining dysfunctional sibling relationships. I will give it credit for having the protagonist realize he has made terrible decisions, suffer consequences, make a real apology, and accept that it would take time to make amends, where many shows would try to hurry forgiveness for him. But it was still only about half good.

Saga of Tanya the Evil crossed the line from dark comedy to just really freaking dark this season, and I still loved watching it every week. In this season, the war has reached the point where alternate fantasy imperial Germany is badly overstretched, the best it can hope for is a peace treaty resetting everything to the status quo ante, and the leadership has decided to just keep fighting anyway in pursuit of some nebulous definition of victory. I found myself thinking about Blackadder Goes Forth a lot, particularly the part of the finale where the writers drop the satire and let their outrage show about leaders who are fine with feeding their army into a meat grinder. This may all be taking place in fantasy Europe, but it's hard not to see this as criticism of Japan's decisions in WWII as well.

Next season is, um, less stacked. In fact it looks like a good time to catch up on a few things. The only premieres I'm currently planning to check out are Tetsuryō!, because trains, and The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom, because it's one of those rare cases of a medieval-ish fantasy world not looking like like a total visual mishmash.